Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Reeling in the Spirit of Angling: Jason Miller Unravels the Art of Fly Fishing and Tying Flies
As the river murmurs and the line tightens, Jason Miller, joins us to weave the rich tapestry of his fishing adventures. From the rhythmic dance of drift fishing to the deliberate poetry of fly fishing, Jason shares the tales that knit together the heart of every angler. Imagine hooking into the legacy of steelhead battles, the finesse of fly tying, and the relentless pursuit of the cast that resonates with the spirit of the angler.
Our episode is awash with the communal language of anglers, where we exchange not just rare feathers but the stories and techniques that shape the fly-tying brotherhood. Jason opens his vise to us, revealing the intricate art of tying the ideal fly and the unique satisfaction that comes from tricking a steelhead with a creation born of one's own hands. Every wrap of thread and selection of material becomes a breadcrumb on the path to understanding the delicate balance between man, nature, and the elusive quarry we seek.
Stepping back from the water's edge, we find solace in the meticulous world of fly tying—a haven from the daily churn of work life. It's here, among the whispers of hackle and tinsel, that we find a connection to our passions, a release of stress, and a channel to the joys that bait us. Whether it's the camaraderie among anglers or the personal victories of a well-tied fly, this episode casts a line into the soulful current of fishing stories, techniques, and the shared pursuit of those moments that leave us breathless with anticipation. Join me and Jason Miller in this journey, where each cast is a story and every fly is a testament to the angler's craft.
•Jasons Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/freestyletyer42?igsh=MTM4MWt1aG5nYmZyNw==
As the river murmurs and the line tightens, Jason Miller, joins us to weave the rich tapestry of his fishing adventures. From the rhythmic dance of drift fishing to the deliberate poetry of fly fishing, Jason shares the tales that knit together the heart of every angler. Imagine hooking into the legacy of steelhead battles, the finesse of fly tying, and the relentless pursuit of the cast that resonates with the spirit of the angler.
Our episode is awash with the communal language of anglers, where we exchange not just rare feathers but the stories and techniques that shape the fly-tying brotherhood. Jason opens his vise to us, revealing the intricate art of tying the ideal fly and the unique satisfaction that comes from tricking a steelhead with a creation born of one's own hands. Every wrap of thread and selection of material becomes a breadcrumb on the path to understanding the delicate balance between man, nature, and the elusive quarry we seek.
Stepping back from the water's edge, we find solace in the meticulous world of fly tying—a haven from the daily churn of work life. It's here, among the whispers of hackle and tinsel, that we find a connection to our passions, a release of stress, and a channel to the joys that bait us. Whether it's the camaraderie among anglers or the personal victories of a well-tied fly, this episode casts a line into the soulful current of fishing stories, techniques, and the shared pursuit of those moments that leave us breathless with anticipation. Join me and Jason Miller in this journey, where each cast is a story and every fly is a testament to the angler's craft.
•Jasons Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/freestyletyer42?igsh=MTM4MWt1aG5nYmZyNw==
I love drift fishing because it is the most similar thing to swinging a fly as to Feel what's going on. Then there is in fishing those two things. I grew up being a drift fisherman. I Loved it because you catch a lot of fish doing it and when you get good at it you get really really, really good at it. If there's a steelhead around, you are gonna catch them. But the way I felt about it is the way I read people write about fly fishing. When someone wrote about fly fishing, like the grace and the feel and the Into it, like it's it comes from in here. Yeah, I don't know how to other explain it than that when I'm drift fishing, everything comes from here, like it's perfect cast, perfect man. You're feeling it touch the bottom just at the right time. It's a complete feel. Swinging a fly is the exact same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I guess. Welcome to the show, Jason Miller. How's it going?
Speaker 1:I appreciate it, brother. Thanks for having me. I Appreciate man learning about the dead drifter society.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, we can run through that again, being technical difficulties.
Speaker 1:So it's probably me, man. I'm bad luck no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so dead drifter society. Basically, I like I said I wanted to start a podcast through the life coaching that I was getting. At the time they suggested the guy that I was had as a life coach. She suggested it for me and then I Kind of went through you know an insane amount of names and of course the wife because she's so good with names Was like well, why don't you do like dead drifters or dead drift Podcast or something like that? And I like basically shot it down real hard. It was like no way.
Speaker 2:And then, like a few days later, I revised all the the names for the podcast and I'd come up with and I just saw a dead drift. And then I was like dead drifters, that's basically what we do. And then I kind of wanted to incorporate like society, because you know we're all in it together, sure, and Obviously bringing people together is a lot cooler than pushing people away. So, yeah, dead drifter societies. There's like some bigger behind the scene dreams, I guess, in the sense of like we're out. You know, five, ten years from now, if this is still a thing, then oh yeah, a bigger thing. Hell yeah, man.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I mean, man, we all gotta have dreams and chase them. Yeah, you know, I mean it's me ain't got goals, what's it?
Speaker 2:kind of just a stand in place, brother, seriously, yeah, well, as far as you, jason, how did you get into fly fishing and getting to tying flies?
Speaker 1:Man. I got into it early. Like I said, I grew up in eastern Oregon. Dad, grandpas have both sides of the family. Everybody fished. I fished a heck out of Of everything I could when I was a kid. It didn't matter what it was, I just like fishing for him and as a kid I when I'm at now is I'm kind of more of a steelhead, a steelhead fly tire fishermen, then then pretty much anything else. But Growing up I didn't have access to him. So I read a lot of books and articles and and stuff about steelhead. I Fell in love with them, but I never got to catch one till I was 14 man and it took a long damn time to catch One. Yeah, I know rough.
Speaker 2:Was that on Gear or was it Centerpin? No, it was on gear.
Speaker 1:You know, I think I would. I probably went Literally two or three years of steelhead fishing pretty heavily with my dad. My dad could catch him and I can watch other people catch him. I just could not catch one and but we were, we grew up as a gear fisherman man. We were kind of opportunistic.
Speaker 1:You know, bass and crappier, what I grew up on, you're up on Vancouver Island, right? Yeah, correct. So you see, you probably don't have much access to bass or anything like that. Like warm water fish. We have a lot of trout over there too, but because it's probably a little bit warmer water, they're big like if, like, growing up, if you weren't talking 20 inch trout, 24 inch trout, we didn't really give a shit. Yeah, you know, that was just the way. It was kind of a High desert where I grew up, you know. So it's kind of those. The summers get real warm but the winters are kind of harsh, but the springs and falls are Prime time for catching really, really big trout. So that's kind of how it goes. So that's kind of how I grew up.
Speaker 1:But man, my grandpa, my dad, both my grandparents, I mean that's, that's just what I did. I kind of was. I kind of grew up different. I kind of grew up really small town In Eastern Oregon. I grew up a little town called Prairie City. To this day I think the population is like 800, but even then most of it's like farms and ranches, outskirts of town. You know what I mean. It's not like in town, the town. There's not a stop, there's not a stoplight, I don't think there's a stop sign and it's like I don't know quarter mile long and you're out of the town. Larius.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so I mean that's kind of where I grew up.
