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3. The dubbing debate

I have always preferred making my own fur dubbing from patches of dyed animal hides,mixing them together to achieve a desired shade. I like the idea of using furs and hairs and I like a dubbing that shows a range of highlights, hues and colors as opposed to a solid, single color. My feeling is that this more impressionistic approach better imitates the mottling and variation present in natural insects. It just looks buggier to me. What do you think?

I agree, and even go so far as to use the Caucci spectrumized dubbing a good bit.

I think that's a great way of going about it Patcrisci. I think a variety of hues and colors more closely imitate the natural. I think the materials market also recognizes this as they offer pre-mix dubbing in hundreds of combination of colors, textures and tones. I've even seen dubbing in catalogs offered to match a regional hot hatch color, its great!

I also really like mixing fur off hares mask and feet; combining the short, dense, easy to spin underfur with a few, prickly guard hairs to create a great buggy look.

The craze in modern dubbings is great cause it offers sparkle and shine BUT, and it's a big one, nothing to me equals natural dubbing. Hare's Ear is my favorite and is available in some great colors. Squirrel is also great as is opossum, beaver, raccoon, etc. I have an old rabbit fur coat I picked up at a garage sale that'll last me the rest of my life. Cotton-tail rabbit tails can be dyed a myriad of colors and mixed. Mole is also great for small flies.


Double Olive Flymph

Mark

The flymph is nice mark! highly underutilized!! I like that squirrel coat idea, I'll have to keep my eyes out for one lol

I love using hare's mask and squirrel dubbing. I have patches of hare's mask and grey squirrel body hair dyed red, green, yellow and orange. What's great about dying over natural grey squirrel is that you end up with very muted, darkish, mottled, natural looking hues that are great for blending. I blend them with light tannish red or grey fox fur and hare's mask or hare's ear fur. For nymphs, nothing beats this combinatation of colors and spiky, fuzzy appearance -- except maybe for seal's fur which has long, wiry, lustrous fibers. I like using beaver, mink and muskrat for dries.

Individualism is what makes fly fishing so personal. Decades ago when pre-mixed dubbing furs were pretty much unknown I used to cut fur off of skins and spend hours hand mixing rabbit, mink, beaver, fox, etc of both dyed and natural colors into different shades. I still have at least twenty-five envelopes of various colors in my desk. Now though with the plethora of natural and synthetic blends I would never even consider hand mixing colors. I don't believe the trout are that discerning. Borger has a pretty neat color system and even he, who many consider to be one of the experts, says that you don't really need an exact match and you could go up or two shades up or down from his color chart.

Wbranch -- you are right on about the individualism and the room for variety and personal choice in choosing materials from which to make flies. The choices are mind-boggling. For me, it boils down to preference... what you feel most comfortable and confident with in terms of materials and flies.

You bring up a good point too, about "matching exact shades," and how critical it is, or isn't. Which brings us to another debate.

What are the three most important factors in making and fishing artificial flies?

For me, they are:
1. silhouette
2. size
3. presentation (in other words, does the fly drift naturally/behave in a manner that is consistent with that of the real fly).

Pat,

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes

To me part of presentation is line management - you might make a good cast but if you are not capable of eliminating, and extending the drift, drag free, you catch rate will suffer.

Silhouette to me is far more important than color - that is one of the reasons why I'm very partial to Compara-duns with wings of 120 - 180 degrees of fan depending on water types. From beneath all the fish is going to see is my trailing shuck, a slender abdomen, a somewhat bulbous thorax and the configuration of my wing shape. I have similar interest in modified thorax style dries - but hey if I tell you all my secrets you might start catching some of those big fish I'm after!

I would agree that color is less important than silhouette and presentation, but having said all that I'm reminded how sharp a trouts vision is every time i see a trout chase down my olive and brown sculpin in muddy water. I realize that it may not care about color but it does make me wonder, or at least make me put forth an effort at matching colors.
jeff

I think color and what material is very important. our dubbing have been around for 30+ years and are the closest I've ever seen to the real deal.One thing we have done is use clored thread to give a look under the fur..I agree with patcrisci on the impressionistic approach.

I believe the idea of triggers is very important, however, I feel fly behavior is most important. If a fly does not behave like the real deal, it gets refused, and that is especially true if the trout are selective at that point.

During the regular course, the trout has to determine if what it's seeing is food or not. Of course they take a lot of things that are not food, but something made them respond to that floating object whatever it was. To me, Movement often = Life, and while trout often respond to a dead drifted fly, I catch way more trout if there is some animation. I believe this is why the wingless wet and flies made with CDC are so darn effective.

