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3. Rusty Spinner Color

I realize color may vary, but in general, what color are rusty spinners? Do they lean more toward brown or orangish? Maybe someone could throw out some examples.
Thanks,
Bruce

Rust, So reddish brown, Some have been a darker brown. What mayfly are you trying to match?

Bruce,
For the smaller cahills and sulphurs on the larger CENT PA stoners I have them tied from the standard superfine rusty brown to a dark tan (flyrite 47 I think) to a very pale yellow dubbing over orange thread to give that watery orange effect.

In general terms i like the dark tan best as it seems to have hints of both ends of the spectrum without solidly commiting either way.
JW

Isn't the "rusty" sex specific, and the females, or is it the males?...are a pale olive.

Read JOHNW above. I've found that they run the gamut from rust color to light tan. Just tie a few different shades, in the size of the hatch your matching and don't worry. But, I'll tell you one thing, always have some with you.
Bruce

To me, the color of a spinner, is way more important to the tyer than it is to the trout. Size and shape are more important IMHO...

Spinner activity can take place all day long but after the sun sets I'm not sure that they don't just see silhouette...Making the correct size and shape more important.

Now...Having said this I still tie for my own eyes and what I remember seeing on the stream and from my streamside notes which became tying notes. I still have one of those Borger color system booklets in my vest and have used it in my notes from time-to-time. I carry a tiny metric ruler and a small note book in a zip lock.

My notes are added to a list of the bugs I expect to see, and have seen, on the river and are then compared to the old Justin Leonard book, "Mayflies of Michigan Trout Streams"...I then compare my notes & Leonard's notes against the different hooks I own, measuring from just behind the eye to the point where the hook shank begins to curve. So, if I decide a bug was 10mm long in real life, I use a hook where the "working" portion of it is 10mm...(most of my hook boxes have the millimeter size written on the outside on the container lid)

Male mayflies tend to be smaller than the female and as stated above can have different coloration. If you have only seen a single male specimen you can tie up a hook size larger or a hook size smaller if you have only seen a female...Most hatch charts do this and show a range of sizes for a particular mayfly...

Though the Rusty Spinner matches a great many mayfly spinners fairly well, I still think of it as a "generalist" pattern and it can be tied in many sizes to cover a great many different bugs.

I like to use sometimes, fibers from a pheasant tail dyed darkish red...I twist/form a rope around the tying thread/or trap the fibers in a dubbing loop and wrap the abdomen with this...If your fibers are long enough you can wrap all the way to the head of the fly or dub a nice thorax of a color close to the natural's color.

What you use for your spinner wings is up to you or a parachute style fly works well also.

This may sound a bit weird, but...If you stand below a mating swarm of male spinners and use the sky behind them as background, what do you see? The split tails are easily seen against the light background, their flattened wings as they coast down, and a thin abdomen etc...You see silhouette and I think your spinner should look exactly as you see them there when you tie them. You are looking at them there like the trout might when they float over their heads as they pass on the water.

For the most part, IMHO, tyers have a tendency to miss the thinness of a proper spinner...I have, in all my years astream, yet to see a spinner I thought needed to go on a diet...:) Syl Nemes in his book, "Spinners" ties his spinner bodies with tying thread...He actually mic'ed mayfly spinner abdomens and found that they are sometimes barely thicker than the hook shank...

Spence

I have experienced very little spinner fishing, or even interest in spinners over many years of guiding, and my own personal fishing on primarily freestone rivers. But last year was a good observation for me on fishing spinner falls for Grey Drake spinners that were intense on our Henry's Fork of the Snake, and intense over a long period of time. We had really high water due to a heavy Winter snowfall, and that creates great Grey Drake hatches. Spinner falls occurred in the early evening, and typically so on the Henry's Fork for Grey Drake Spinners. But there were also falls that occurred around 1:00. I would sit in my driftboat and watch many spinners float by in their different colorations from a dark brown to a rusty to tan, and different wing attitudes from curved bodied both wings laid over to one side, and there were a lot of them in that position, to horizontal positioned wings that most patterns represent. And GD's are not small mayflies. A Parachute Adams in size #12-14 worked great IF the body was tied in a darker grey, not a lighter grey like mine were! After one day, I found that if I took my brown Pantone Pen, and darkened the body the PA worked just great. Big rainbows that would get into heavier than normal current were tough to land. Wish it happened every year like that, but doesn't look like it will this Winter. Our snow pack is down thus far.

I agree. Color isn't even next for me; shade is. A favorite color in England is the right shade of orange for the olive hatches. I have had excellent luck over the years with bleached beaver (Lt. grayish tan) for several olive hatches and even Pale Morning Duns. Everything else in the pattern being the same, it often outperforms more perfectly matching colors. The key I've noticed is that when it does, it matches the right shade. Truth be known, I suspect in a black & white photo it probably looks closer than "the right color" that may be a little off in shade at those times. If I were allowed to have only one box of dry flies to "match the hatch", I wouldn't feel too handicapped as long as I could carry four different styles in different sizes in Dk. brown, gray, tan, & cream.

Will I voluntarily limit myself like that, though? Nah.... I'm hopelessly addicted to searching for the Holy Grail of the perfect color.;)

Speaking of thinness, I think we all have a tendency to tie dry flies too thick. My buddy mentioned this to me one time years ago and I took notice. I tie 90% of mine with thread or biot quill bodies.
Bruce

Depends on the family, Bruce. Baetids yes, but some heptageniids and ephemerellids for example, no.