Speaker 1:So, and when I grew up over there, you know family was super tight. I hung out with my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, we all were around the same area, grew up A real close family and we all I mean all of us fished and hunted. That's what we did. If we weren't in the woods fishing or hunting, I mean there wasn't much we weren't doing. We cut firewood, you know we deer hunted, scouted for deer, deer and elk fakes, I mean we were pick mushrooms, you know all that stuff. Like my whole childhood was, was in the woods.
Speaker 1:But then my dad hurt himself pretty bad working in a mill and we had to move to a big city, portland. So I mean Portland, oregon, from is. I don't know how many milling the people live there compared to my 600 person town. I never really fit in in Portland, but I would still like to fish and hunt. But the access to steelhead, anyways, I got it, yeah, and Once I got it, man, I got it bad, I got it real bad it was. It was my kind of Living in Portland. Literally you can, it's you're an hour drive from steelhead every single day of the year, yeah, and when I, you know, going through high school and before I moved to Bend, I mean I was fishing a lot every weekend pretty much, and then, like in high school, shit man, I was skipping school, I was going, I was, I was going, I think I went Something like seven years. Something like seven years where I didn't get scum still.
Speaker 2:Admission, that's beautiful, but at the same time when I grew up, you know it was kind of I don't know if you know anything about Oregon.
Speaker 1:Like you have the Columbia River system. Mm-hmm, that's the largest steelhead run on this Planet. You know what I mean. Like Every still it goes up the steel or up the Columbia, is going up the Columbia River. You know I can just name the order. There was John Day River, clearwater River, idaho, with all those fish got to come up the Columbia River. You know Grand Ronde there's just so many infamous, famous rivers that are connected to the Columbia. So living in Portland, I had so much access to so many steelhead all the time. I mean right there, portland, you got the sandy ain't very far away, clackamas. At that time and growing up it was kind of when there was just tons of fish around because all the hatcheries were producing tons and tons and tons of fish. It was insane.
Speaker 2:That is crazy. Yeah, I definitely was not skipping school for fishing, but I sure wish I could have done that. I'm not skipping school for fishing, but I sure wish that that was an option and that I knew.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah. So some of my best friends man, I grown up in high school and stuff I met in senior hall like I would I literally walk. We had a beer in high school, we had a senior hall and I'd walk down there. Anybody want to go fishing? And someone said, shit, let's go. And I'd like my house was two blocks away, I will grab my stuff, grab your stuff, let's go. And I mean, we became really good height buddies and fished all the time.
Speaker 2:That's. Yeah, I like that because that's definitely when you would. You know, oh man, less cares.
Speaker 1:Then you know, now we got jobs, oh for sure, yeah, kids, wise, family fucking responsibilities, man, you know.
Speaker 2:Whenever I hear someone talk about going fishing, all the time I'm like, yeah, that sounds really nice, I like that. Yeah, yeah, I feel your brother, I'm going to Swinging tomorrow. And I, my buddy, called me and he's like dude, it's been raining up here all day. And I was like, oh no, what do you mean? How, right, right, and like I saw that there is rain in the the forecast. But I kind of like just been busy the last few days. Like I said, I got To do two extra kids in my house right now, so we have a house of four right now and it's it's not bad. But you know, obviously I was, oh, yeah, yeah, the normal stressful, yeah, it's stressful, brother, stressful, no, it has been good, but yeah so, and he called me and was like, dude, it's been raining all day. I was, I was stressing, and then I messaged a few people, but then I was also thinking my head. I was like, well, I would, I still want to go, I don't care. Like I'm going right, yeah, yeah, yeah, if I get it, and and the weather is fine, and it's always, like you know, it's a Friday I'm getting off this fish and like at the forecast and all I see is, like, you know, rain. Yeah, all brother. So we're going.
Speaker 2:River seems to be holding out. I keep checking this river up to make sure that I'm going to survive. It's on the rise or on the drop? It's on the rise, I know Barely. No, it's going. It's going, damn it. It's nothing crazy. That little song. No, it's very minute. But that system also takes like. It doesn't dump quickly, it takes a while, it's like lake fed. So when it gets up, it you know that being oh, that's good, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really good. It can still be really good, yeah. And you know, I know that I can do some other things to try to catch them, but I just want to do it on the swing this season. I got six grabs last year, like and like, four of them for sure, full, nice hookups, and lost every single one of them.
Speaker 1:So, man, that's that big brother. Yeah, no, that's good. Did they rip the shit out of your hands, or did they do that? Or did they do that.
Speaker 2:Two of them were like directly downstream, as it was done in swing, sitting there and I got like One of those ones stayed on and like did a bit of a run downstream and then just came straight at me. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a few mid swing that like started freaking out and then just gone and I was like I was doing so good. It's only I guess this is my sixth season steel heading and my first I got one. My second I got two. My third, I got three. My fourth, I got four and then my fifth, I lost six. I figured out how to keep these guys on. I literally in the time that I was like Like landing them, which is a crazy idea to me to think right now when I was landing them I only lost one and you know it was good. And then we got the humbling year that reminded that we got to work on more Well man, that's just steelhead.
Speaker 1:That's what I love about them. Yeah, about all the other fish that I fished for, like all of them, bass, any of them. I mean even you get to the salmon Coho in particular, they roll. You know they're rolling fish and I mean half the time I've caught a coho. If you hook them and they roll so much, they wrap themselves in a line and you get like a minute fight and then you pull them in and they're all wrapped and I'm like I wish they could just whoop my ass. Yeah, you know they're like hey, fuck you. You know everything's super tight and you can't move them until you work them around enough. I mean, yes, they'll take runs and they'll kind of splash on top, but you know, once you're really tight to them, you got them.
Speaker 1:Steelhead are just complete different dude. Like you said, it's one minute they're just ripping line. Next minute they're at your feet and you think you lost them and all of a sudden, I mean I can't tell you how many times where it's like shit, I lost them, you got, and you're just reeling up your slack or whatever and all of a sudden it's tight and it's at your feet and All of a sudden it jumps, you're like, oh shit, I still got it. And then it's picked your shit. You're like what the fuck just happened?
Speaker 2:And that one that I was saying that like ran straight out my feet. The first one of the season two, man, it was one of those moments where and I've said this on the podcast before, but you haven't heard it, so you need to hear it it oh you good.
Speaker 1:Hang on just one second. My son just handed me his iPad to charge it. Oh no, I got it, buddy.
Speaker 2:No worries, got kids, you know, I know the story. Sometimes we'll hear mine come down the stairs, all quiet before, and he like sneaked down and I'm like here we go. But yeah, so I cast it out and I was like that was a beautiful cast, everything landed the way I wanted it Right angle, beautiful, beautiful. Then it just started digging and I was like, oh man, look at it digs. Like. I literally remember thinking all these nice things and I remember like it was digging and I like looked up for a second and it was just beautiful scenery. I was like man, it's just so happy and lucky to be here. And then looked over and it was just finishing its swing and I was like, oh man, I'm just going to let it sit there because it's a deep pocket, so I just like let it sit.
Speaker 2:And then all of a sudden it was like grab and I was like no way it's happening. You know like slow motion, it was like a no, it was like you know, all these parts took place. And then I was like oh my god, and I was like don't fucking move. And I felt a pull again and like kind of like almost a double head pull and I like lifted my rod gently to like the side and next, you know, this thing just starts erupting. My buddy's next to me and my raft is like far down and it has the net and he just bolts right away and I'm staring, I saw the thing and I was like, oh shit, like that's a sizable fish right there.