Another thing we must remember is trout ARE predators and they behave like predators. If you observe land predators, you will find that they prey opportunistically upon animals that exhibit some weakness or something that sets them apart from the rest of the herd. Trout, in my opinion, for the most part do the same. Cripples, spinners, and emerging flies fit into this category. They are perfect to zero in on because they are vulnerable.

I think about these ideas each time I go to the river.

Mark

Mark,

I'm kind of curious as to how you impart movement/life to a Compara-dun or for that matter any dry fly? I know you like soft hackle flies and I can see how the materials you use, and the motion you can employ to the retrieve, would add movement/life to the fly.

Hi Wbranch,
Movement to a dry fly can be incorporated into the fly by materials used. CDC is a good one. Even floated dead drift, some of the fibers must move or wiggle a bit.

The other method I use on occasion when I fish dries is described nicely in Len Wright's FISHING THE DRY FLY AS A LIVING INSECT. I don't know if this book is in print anymore, but it can be purchased through online book stores. While the method was devised for imitating adult caddis, it can be used with most floating flies. While the method may seem unorthodox for fishing dry flies, it works.

At Amazon

Also Read Here

You are correct, the majority of flies I fish are wet flies, and that's another point I should make. MOST fly fishermen ignore using wet flies. This, in my opinion, is a big mistake. It subtracts one of the dimensions of fly fishing. We often forget that when a trout takes a dry fly, it is an exception to the norm.

Mark

Hi Mark,

"Len Wright's FISHING THE DRY FLY AS A LIVING INSECT. I don't know if this book is in print anymore"

I bought a first edition back in 1972 and unlike you I think it is a joke. I was all excited when I first bought it because back in those days I was still forming my fly fishing opinions and techniques.

After applying the "sudden inch" or whatever it is called and never having even as much as one false rise I put the book back on the shelf and today when I went to look at the publication date it was the first time I'd opened it in at least thirty years.

You also wrote -

"We often forget that when a trout takes a dry fly, it is an exception to the norm."

While I respect your opinion and I'm sure you catch as many or more fish than the average fly fisher I'd have to disagree with that premise. Possibly my high rate of dry fly success is due to the rivers I fish. I'm a slave to a few western Catskill rivers where in all but the worst weather days I will be able to find rising fish.

I fish three days, during the week, late April to the end of October. During that period I catch hundreds of trout and while I don't keep a log I'd venture to say 90% are taken on dry flies and the other 10% on streamers. I do admit though to catching all of my steelhead on nymphs or egg flies.

Where I go in MT in June or July I see many rising trout from 6:00 a.m. to about 2:00 and then again from 6:00 to 10:00. That four hour flat period gives an old man like me time to take a seista and re-charge my batteries for the witching hours of the evening.

I am familiar with Wright's book and yes the skittering or twitching methods have worked for me in certain conditions when fishing dry caddis patterns.

As far as "behavior" goes -- I agree with Wbranch that presentation and fly "behavior" are related and both are critical factors in eliciting strikes from trout. But behavior alone is not enough.

Trout, discriminating trout, will key in on an insect's sillhoutte (shape, wing profile), size, and yes, color -- but to a lesser degree, in my opinion.

On materials and how they contribute lifelike action/movement: I'm not convinced that this is a factor in dry fly fishing. I do believe that it's very important though, with sub-surface imitations.

Wbranch,
Think of all the fish you are missing by not fishing wets. Trout are underwater feeders and it has always been stated, and somewhat my experience, that the majority of their food is taken underwater.

I have successfully taken trout when there is no surface activity on wets, both winged and wingless. One of the problems with dry fly fishing is that most trout fishermen think it is the only way to catch trout. If you fish streamers you do not fall into that category. I fish dries, myself and I believe that however you do it, I applaud you! It is in the doing that we find the greatest satisfaction and learn the most.

I do feel, however, that movement is often a key to success. How many times have you seen a trout slash at caddis moving near the water's surface? We all know the nymphs crawl around on the bottom and swim to the top, where many struggle to set themselves free of their shucks. Even a supposedly dead drifting imago moves, perhaps opening and closing it's wings as they dry. There are very few instances when a fly sits still, and a majority of those instances occur out of the trout's view. For the most part, these living creatures move, and the trout know this.