Well, I didn't state the obvious, I meant in general.

Sorry about that. Didn't mean to sound so picky.:)

Entoman, I wasn't busting you, just acknowledging that you are correct.

Pax.;) Thanks, you never really know how some posts are received.

Doublespey,

Wish I had been there! My last trip to the Ranch was in 2004 and I was warned in the local shops there about the fishing before I had purchased my fishing license...It seems to always be about the water there and the prior years snow-pack. There were next to zero fish there that early fall...Some guys gave me directions to some spots below where feeder creeks entered the river in hopes of finding some fish stacked up in the cooler water downstream.

One gray low cloud day the water looked like glass...I had a hatch of a handful of different bugs and I have never seen anything quite like it...It was like someone had sprinkled the surface with a pepper shaker! All across the river! There were maybe three of us die-hards there...and no feeding trout!?

Timing is everything there.

Here in Michigan our Pere Marquette is known for it's Gray Drakes...Unfortunately, this hatch is overshadowed on that river by the steelhead and salmon runs there during the year and something called a Hex...;)

I'm trying to work out a float there this upcoming summer with a guide friend who knows the river...The river itself is beautiful but can be fickle...In 1991, near the Memorial Day weekend, I remember a sulpher spinner fall there that ranks right up there in all time intensity.

Spence

Yes, the Ranch has gone through some lean years. The drought years really hurt Island Park, and then there was the need for dam repair that dropped the water down to nothing, and really depleted the fish pop. They tried to net them, and transfer them downriver, but weren't very successful. It will take time to recover. I fished below Ashton, and that area has a large per mile concentration of fish, the biggest concentration on the NF and it has been that way even during the good years up at Harriman St. Park on the Henry's Fork.(NF) Grey Drakes flourish when the water gets high on the banks, and backwaters are formed. There was a huge back water area that formed not far below Ashton Dam that really produced a great spinner fall below there. There was also a good area at St. Anthony not far at all from where Mike Lawson built a new home. A big, wide area of river called the Fun Farm, but it got fished hard, and it had been awhile since I witnessed such spooky fish. Casts had to be 50 fters. I'd quietly pull anchor, and gently try to oar within closer distance of working fish, but they would spook, and be gone...too tough for me.

Doublespey,

I remember seeing an article somewhere about the dam repair. I also remember reading somewhere about a dam (not sure if it was the same one) that gave out many, many, years ago and tore quite a path downstream, jumping the banks etc.

I am reading Craig Mathews' small book on "Western Fly Fishing Strategies" and he mentions that sooner or later the pile of rubble below Quake Lake on the Madison will probably be blown out. The power of the river at that bottle-neck, created after the 1959 quake there, is awesome!

How's the river over in the Ranch fishing these days?

I have wanted for a long time to float the "Box"...Sometimes I think I just need to park my dry-fly trout chasing attitude and let loose with some rough water and maybe a Brook's Stone or some large streamer...:) My biggest Brown ever was caught on the Madison in 95! and he took a supposed "secret" guide fly streamer that I wasn't allowed to look at...Once I caught Mister Big though they gave me the fly! ;)

I remember us pushing off on that float down the Madison. I was in the rear of the boat and was just a bit tangled up and said something like, "Whoa." under my breath and the guide saying, "Spence. On the Madison, there is no whoa!" :)

Spence

There is a lot of interesting spinner data here. I am curious to learn what you guys prefer to use for the wing of the spinners you tie or buy. What I prefer and what I tie most of the time is not the same. I prefer either wound hackle in the conventional style then figure 8 the dubbing noodle over and under and back and foward around the wing or Borger's "X" spinner wing. However for quickness of tying I often cheat and use either micro flash or white or light gray Hi-viz.

The hackle wing spinners are the prettiest and to me look the most natural on the water but I can't say that they fish any better than a nice sparsely tied synthetic wing. Any opinions?

I use my ep fibers they call them. Come in a skein, and lots of it. Crinkley, and shiny. Can't say I had good success with them though because the pattern I used for the Grey Drake Spinners last season with lots of success were Adams parachutes. But I remember now a point someone emphasized, ..Oh, it was Gallup, that said a spinner pattern he designed placed the spinner wing material on the thorax 3 times, and then the dubbing wrapped behind, and forward, how, I can not remember specifically, but the intent was to create a wide, shoulder base for the wing..said that was a visible feature, and most tie in spinner wings are very narrow at the shoulder unlike the natural...maybe it wasn't Gallup?? Maybe the pattern was called a "tri-wing spinner?"

Matt-
I like to tie a variety of different spinners, too.
I like the hackled "Catskill style" spinner, but they can be a pain in the ass to tie well, so I don't do too many of them anymore.
The HiVis and EP fibers can be cranked out by the dozen in a short period of time, and I'll admit to tying lots of those. They are very effective despite what others claim. The wings MUST be sparse. I haven't tried the DNA fibers that seem to be "all the rage" out here in the East (thanks to Henry Ramsay's book), so I can't comment.
Lately, and for "picky" fish, I have been tying and using a lot of hackle stackers. They have been the best performing spinner imitation for me on flat water the past few seasons. They are way more time consuming, but the results are worth it.
-Tony