Speaker 2:And yeah, then it just like ran at me. Everything was soft, I'm freaking, running back, stripping as fast I can hoping for, you know, whatever I can hope for? Catch up, helping to catch up. And I'm like yes, I'm still on. And then I realized that it's not and I'm on a branch, shit. And I was like, so, like, through all that, it spattered, it probably went and had a coffee by the time I was realizing what was going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my buddy gets there, all right, are you still on? And I'm on the branch and I was like yep, yep, yep and I lift the branch. And he was like are you kidding me? And I was like no, that was a steelhead. And then he was like saw something thrashing. I knew it. It was a tough one but I like it was the first season I used classic flies, and by classic I don't tie classic. I tie classically inspired flies. I guess Me too, brother, you're good. I rarely follow patterns, but for the classics I'm more willing. But for everything else I'm like as long as I've seen a picture of it or something, I'm like okay, I'm going to tie whatever my thing is, or Of that dude and that's awesome and that's what I think.
Speaker 1:I do the same thing. I do the exact same thing. I really appreciate the classics and they inspire me, you know, with their look and character and all that stuff and the heritage and everything comes. But, man, I kind of got my own style, so I just kind of do my own thing with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the biggest thing I've found for the tying the classics is going from like just tube flies and then like streamers and stuff like that. So you just need so much expensive feathers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, dude.
Speaker 2:The whole another book of worms. Yeah, it's not a book of worms, but either or works.
Speaker 1:My son's yelling. I don't want to do what you guys are doing in the background. I'm going to shut the door. This is not all. I'm pretty used to the loud kids, so it's all good, he's got his brother out there, but I just want everybody hearing him. He's my youngest, is not. This is so when he kind of goes, kind of goes, what, ask your brother, will you shut the door? I'm doing a video. Shut the door, okay. Ask your brother. Thanks, buddy Needs a bath.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um. Well, anyways, as far as tying flies, one of like my biggest things that I've kind of come around Just knowing is like when you're tying new flies or a new material or something, knowing how to actually lay it in Just make a dramatic difference.
Speaker 1:Feather prep is a huge asset to learn. You know all these feathers, every feather you have. You know, man, I get away with using a lot of not super expensive feathers. I have some feathers, man, that are Incredible. But at the same time, man, if I zoomed around my room right now you would go holy shit because of how many Boxes I have. I mean, I got six of them laying right here, the same box, and they're all like kind of color coordinate is just my Organization of what I do, but most of them were given to me.
Speaker 1:I owe a lot of people a lot of flies. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to be a big fan of the new feathers. I owe a lot of people a lot of flies. Yeah, now, I'm giving most of those guys flies, but I never feel it's enough. So for me, like, this whole fly tying journey is how do you say it?
Speaker 1:A lot of people ask why don't I like tie-pot flies? Professional Sorry to see my mumbling professional, because I think I'm thinking a little bit ahead of where I'm going why don't I tie-fly like professional One, my normal job, man? I get paid 30 something bucks an hour. I can't I some of a lot of times that I thought why it's two to three hours to tie if not four or five, six hours? I don't, I don't put any time limit on there, so I mean it. It would never pan out, yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know, being in this awesome community, there's a lot of friends I have. Where I've been able to, they've given me feathers and I've given them flies. But I've never. I never feel like I have paid my debt so that you give me two feathers shit, you got flies to life. This guy gives me two feathers fuck, you get flies for life. You know what I mean. It's like you need a couple flies, I'll tie them, but it's it's. You can never really make money on it. But to me it's more about guys Like mining and enjoying what we do and learning and being able to help each other being better. A lot of them flies. Have you ever heard of Corey Bustard?
Speaker 2:Corey Bustard yeah, doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1:It's probably the most sought-after feather in like classic time, doing married wings and stuff like that. This feather Like one fiber in between, like tough materials to bind together in a marriage. This feather makes them stick. It is like Velcro, but literally like. I looked the other day or I was on Facebook the other day and a guy on one of the classic size was selling a pair of Bustard feathers Corey Bustard feathers. They're five hundred fucking dollars a pair. I got like I have like 30 pair of those and they were gifted to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know so like that's what I mean by like our community and being able to. It brings us tight, but we all have a like-minded achievement of helping each other be better. You know what I mean. Like it's a. It's a. It's a very special group In the, in the, in the vast majority of people that I come in contact with, of always just trying to help each other Be better at what they do, understand what they're doing. You know it's not even being better. Just Once somebody has a better understanding of laying feathers and manipulating feathers, you become a better tire and you are more proud of what you're tying Mm-hmm, if that makes sense. You know what I mean, yeah, it's a, it's a. It's just kind of a different game, though, when you get into the classic stuff, especially.
Speaker 2:This. Yeah, I feel like all the years of tying nymphs Helped. But then when you get like you're trying to lay two feathers down and make them even on either side, like no tying nymphs or you know right, it's going really. You know, you got an idea. But even Ryan Morgan do you know? Ryan, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's me and him have tied flies together and he, he laid down some information on how to do some of it and just the little tips he gave me. It Like, yeah, it advances way better. Yeah, I'm not saying that I, you know, after that point I can tie beautifully, or they always laid down the way I wanted them to, but at least having to have an avenue in my mind on how to actually go about it, right.
Speaker 1:So just having a little bit of understanding, having you know, like, because these feathers a lot of them, you know they have different stems and stuff like that and just someone who's tied one before it can help. So a lot of times it's literally just in the most minute way or Minute technique. You're like man, how come I didn't think of that? But at the same time that is going to make me feel so much better and achieve the outcome I'm trying to get. How do you?
Speaker 2:know about. Like you know, if you tie a fly, obviously if it's like spinning in the water, which usually doesn't do that, but like lays flat on its side or or goes upside down, does that? Obviously where our goal is not to have that happen with the classics. But do you stress about that kind of stuff, honestly, man?
Speaker 1:Here's the. Here is the hardest part For my understanding that, as I I've been tying flies, I've been tying flies, I'm put the house today the fifth right now, 26 days away from being 41 years old. I've been tying fly since I was five. Yeah, the experience I have like.
Speaker 1:So, anytime, the functionality of your fly is the utmost important thing that there is. If your fly is not fishing right, it ain't fishing, you're not well, it's not that it's not fishing man, you're fishing for a 1% Fish out of a hundred. You know, yeah, you go I mean I'm still at fishing up to where I know and I've seen, I've walked up to a whole first light. First cast fish on. Second cast fish on. You just get into where you get these pods, where these fish are super grabby. Anything I threw out there if it didn't fish right, if it wasn't, you know if it was doing this shit. That steelhead was on a mission to grab 99% of the other steelhead. Though, aren't like that they. It's gotta be. Have a functional fly where it's fishing right. If your fly isn't fishing right, you're, you're not fishing well, and that's our, that's our goal. You know what I mean, that's our goal is a tire and a fisherman, I I've had the hardest time learning how to fly fish and swing fish for steelhead.
Speaker 1:A lot of it had to do with your line types for your rods and shit like that, because that's that's a whole another game that I. That's way above my knowledge of yet. So I just talked to my my guys, who really know what they're doing, and I say here's my rod, give me a line. And da, da, da and man, I can shoot laser beams now. But if you're not fishing a fly well, what's the fucking point? Yeah, there's no point.
