Quigley’s Tying Tips
For the heads of my steelhead and saltwater flies, I apply a drop of Super Glue and two coats of Hard As Nails. This makes a glossy, bulletproof head without mixing epoxy and using a turning wheel.
Use a small amount of Super Glue on the clipped butts of streamer wings before tying them into place. A drop on the last wrap over the rib at the rear of Woolly Buggers makes them nearly indestructible.
When finishing beadhead or conehead flies, put a drop of Super Glue over the thread wraps securing the final material, make the final wraps in the groove between the material and the cone or bead, then clip the thread off. No whip-finish is required.
Simple Mayfly Tails
Some mayflies have two tails and some have three. Since trout can’t count, I always tie three Microfibett tails for better balance and floatation.
Wrap your thread back to above the hook barb, then make several turns to form a small bump. Peel away three Microfibetts of equal length, and grasp the tails between your thumb and index finger. Place them in front of the bump and slightly on your side of the hook. Wrap the thread over the tails clockwise to spin them to the top of the hook shank. As you wrap toward the thread bump at the rear of the shank, thread pressure against the bump flares the tails outward. Adjust the tails with your thumbnail so they are evenly spaced left, right, and center.
Simple Hand Stacking
Trim more than the amount of hair you actually need for the fly. Pinch and hold the tips with one hand and clean the butts with your other hand using your fingers or a comb.
Transfer the hair to the other hand and loosely surround the hair butts with the thumb and first two fingertips. Turn the bunch upside down and tap the hair tips against the palm of your other hand. Repeat if necessary. The movement and gravity aligns the tips without a stacker tool, which is costly in terms of time and efficiency.
Circle Wraps
When working with bunches of hair, such as adding the wing to an Elk-hair Caddis, you do not want the hair to spin around the hook shank.
To keep hair where you want it—on top of the hook shank—stack, measure, and pinch the material in place with your thumb and forefinger. Make a circle wrap around the material at the tie-in point, using the bobbin to position the thread under the forefinger on the opposite side of the hook shank. Bring the thread up on the near side of the hook shank with the thread positioned under the thumb. Slowly pull up with the bobbin to tighten the loop and cinch the material into position.
Exposing the Hook Point
To improve your hook-ups with large dry flies—especially the bulky foam and spun deer-hair creations trout relish—slightly off-set the hook point. It’s amazing how much this improves your stick-to-strike ratio.
To off-set the hook point, grab the fly with hemostats behind the barb at the back bend of the hook. Bend the point slightly to the side and downward.
You can also off-set the hook point just before you tie the fly. With the hook bend in the jaws of the vise, grasp the hook shank and push it away and upward until the hook shank and the lower portion of the hook bend are not parallel.
Pinch the barb down with pliers. It leaves a little bump that helps hold a trout during the fight, but slips right out when you release the fish, or hook yourself or fishing companion. [If you find your hooks breaking when you off-set the point, you may be bending the steel too far and weakening the hook. Off-set the hook no more than 10 degrees from parallel. The Editor.]
Trimming Synthetic Hair
I prefer the wing materials in my streamer patterns to have a natural taper at the tips. Translucent synthetic materials offer many color, texture, and luster choices, but many flies tied with these materials have blunt ends or square tips that do not look natural for swimming baitfish and other imitations.
A simple and easy way to properly taper synthetic hair fibers is to hold the fly in your nondominant hand so you can view it from the rear, which is often the angle from which the predator sees it. Trim the fiber ends with your scissors facing toward the eye of the hook, and clip top and bottom at a slight angle for a natural-looking pointed taper.
Measure Longer Materials
When tying large streamers or stinger patterns, I tie one as a sample—with the proper length—then mark a spot on my vise where the tail or stinger hook reaches. This makes the proportions precise and consistent on each fly, and I save time by only having to measure materials once.
Proper fly length or size is just as important as color, silhouette, and action. When striped bass want a 3-inch smelt, a 4-inch imitation may look close to us, but not to the stripers.
Stacked Hackle Tangles
When stacking hackle on my Backwing Stacker Caddis or stonefly patterns, the wing fibers can get in the way. To keep them from tangling in the hackle, use a short section of drinking straw with a lengthwise slit in it. Simply open the slit and place it over the wing to keep the hair and hackle from tangling. Slide off when finished. [For detailed information on how to tie Hackle Stackers, see the July 1999 issue or flyfisherman.com/quigley. The Editor.]
Jungle **** Eyes
I learned this trick from John Shewey, and it’s one of the slickest ideas I’ve taken home from a tying demonstration. John placed two jungle **** eyes convex side up on his tying table, moistened his fingertips, and then stuck the two eyes to his two fingers. In one motion, he brought both jungle **** eyes to the fly at the same time, masterfully pinched them in their proper place, and with a few quick wraps secured them and finished the head.
Attend as many tying demonstrations as you can. You can always learn something from watching someone else.
Bob Quigley is a fly designer and author. His latest fly-tying DVD is Tying Bob Quigley’s Signature Flies (Pegasus Productions, pegasusvideo.net). He lives in Ashland, Oregon.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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