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http://i607.photobucket.com/albums/tt159/FredHannie/P5250282.jpg


http://realisticflytying.net/id14.html

come on fred - leave it alone and stop whining

What are you talking about Gutcutter ? I have left the discussions alone . I am just adding patterns and links to step by steps. Did you follow the link or look at the photo? What does it have to do with anything other than the pattern? I thought I would try to contribute something positive and helpful . This is only a pattern of a fly with no commentary.

fred-
if you tied that ant colony - then you are a wonderful tyer AND they have hooks. i am impressed. as photographed, i suspect that they would work wonderfully on an ant eater. i've never caught one on a fly rod - or spinning rod for that matter. one would probably work on a trout, too if those flies were shown in the water. they are a nice demonstration of the ART of fly tying.
however - if this is another one of your attempts to bash realistic tiers then i recommend you leave it alone and go somewhere else.
gut

Not an attempt at anything but to share a pattern , just like the caddis I posted. This fly can be tied in many sizes just follow the step by step link . It works well on bluegills and trout . Any place where carpenter ants are near the water fish will dine on the hapless ones that fall in.This is an easy to tie fishable fly.Please before you comment again follow the step by step . You will see it is tied and can become a useful addition to your fly box.The small pictures will enlarge if you double click on them . I hope you give these patterns a try , they have both saved a day or two on the water for me .

Fred

I dunno, but I would guess that those "flies" don't sit on the water well. Realistic to us doesn't often translate to the water and trout.

Paul I would invite you to tie the pattern and give it a chance.Or I could send you some to try.The ant sits in the water film just like it's living counterpart. I've had alot of sucess with this pattern on spooky or shy fish.I't only takes a few minutes to tie ;what have you got to lose.

Fred

The guy that taught me to tie use to say to me, when he thought I was getting too carried away about something, "Spence. It's just a craft!"

I think that the tying process, besides being very practical (it's nice to make what you need), can have a therapeutic side to it. It can simply be a hobby. There are folks that tie that really never fish. I use to watch my grandmother wasting time playing solitare or doing needle point things...Tying can be simply something to do to pass the time.

Some of the best production tyers I know seldom get out and fish. There are some famous tyers, women tyers, that have never been near a stream and many people making flies in tiny little sweat shops overseas doing it for a living and probably have no clue what they are tying. There is an old photo from Bailey's shop out in Livingstone of a room filled with some of the local housewives, looking for something to do and earn a few bucks, tying flies for his shop.

Sometimes us "old-school" anglers have a tendency to over think and complicate things up. There are a trillion different opportunities between the two materials of a Sawyer's nymph and say a Jock Scott. Why would we want to chain ourselves to limits? We can still poke a little fun at "gaudy" flies, or attractors, or what the Brits would call a "lure", and even those old fuddy-duddy "match-the-hatchers" like Spence...

It's a big old world out there boys and no two of us thinks alike...What we going to do??? "Kill all the unbelievers."

I attend a fly tying expo every year and by accident there is a fellow there with the same old-dutch last name as mine. We are, no-doubt, related somewhere back down the line...He's from the western side of the state and my folks from further up 131...just a little closer to "gods-country". He ties up these elaborate spiders that look like they are going to walk off the table and I heard him tell a couple youngsters to take a couple and that they work wonderfully on the blue-gill in his pond...After the little guys moved on I asked him, "What fly doesn't work well with the blue-gills in your pond?" He just smiled and schrugged his shoulders...He's tying them just for the fun of it.

Spence

Fred, That fly is a wet fly, yes?

Spence,not sure what you're getting at. Tying can be fun, whether the product catches fish or not. Agree with all my heart.

But... those production tiers you mention that have never been near the water are just that -tiers. They are following a recipe. To design flies, especially something new, you gotta go to the water.

Paul to be acurate it is probably neither truly a dry fly and its not really a wet. Because of it's light weight and water displacement , along with the head cement (flexament) (which floats on it's own) this fly on a size #20 or #18 will stay in the surface film .

Gotcha.

Cool pattern, Fred. Thanks for sharing the pattern along with the step-by-step. For the antenae, I wonder if it might add durability to tie in 1 doubled strand of mono rather than two separate ones, or for speed to tie in a loop of mono and then clip it in two after tying. Thoughts?

-Shawn

Shawn you could do it either way . I like the loop idea .On the smaller ants ,(# 18 and smaller ) my biggest concern is to keep the material added to the head as thin as possible so it wont force me to go off on proportions. Microfibbets would work well for the antenae also.
Thanks for the comments, Fred

Paul. I hope this isn't keeping you up at night! :)

I'm just adding my two cents to the ongoing discussion/argument re: realistic vs inpressionistic, real material vs plastics, "what is flytying?" etc going on here in this post and one elsewhere.

I think we have painted ourselves in to a semantic corner and are just blowing a little hot air up each others skirts...I was just trying to say to each their own even though I have drawn some lines in the sand myself from time-to-time.

We all are basically doing our own thing and each have our own traditions/fantasies about what we like to do either on the stream or behind the vise and that's probably the bottom line to a question that can never be completely answered and only causes arguments that go no where really...

I have a friend that over the years has made statements to me while we were fishing (fly or ice) that were delivered as gospel..."I will never do this!" or "One should never do that!" Only to find, when I fished with him a few years later, he's doing what he said he never would.

The best example has been our long history together ice fishing...At first we swore that shanties were for wimps...A couple years later he had a nice portable model that was so warm inside we had to remove our coats. A few years later Mr. Natural/Tradition had an actual underwater fish finder! He probably has a GPS unit by now...

I practically got run out of here a while back when I said that the Michigan Big Ugly was a glorified jig and that it pushed the envelope of what "fly fishing" was...It would probably work just as well on a spinning reel. These, as I said above, are questions that are so subjective we are wasting our time trying to argue them out.

Here's an aside...Instead of trying to figure out what fly tying actually is maybe we should ask ourselves (especially those among us worried about the environment trout live in) what happens to all this plastic and lead and beads when they are no longer attached at the terminal end of our leader? How much shit are we coating the bottom of the stream with? Some of which will never decompose.

The fly tying as craft/hobby idea I was alluding to I guess was to illustrate my reluctance to "hassle" someone for being creative. I wasn't really discussing whether or not their creations would catch a fish or that it even had to. You and I are on the same page with the comment of yours and I do believe this with all my heart...But that's you and I...

Maybe I do need to get that ex-wife/editor back...Maybe she could help me straighten out my thought process and give me clarity...Nah!!!

Spence

It's all good, and very individual, and even THAT will change over time.

My aesthetic was originally cast from the classic fly-fishing images that captivated me when I was young and impressionable (lol) and has been challenged since. I now know it's where I developed my aesthetic and passions, and not some inherent right. Took a while. I've come to appreciate the pragmatic too.

A great example is my archery. I started with wheels, went "traditioanl, then began to make my own, going into the woods with a hatchet and coming out with a bow. I shoot wood arrows, originally gleaned from the woods. But now with so little time to devote to something so time consuming, I've begun to appreciate the pure functionality of glass-backed bows and synthetic arrows. I still hunt with wood, but understand the reality -most people just don't have the time.

As to tying, I love the creative inventive possibilities, and mixed with some rigorous ground truthing (what the trout actually think), I can be excited about almost any material. I certainly do have an aesthetic sense though, but I will drop it if the trout require it. There is nothing more beautiful than that, my own whims be damned.