Speaker 1:And the most frustrated I've been learning how to swing was making learning. I learned how to cast. I cast really well, but I didn't have the right sink tips or heads or whatever. You need to have that fly fishing right or my fly not fishing right. If any of that's not in place, you're not fishing, you're not fishing. There is no more satisfying thing than swinging a run, fishing it well, knowing your fly was down in the fish's face. The fish don't have to grab. I've no doubt about steelhead. I love steelhead. I know how finicky and frustrating them fuckers can be, but but if I'm swinging a fly well and presenting a fly well, that's all I can do, and if I'm doing that really well, I can be satisfied. You know what I mean. Like man hey, he didn't grab.
Speaker 1:But every fucking cast I throw, every swing, I swing. I'm expecting the whole time, and when you're fishing like that, then that's, I mean, that's all we can do, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that was well. But I definitely like. I mean, obviously when you're swinging like a tube fly or something, there's not much to go wrong, right Of how the flies you know behaving.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Last year I tied on, you know, actual traditional Steelhead and salmon hooks. This year I decided to tie them all on shanks with trailer hooks. Most of them don't sit right. They'll still like, swim nicely, but they keel side down. Because of that. You know there's no bottom of the hook. So it's just food for thought, because I was like I wonder, you know, I feel like in the, do you?
Speaker 1:want to know. Go ahead, buddy, Go ahead, I'll call you sick. No, I was just going to say I feel like if it was like you know right, in front of the fish's face.
Speaker 2:Does he really know if it's upside down? Maybe Right, and if it was upside down, would he be like, hmm, no, right, right.
Speaker 1:But I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, ah, you're upside down, I'll take you out of the food chain. Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:Man, I don't think that that doesn't matter much.
Speaker 1:I just think it's more of the like, the movement. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:If your fly is fishing, as long as it's fishing, like it's just straight and straight and kind of wiggling like this, but not doing a lot of this shit, the current does that to it, yeah, but it still needs to be, in that line and I think that line like if your fly is here coming down, it's just kind of wavy action, but if that current kind of lifts it and does it this shit, that's when they grab, it comes right down their face and the current, that little boil lifts your fly up that little seam. That picture Line speed up, you get that cat like it's like a fucking cat, it's oh it's down my face and oh it's trying to get away. Those are the grabs that I'm after. Yeah, you know, going back to the grab kind of things real quick was I've had so many steelhead grabs where Everything just kind of stops and that's like drift fishing, like gear fishing. Yeah, I fucking hate that grab for steelhead swinging. I'm happy a steelhead ate my fly. Don't get me wrong when I'm saying it's just, I always assume it's a rock, always and I'll lift up like shit, get it out of the rock, you know, and it's like two, three head shakes and gone, son of a bitch. That's my best. I hate that. I want them. The best grab I've ever had, swinging.
Speaker 1:I was up on the OP with my buddy Joel and man, I was shooting lasers. I was, my fly was swinging. I mean I felt confident and I'd fished that way for like two days and finally I get to this run and we fished it like few times before and I think the third time we got to this run Like the water had just dropped, perfect man, and one of my fly was swinging. I knew Like I felt it's going to happen any moment. And son of a bitch, it happened, bro.
Speaker 1:I like cast it, took my two steps downstream Like big ones, everything just tightened up. My fly was just swinging and I could barely like kind of come off this ledge. You know what I mean. And so you kind of feel like like I could feel the Bones and you could feel it not. You're like, okay, I'm in the zone and like literally five feet in the. It was probably like 20 feet in the swing, because I mean I was shooting a really long line At a pretty steep angle. But I mean it was, it was just perfect. And it was like someone just shot lightning through my arm. I mean it was just oh, fish going ape, shit, heart willing. And that fish was. She was 14 to 17 pounds. I only had her on for three or four minutes but she jumped six times and from the grab to the jumps. So when she was unbuttoned, my reel never stopped taking line. Yeah, just Exactly.
Speaker 1:I was like holy shit, and it was unreal. And the best part about it was it wasn't like that Like, it was like bold. It was like when she grabbed she jumped and like took line like you know, started running, then jumped, you know, it was like it was like 10, 15 seconds between each jump. So I mean it was incredible. That's, that was the epitome of what I wanted to accomplish. We all want to land. I want to land every one of them, but you know we're fishing these more classic hooks and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Everybody I ever talked to about swinging flies Say man, it's, it's not the best way to do it. All these long shanks are to do those. You know, either tube flies or intruders. Where you got that stinger hook? Eye gear fish, dude eye fish number two is number one, got one, got one, got one. Number two is number one, got one, got one. Owner. Just badass little same hooks we use as stinger hooks. I don't lose very many steelhead yeah, I don't, you know. So I know that that's a more effective way, but the grab and that what I experienced With that steelhead is what I'm after. That's it. Yes, I want to touch them. I fucking love them. I love touching them, I love the smell of them, I love every part about them. But if I don't get to touch them, that's what I want out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel it, man. I was like and that's that's the other thing I was talking to someone about Was last year I was using all these long shanks.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's a different ball game, man.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh man, that like makes it that much harder. But there is something cool about tying the fly and then like going, you know, I mean the thing I did, more like authentic classic, let's say, and they worked. And then it was the first I ever used them, and then I got six grabs. I was like, well, they're so Classic for sure, and it's common cool that we tie all these crazy flies and at the end of the day, like you know Well what works. Well, these classics.
Speaker 1:You don't have to remember, right oh?
Speaker 2:yeah, we're all tying these big, like you know, whatever, and the classics work very well.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and that's kind of like I don't tie much of the new, newer stuff. I mean, intruders have been around a long time but for me they're still kind of newer. Do I fish them and do I tie them? Yes, I always put a few in there. They have their place, especially with you know, the weight you can add to them, the dumbbell eyes you can add to them, you can fish them deeper. There's a lot of, there's certain runs that you pretty much have to fish, something like that to be fishing effectively. I have them in my box, brother, they're in there.
Speaker 1:But you know, being able to touch like this is the fly, this is the fly that I hook that steel head on. It's on my, it's on my desk. There's a reason why it's on my. I mean, it's a GP. Gps are my favorite. They are. There's something about GPs, but this isn't. This is my own variation of a GP. It's not normal, it's not a traditional GP, but it's based off a traditional pattern. So you're kind of keeping up with the traditions, but I put my own flair into it and this was, you know, being able to have something of me and my own idea and my own creativity. Work means a lot to me. I added so much more enjoyment to it. It wasn't a store bought fly that hooked that steel head. It was something I came up with. Fuck, that's cool. I mean that's fucking cool.
Speaker 2:There's nerds nerding out.