As for Len Wright's technique, I have used it successfully, and I don't think it's a lot of bunk. Here's something I found recently online-

Field & Stream Article

I found this interesting because it is based on Wright's work done in 1972 although it gives him no credit. Before his book, casting downstream with dries was definitely frowned upon.

I addition, the Late Gary La Fontaine acknowledged Wright's technique and its success as a way to imitate the caddis, " The modern acceptance of the moving dry fly is recognition that for many insects, and especially adult caddisflies, the action of the imitation becomes just as important as its appearance."

Mark

I was headed up to the Delaware one year at Green Drake time and stopped by in Bob Clouser's shop just before. He told me to twitch my GD if fish wouldn't take it. He said he'd watched pressured fish refuse real flies that were dead drifting only to smack them if they wiggled. Floating the river, in the lower Gamelands I watched some fellows work a rising fish. I don't know if they were dead drifting dry flies, but the fish wouldn't take and they moved on. Anchored above them, I rested the fish a while then moseyed down after tying on a GD emerger. After two or three drifts over the fish I remembered what Bob said and although I was sure I'd mess up and drag the fly I gave it a twitch. A nice 16" brown rose confidently and took the fly. I hate twitching dry flies, but believe there's a time and a place for just about anything in flyfishing.

SH wrote -

"One of the problems with dry fly fishing is that most trout fishermen think it is the only way to catch trout. If you fish streamers you do not fall into that category".

Here are a few phrases from E. Schwiebert's classic "Matching the Hatch";

"The aquatic insects spend all but a few days of their lives under water. For this reason do most of their feeding beneath the surface."

"The dry fly purist is placing his chances for success on the short end of some rather impressive odds. He is benefitting from only those 10 to 25 per cent of feeding activity."

For those of you who would like to read Mr. Schwiebert's take on trout feeding habits it can be found starting on page 8 of the 1969 fifth printing entitled "The Trout and His Habits" and ending near the bottom of page 24 of the chapter heading "The Principal Trout Stream Insects."

Yes, I was not born with a dry fly at the end of my leader LOL! In those formative, Dark Side, (just kidding SH) years of my early fishing life I nymphed far more than I dry fly fished. One of my nick names given to me by my peers was "BB" - we all know why I had that moniker! I was, and still am, an accomplished nymph and streamer flinger.

I realize my daily tally would likely be increased if I fished wet but after having nymphed my proverbial butt off for the first thirty years of my fishing life I just got tired of high sticking and the "chuck and duck" method of moving multiple BB's, and/or weighted flies, from a point behind me to some chosen point up and across from me.

My modus operandi now is to either float into prime water and drop the anchor and wait for a fish to show itself, or walk in to a likely spot and sit on the bank until I see a fish rise a few times. If the rise form looks meaningful, and the target rises say half a dozen times, I get into position and begin to fish. Catching, while important, is not nearly as important as locating a rising fish and me giving my 100% until I either rise the trout or I feel he has bettered me.

As the French so eloquently say Viva la Difference!

Thanks for posting that, Wbranch. It gives some great insight into a great fly fisherman. I cut my fly fishing teeth on Matching The Hatch, which I still refer to.

As I said earlier, I fish dries, too. That being said, I very seldom weight my flies, preferring to use the hook and the line, plus presentation when fishing wet. The ONLY time I might use a weighted fly is in the early spring, when water is fast, deeper and off color. The weight gets the fly in the water quicker.

All the excitement of dry fly fishing can be had fishing the wingless wet like a dry in the surface film or just below. For versatility, you can not beat these flies.

One of my sons-in-law use to be a dry fly purist. I soon converted him one day on my home river. My son and I were fishing Hans weilenmann's Partridge and Olive emerger-which is a soft-hackle wet in actuality. It was May, and the trout were taking very well at the surface, however, they were taking better below. Mark and I took two fish to every one of my son's-in-law. He was fishing the dry. In addition, the largest trout was taken by my son-a twenty inch brown on the P & O Emerger.

Since that time, we have fished the Willowemoc twice, taking many trout on winged and wingless wet flies when others were complaining of taking nothing. The reason? Everyone else was fishing one dimensionally-on the surface.

As you said, To Each His Own.

If you would like to learn more on the wingless wet fly, I invite you to visit and sign up for http://www.flymphforum.com. I do not wish to take anyone away from this most wonderful forum, but for the these flies, this new forum is packed with info.

Thanks for this great discussion, Wbranch. I really enjoy exchanging ideas, theories, etc. and will talk with you anywhere, anytime.

Mark