Speaker 1:It's cool man, I swear it's cool, you know, that's just what it is. So that's you know, being able to help people Learn how to kind of manipulate feathers, or the way that helps them tie something they like better, only adds to their enjoyment of what they're doing. Hey, fuck, I'm fishing a fly that I am proud of, that I tied, and I'm fishing it. It's fishing, oh shit, it's grabbed. I got a steel head. Yeah, what the hell's better than that man, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not a whole lot, not a whole lot. I like every time, you know, spring comes around and steelhead are doing their spawning and I like I have only gone winter steelhead. I've found summer runs but I've never actually hooked them. So, yeah, it's a winter steelhead, though that's like pretty much how I started fly fishing in the river. In a sense, I did some like fishing with like a dry line or well, originally I think, a sinking line, a full sinking line, because I had no idea what I was doing. That's normal, buddy. I was coming with Lake and I was like oh river, you know, thinking why it's down makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gotta let it roll, man. It's just. It's such a huge learning curve to it. You know it really is, and I think at the same time we all individually have what feels right to us. Yeah, you know what I mean. There's a me and my buddy, joel. Joel, I mean he's like my best friend. We tie a lot of flies together and we fish quite a bit together and you know we have very different perspectives Of what we're doing out there. But at the same time, you know I can watch him, enjoy him doing his thing his way and I love it. Like dude. He's on cloud nine. I'm fishing behind him or below him or wherever. I'm doing my thing and I'm living when I'm doing that and I feel that way about what I'm doing, I know I'm where I'm meant to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, and it's the same for him, and that's what it's all about. We all kind of got our own things about how we do it. Man, just enjoy it. You know Shit, I don't care how you do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, get out there and actually do it. Yeah, it's a. You can just go on and on, but I guess our game plan today is to tie a fly. Um, we probably won't have all the same feathers, because you have probably an insane amount of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's all good. Buddy, that fly you sent me a picture of it's a tensile body fly. You can use basically anything On the fly that we're talking about. You sent me the picture of it's a. All the hackle is purple, dyed, grizzly. Pretty much that's it.
Speaker 2:And I got that. You know it's good why I picked it. I was looking at everything and I was like I could see what feathers were and I was like, all right, how many I obviously have. Oh yeah, perfect, I guess. Another thing I want to talk a little bit on, because it's something that I've always just been like SP or VVS, uh, families, oh yeah yeah, what buddy you need a charger?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. Go ask brother if you can use his.
Speaker 2:So you're the charger man, whatever.
Speaker 1:Listen. Yeah, I'm gonna shut my doors off. Go. Yeah, gsp, beavis GSP is is typically what I use. I like to use the real thin stuff, either 30 to near, 50 to near on. What I'm trying tonight is is 30 to near, and there's probably seven, seven to nine back and forth, kind of creating the shape. I don't know if you can see that. I hope you can.
Speaker 2:I Can kind of see that there's a bit of a oh yeah, I.
Speaker 1:Kind of build it up, but you kind of kind of see how it's very opaque, yeah, clear. That's the GSP and I burnish it. No, okay, with an agate. I got a burnish an agate and it keeps everything smooth. And what I really like about the GSP man, I'm part of lager 10s pro staff team. I've been with them for a long time. Their tensils are unreal. Ben lives up in your neck of the woods. It man, it everything.
Speaker 1:If you can get lager 10s, gsp is way better than anything else. What it does is it doesn't spin where, like Vivas does, like when you're rapping, you know, it kind of binds up and tightens the. The laggerton really stays flat, which Just makes everything smoother. Yeah, I don't know if you've used silk a lot, like you know, one of the things that I'm fortunate enough to have is, you know, like I said, I have a lot of pretty high-end materials. Like I don't use, like rayon floss. I don't use any of the other. All I use is silk. That's it, and I man. You can get lager 10s. You can get a lot of the Japanese stuff. They're all awesome. Silk, though, lays very similar to GSP or lager 10s and lace flat, but it does two things. It allows you to really build up your body in the way you want it to. You know, like if you lay flat it's thinner, but you can kind of Twist it and make it a rope and get it thicker so you can get that cigar shape a little bit faster. You know, but silk, silk, steel and like polar bear are like the three things that, whether you know, if I'm tying a harrowing, I'm it's polar bear, if I dub a body, it's steel, if I'm using floss is silk. Those three things have such a natural Shine to them that other materials don't have. You can. You can get away with a lot of other stuff, man. There's a lot of other cool things to To use, like dubbing wise.
Speaker 1:I use a lot of the STS trial oval. I Think that's hairline STS trial oval. It's a awesome material and it's very. It's a synthetic but it's very similar to seal. So dubbing it it, you get the same effect.
Speaker 1:The other thing like silk, seal and like polar bear don't retain water a ton, so you get a really nice sink rate. You get more Fishy attributes to your fly. You, you get it to do what you want it to do. It has a lot to do with. Like we're talking about having a fly that fishes better. Those type materials have a better natural characteristics, characteristics that allow them to Sink well, not retain water, but have a lot of movement to subtle movement, yeah and the natural sheen to them gives it a kind of a life-like mimicy Deal.
Speaker 1:When you see that stuff in water compared to everything else, you'll understand why is. It's hard to describe, but it has just a a different look, a more natural, life-like look to it. Then a Lot of the synthetics you could have bolder colors, you could have other things, but it's Still had to me are very natural, very. Anything you can do to appeal to their more natural traits, you have a better chance of catching them, in my opinion. So the more natural you could have your fly, lure, bait, anything look, the the better the outcome is going to be. Yeah, okay, I can.
Speaker 2:I can get down with that. Definitely it makes sense what you're saying. So it's not like out of hope it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hope, I hope it does make sense because it's well, there's a lot of stuff up in there.
Speaker 2:You know how, how natural fibers swim. Like I got polar bear, I got a lot of polar bear Once again got it for dirt sheep so that was sweet, but Hell yeah, the way it swims. I mean you know clouds are very, very the way it swims. I mean you know clouds or minnows and all that and like you see the polar bear and then just I know I definitely pick up what you're putting down. Yeah, I've never tied with silk, so we're talking about silk on like a bobbin. No, I Haven't asked you get schools. I mean, yeah, okay, honest fool. I mean not a bobbin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're good, so yeah, and then you know I it's like pencil, but when you're laying it down, man, it just has that natural I mean it kind of sparkles and kind of glows. Yeah, compared to and I spent the heart the. Everything looks great when it's in your vice and dry. There's a big difference when you get it wet, yeah, and silk has a not, it holds its color better, um it just, and it has a natural sheen to it that none of the other synthetics or any other flosses have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so I guess, as far as what you've started so far, so you've worked up the shank up and down, but you've kind of created a bit of like a Just to build up we can't really say that yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, a lot of guys, yeah, I know, I get what you're saying. Funny, as that's the way I'd put it too, because I you look, you're going, you're going for a cigar shape, you know, kind of the more classic sounds, but this is more of a joint shape.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's thinner. You know, like you, you ain't got enough to jam it all in there last step. So I think you know, I think you know, I think you know, I think you know, I think you know, I think you know, you know, you, like you ain't got enough to jam it all in there last, that's the last of your allowance that got you that Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. You know it's just. But you know, using such thin thread that's that's a lot of work. To be honest with you, I mean it. If you want to make it fast so you can use the thicker deniers you know the 50 deniers or 100 denier It'll build up a little bit quicker, but you don't have as much control. Anytime you go thicker, you don't have as much control. Then all all the thinner stuff, you have a little bit more control. So one of my biggest philosophies or Rules and fly tying is thread control. Mm-hmm, the more you have, the better, cleaner your flies we're gonna tie. Wow, wow. I got home from work and I Was hanging out waiting to do this. This is what I tied.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:I'll send you some pictures of it and it's, it's half tensile, well like two-thirds tensile and a third silk. But you'll see, I'll send you a picture I sent it to my buddies of Just the tensile work and the silk work and you'll see how there's not very much Transition between the two, like you can't really tell. They kind of are in the same line. So when you build these bodies up, that's your goal is to allow, once you start doing whatever you're gonna do with this body, you're gonna have control of the thickness of your tensile and the thickness of your silk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good, good, technical, huh, I'm about to get my pen and paper out. Class right now, let's go.
Speaker 1:So it's crazy. And here's the other thing, with GSP. With GSP and like, if you're using in here you know most people use, I don't know, you know just your standard tying thread. Danville's is the calm, most common one. I use Vivas. When I get up to my head I'll switch to Vivas and it's still, though, as thin as I can get. I get 16-0. I mean it's super thin. I would rather have more smaller but more tight securing wraps, then two or three big, you know, thick wraps. I, if I can get six wraps for the same Technics I can get three wraps out of. I want the six wraps.
Speaker 1:And when you tie, going back to that, when you tie a built-up body like this, like metal or or any of the like, danville's are thicker, even just the regular Vivas tying thread. When you, if you were to do a base like this, the GSP Will take absorb, yeah, and so when you Okay, I'm glad that makes sense because I was hoping to do like, when you tie something into it, sets down into it as to where More rigid material or more rigid thread doesn't do that. So anytime you tie anything into it, it really creates a Bump In in your base of your body and that's hard to overcome. On tin soles or silk or anything They'll be, you can get away with anything you know. You can shit, you can write whatever, whatever the fuck you want on there with W, but when you're doing tin soles or like silk man if you, that bump is a really hard transition to Level out. Yeah, I hope that makes sense.
Speaker 2:It does yeah, I do know what you mean by like it absorbs the, the next material, like it does squish down into it. It's like memory foam for your Thing.
Speaker 1:well, yeah, yeah, a lot more than than other threads, for sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool. So then, as far as what you've done, like looking at your little doobie Esk, fly there, that's right. Like where do I start from the head? If I was like right now I got a hook, it's obviously a bit it looks smaller than what you got going on, but it's there and said what hooky is it? Oh, everyone always use. This is one thing I don't think I'll ever be able to pick up is like saying the hook size, but it's a size 10, one and a half standard wire. I like Jackson.
Speaker 1:What number?
Speaker 2:oh, there you go, see, I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 1:21, 20 there you go. So it's black, it's black. Oh no, al Jackson hooks man as a Readily available hook to Al Jackson, spay hooks the 2051s, 20 I think. The 2050s are bronze and the 2051s black, and like the, 2052 is gold and 2053 is blue, any of the 2050s are are the, in my opinion, my favorite Over the counter hopes you can get readily. I'm using the blue hair, number three.
Speaker 2:That means nothing to me, but I'll shake my head.
Speaker 1:You're all right, buddy, they're very similar. They're very similar to Alex Jackson. I can say, dude, I got Alex Jackson hooks out the ass. Um, the back end is very similar. The difference there's just Minor number fives, I think, because I was getting ready to have some summer. Yeah, these are number fives, mm-hmm so, but the shape is very similar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the difference with with the Al Jackson and these Boo Herons is so you can't see it, I can't zoom in is the return? Yeah, the return on the the blue herons is the eye is a lot smaller and the return is a lot smaller. So you know, going back to, we're talking about that bump, I can build up really quick and and that transition where my return I, I can cover it up and make it in sync with my thread wraps, where it's very hard with that, yeah, but no matter where I start, brother, is that return I. I start Four or five turns up and I start there and I work back and I tighten that return. That's my first thing, I always do and then I work my way back.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'll take this off. I'm just going to go step by step on what you said. How far from the eye do you normally start? I know I know different flies, but like if we're tying, it's the same.
Speaker 1:I always do the same, brother Dude, always, when I got her, when I got a return, I, like I said, I always start, you know, an eighth of an inch, a sixteenth of an inch above the return and I start working my way towards the back of the hook and I secure that return. Okay, just like that. And then the other thing, that's, this is a rule I live by and I don't expect everybody. I don't tie fast flies. I'm not worried about speed, I'm more more worried about how I want my fly to function.
Speaker 1:So when I Every wrap I do is touching, yeah, hi, my rule of thumb is I always I make every wrap count. And that's why I say, you know, like, if I've done this down and back 11 times to get my joint shaped Underbody, it was worth the 11 times to do it. But shit, that's 11 times where I got through it. You know, yeah, I'm gonna get carpal tunnel on my wrist, but that's that's how I do it. So, but in doing, in saying that too, like I said, you know, if you use any of the heavier deniers and you want to build up that Faster, you can for sure it's a simpler way. I've even done where I know I want to tie my fly with 30 dinner tie everything in. I'll do a layer of 30 to near and then I'll grab 50 or 100 and do a quick build up my body and then I'll do once over with the 30 to near. So it's just nice and smooth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I Definitely picking up what you're putting down, make sense, which is good, because I'm wanting to do what you're saying and stuff, so that's good.
Speaker 1:It's a long, tedious process, man, it just is. You know, it's I'm. It's hard for people to understand that it's just a difference and a preference that I have. A lot of people, when they sit down the vice, they want to crank out flies and I get that. Man, I mean that's, that's cool. Do that if that's what you want to do, but you're, it's a different approach than what I take. Yeah, but I would rather I always.
Speaker 1:I, I always try to tie the perfect version of the fly that I'm trying to tie. It doesn't. It never works out. It never fucking works out. There's always little bumps and shit that I I feel like it'd be better at. But that's what. That's what I enjoy doing. Like it's. Other people don't enjoy doing that. They, I'm not an idiot. I. I do know that ugly, nasty bullshit flies catch fish. I tie ugly bullshit fly, but I don't enjoy doing that. You know what I mean. Like it's, yeah, I enjoy. I enjoy the, the passion that, the decision, the artwork, that all of the above, the whatever the hell you want to call it. I enjoy Putting that in, I enjoy putting myself into that fly fully, or I like that. I.
Speaker 2:That was something that I, you know, two years ago it was like my favorite thing to tie was tube flies because they didn't take 15 minutes. Yeah, you know, I liked sitting there and spinning some concoction up and then you know, or in a dubbing loop and looking at it and, yeah for sure, no, it's not good enough, and like cutting it off and making another blend of whatever I was about to go do. But I think that's what kind of got me with the like. Classic style was One fly trying to just set a frickin wing could take me an hour. You know, it's not nobody fly, just one wing and like, oh yeah, no man, I I have flies that I have Literally 40 hours into you.
Speaker 2:Here's a question for you because I'm kind of at that state. Have you ever tied a chronoman? Sure, okay, so I'm fucking stupid flies, but they work so damn good.
Speaker 1:I actually last year is the first year that I started tying them and fishing them and I'm just like these things work so fucking good, good. So I think that um.
Speaker 2:Is it the same kind of thing because, like, looking at your yes, they just end is the thinner. So like, do you wrap this down and then go back up all the way, and then back almost to the end, back up, and I'll go. What I do is I?
Speaker 1:typically. So like I kind of do the opposite, like, so I'll go down a little bit and I'll go back, and then I'll go down and I'll go a little bit further, oh, and then I'll go back up. Okay, go down a little bit further. So once I start my fly and start my tag or tail or whatever I'm gonna do, I'm at a base layer of basically one layer over the Stank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to Not start over to achieve that, but I'm going to basically now do that and just play with it. I'm not expecting my fly to come out looking freaking Like the best thing I've ever tied, but I'm more trying to kind of follow, learn, learn and then here for the Alec Jack. Because of the way the return works and it comes so much further down the shank, it's thicker, it's thicker, it's so much thicker, like the, the blue heron, like it's a needle point, that return is like a needle point.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I pick up where you're cleaning. Would I stop at that like, let's say, the needle point, and going back down just because of that? For sure It'll build up that transition, yes a little bit faster. Yes, Okay, and then once I get that transition, almost the same thickness then I can go back over to the very top. There you go, brother, there you go brother, see, you're learning like.
Speaker 1:See, just that's a simple thing that, yeah, most a lot of people don't understand, but it's uh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, little things, little details, and I I have a mad respect for A lot of things, but when it comes to tying flies and I see like when I saw some of your flies, I was like, okay, this guy might know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1:Um, and, and you know, one of the funny things about like my whole tying journey and stuff like that is Honestly to what, what, what I'm saying or what I'm teaching or trying to teach, um, it's what I've learned. This is all experience, because when I started, you didn't have videos. You didn't have any of this shit. Like I Men for the longest time, like I learned, like looking at John Shuey's books and the pictures and you would see where they do Like it's all the threads here and they tied their tail in. There's so much in between that there's so many fine details that you don't see, because next picture is the Dove, the body for it. Okay, well, next picture if they dubbed it or they did this or how did they tie in the river. There's, we have such an advantage today compared to everything I'm doing. I learned Basically just from my experience.
Speaker 2:Well, um, Exactly, you know, because I know audio of this is is useful. But that's where I'm kind of like excited to break into the youtube thing, because I was like, you know, when people are tying flies and they're not necessarily like, yeah, they're teaching someone, but it's an audience they're teaching and they don't actually see the person tying the fly, I feel like there's a lot of questions that can come up simply from that. So I definitely would, and I've been before the winter I was tying flies with people while recording podcast, but not really about tying flies per se, yeah, just tying and bullshitting, yeah, and I had so fun, I enjoyed it quite a bit. So for me it was kind of like, well, I could, you know, kind of implement this into my, my podcast? Oh, yeah, sure, and you know, not only have like an awesome episode where we just sit here and tie a fly, but also where, you know, through my question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for, yeah, yeah, you're teaching and learning, yeah, it's, it's kind of a little bit of everything and and that's kind of like. Yeah, and that's kind of like I could said I've only I've done a couple other podcasts, but honestly they were. One was on Some weird video room like this too, and it was a good buddy, but he was just learning how to do set up his podcast stuff and I don't think he ever posted any of it. But uh, the other ones I've done were all like just on the phone. Okay, yeah, um, but I used to do a lot of like instagram live videos. Okay, it's just harder, man, and it's.
Speaker 1:And when you do the instagram live, basically the technical difficulties is what has made me stop, because you would get through it and Sound like a robot, shit, it's not working and it just sucks. But, um, it was really fun to do that, especially live, because People would pop up questions that I'd see him come up as I'm tying and I could answer them. It was so much fun, like I really really really enjoyed it, and a lot of times it was me and a buddy yeah, it's like you're saying, and me and my buddy would be bullshitting and cracking jokes with each other, and then Someone would pop up a question and you're like, awesome, now I get to be able to help somebody else.
Speaker 2:So, uh, it's really cool to be able to do that, yeah, and I think like there's just so much room for you know what we we love doing and sharing, yeah, so having like a good platform to do it on or like you know, like you're saying, with the technical difficulties I've done, um, like I've been on instagram live and stuff and yeah, you people like drop out and all these things, it's like it's it can be really frustrating. I mean, we even Went through that, uh, for a bit trying to get this set up originally.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes yeah, I do this like once a week. So I know this program and, like you know, that's why I sent you a new link, because I was like I know it's not wanting to function, it's just given me a hard time. Um, one thing I'll say, though you know, when you're working with gsp and you got like a game thread and then a little section of that thread starts to walk off, yeah, laying in flat even on your spool, on your spool, on your spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like.
Speaker 2:People way what's up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like a spider web man. It just my biggest problem with the gsp, what you're saying. I'll, once it starts really getting flat, I'll spin it just to tighten it up.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, like that, like this, yeah, counter clockwise, depending on what you're going to achieve. Yeah, and how about back should I be going with my, my end of my?
Speaker 1:About an eighth of an inch or a sixteenth of an inch above your hook point.
Speaker 2:Okay, so One more wrap, just because I can All right can we take a break real quick?
Speaker 1:I got pissed Really bad, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I gotta go pee. All right, it's all good, but I'll be right back, all right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so far, what I am seeing from this whole thing is, even while I'm wrapping all this gsp up and down, trying to make it smooth, there's a lot of little bumps. And one thing he said was he works with um Gsp like 30 and I'm working with gsp 100. So I'm definitely seeing what he was talking about Um, how I'll kind of start to clump up and create little grooves. So mine's not like perfectly smooth across. Obviously I'm trying to counter that the best I can, but once it starts building that groove it's kind of hard to To drop out of the groove. But I am working on it and I'm sure my mumbling will work for him because I don't know what I'm really talking about. But I'm trying and yeah, so yeah, you can definitely get the bumps out a little bit if you really focus on them. But as far as I've been doing is really those tight wraps like he was saying and he is back Alive and well, sorry about that.
Speaker 1:No, I'm good buddy, sorry, no worries. After work man, he's like to have a beer or two. I've had a couple beers, so sometimes you got to let it.
Speaker 2:Let it loose you know, gotta let it loose. Yeah, no, I feel it, man, I've been uh, not really for any particular reason besides from just um, but I haven't been drinking. But my biggest thing about not drinking Um Is then, what do you drink? And I don't always want to drink water. So now I'm on this, like it's tea, just drinking tea. I drink like so much tea and no water. I should drink right water, but all right, I drink a lot of water.
Speaker 1:Work Thankfully. Yeah, that's where.
Speaker 2:I kind of sit too is like I drink most of my water at work and I'm uh, we got Kool-Aid in this household.
Speaker 1:Brother work Kool-Aid, man work Kool-Aid. But and it's been a, it's been a long first week of the year. Tell you that much. What do you do for work? Yes, um, I'm a delivery service manager, I'm a dsm or, uh, a drywall, uh, delivery company. So we run boom trucks. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, I run all. I run all the crews and take all the orders and deal with all the customers and schedule all the runs and All that fuss, deal with all the trucks, all our employees and so there is like a for the holiday season, and then you came back to work for all over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, only to get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and starting to get cold. And you know, you know, man, it's just my job is stressful job. You know, um, nothing ever goes perfect. It doesn't, so you're always problem solving all day long. And then you know, man, I, I do a lot. I do a lot more too. You know, I load a lot of my trucks that come in when they come in the yard, unload a lot of the material that comes in. Man, it's just this stressful job.
Speaker 2:This is the job I uh right, I know what you mean. I mean this working is stressful. I'm not as stressful as watching a fly pop out of a steelhead's mouth, but there's.
Speaker 1:There's very few things that are. There's very few things. Man, yeah, I go on a story I got about that is, uh, this wasn't a fly, but Um, I took my father-in-law down one of my favorite coastal rivers, yet 10 years ago now, but he was getting into it, man, he, um, at the time Right now I'm going through a divorce but, um, at the time me and my wife, I don't even think we were married. Oh shit is 15 years ago. 16 years ago I was. I was with my wife for 14 years, so 13, 14 years ago.
Speaker 1:Anyways, he, you know, living there, getting to know him, he wanted to really get into salmon and steelhead fishing stuff, so had a buddy over there to let me borrow his boat, took him down one of my favorite rivers and it was just me and him and man, we caught Quite a few fish or any. But we get down to this one hole and the river was, it was pretty high. I mean it was dropping, but but for the river it was pretty high. And we get down, we're down to the bottom end of the our run that we do with our drift boats and uh, man, I, you know, like I hooked her, her on a sand shrimp on a sand shrimp and, um Damn dude, this fish whooped my ass. I would easily say it was a half hour fight.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, and the water, and the water was just, I like to. Whether I any Um fishing, I do, I kind of tend to fish lighter stuff than Everybody. Um, I just like it, I like to have. Whenever I'm hooked up to a steelhead, I want to be going oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, the whole time I'm hooked up. I love that. That that's, that's what I love about steelhead. You can do that. But anyways, um, I was fishing the sand shrimp Drift fishing, sand shrimp and, um, man, I couldn't feel the bottom.
Speaker 1:But in this little back, anywhere my stuff was at. This fish was on top, just gnarling the shit out of something. I'm like what do you see that? He's like man. Yeah, I saw it. And I reeled in. My sand shrimp was toast, it was gone. So I I go that fucker was eating my shrimp. So I put a new sand shrimp on, threw it up out there and then I can, all of a sudden I threw a bigger mend in it.
Speaker 1:I love drift fishing because it is the most similar thing to swinging a fly, as to Feel what's going on. Then there is and fishing those two things. I grew up being a drift fisherman. I loved it because you catch a lot of fish doing it and when you get good at it, you get really, really, really good at it. Um, if there's a steelhead around, you are going to catch them. But the way I felt about it is the way I read people write about fly fishing. When someone wrote about fly fishing, like the grace and the feel and the Into it, like it's it comes from in here yeah, I don't know how to either explain it than that when I'm drift fishing, everything comes from in here, like it's perfect cast, perfect bend. You're feeling it touch the bottom just at the right time. It's a complete feel. Swinging a fly is the exact same thing. It is the exact. There's a certain feel when you're in that feel and in that moment you know You're fishing. Yeah, there's nothing like it. That's all I can hope for. That's all I can hope for. But when I'm drift fishing, I expect to catch fish because I'm, I'm, I'm son to bitches. That's what they want. They love it.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, like going back to that, like I watched it. I couldn't feel, I couldn't feel what was going on, but I could see a steelhead eating my shit on top of the water. So I reel it in, put a new sandstrip on and throw it out there and then I felt it, my, my weight ticked the bottom and just tick, tick and it was second tick. All sudden it was. I put the wood to this fish so hard. I had it on, like I said, for at least half hour. I had that thing like that's what I was going with with the river was just high, it was. It was high but it was on the drop, but it was on the higher side. So I had my swivel and my weight that far from the tip of my rod For 10 minutes of that fight and I'm trying to lift this fish on the side of the boat and I can see it the whole god being on time.
Speaker 1:My father-in-law is new, like this is the first trip I've ever taken him down there. He didn't know how to net a fish, I know he. He missed that fish like seven times and that bitch was every bit of 18 to 20 pounds it was. She was huge, like huge. So finally, like after he had missed net, net Like six, seven times. I was, I was a little bit perturbed, I was pissed, I was upset. I'm like god damn it. I go, john, just get on the oars Roaming in the fucking bank and I'll just beast this bitch. He rose, I get her up, gone the bank and I'm fighting for another five minutes and the same thing. I'm like this, far away, the steelhead right on top, my rod on the water, and I'm trying to just swing it in the bank and my leader breaks.
Speaker 1:No, my rod was 90 feet up there so fast, so fast, dude. I launched that fucking thing. I was so pissed off. It was a hatchery fish. I could have kept her, damn. I caught a lot of steelhead man, and I've, every year when I like when we were talking about when I was younger, you know, being able to fish in high school and all that stuff Every year I caught a legit 20 to 22 pound steelhead. Every year I did, but that fish was probably the only one that was in that range that I ever could have kept and I knew it. You know like it. I should have let it go, like I, really I but my intentions was killing that fish and man. You know, we all got a little bit of pride as sportsmen or whatever, you know, a little bit of ego, or I gotta take a picture and, yes, I caught that fish, that was my fish and the fucker got away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a tough pill to swallow, for sure, all right, but you know not so many times with steelhead, but Lots of other fish that I was like, oh shit, oh my god. And then it's all over and your, yeah, first thing he does, he looked who to blame, who to blame?
Speaker 1:It's under the weather, we're not wrong why?
Speaker 2:is it banged, was it? You know? Um, yeah, yeah, well, okay, so here we are. I got this, but very Beautiful looking cocoon. Yeah, there you go. Do you have a burners tool? No, I don't, and I don't you have a needle? Yeah, I do have that thing you talk about. There it is.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, now feel that body with your finger right now. Yeah pretty rough, yeah, very rough. Take your, take your needle, yeah, just the side of it and literally rub it up and down Pretty firmly, like you can get Pretty firm, okay, and watch and watch that gsp kind of go opaque. Can you kind of see it do that A little bit, a little bit. You got a lot of body wraps probably, and what. What thickness are you?
Speaker 2:using, unfortunately, the 100.
Speaker 1:No, that's fine, but that it's just so I can explain to you that because it's thicker, it's not going to go as opaque as yeah, 30 to near and when you're, yeah, okay, that's all.
Speaker 2:But I do see that I am Causing things, repping and rubbing.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And so this one, this basically just helps the the.
Speaker 1:Smooth everything out makes it. You can make it as Wait, wait, yeah, now I say, rub your finger over it.
Speaker 2:Once you get it all the way done, around all of it, rub your finger over and you'll feel the difference, like the wax coming off and like a little bit. But there's no wax. What is it? That's just like material, or that's just it smoothen up? Oh okay, well, maybe it's a lot. I do have a little bit of glue on this pokey. That's all good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then maybe I'm a Dumbass. I didn't think there was wax on GSP.
Speaker 2:I use wax, I don't know Hi, yeah, I use wax. Okay, you do use wax, mm-hmm. That's something I need to invest in as well. I.
Speaker 1:Don't use it as man. A lot of the the the real traditional classic tires like big-time Sam and fly Classic Atlantic salmon fly guys. They wax the shit out of their stuff and I mean it's like a glue. It's a different ballgame like. It's almost like cheating. I won't use it as much as those guys because to me it is fucking cheating. You can't have the threat control or or If you can't have that then you don't have an the right understanding to do what you need to do. A little bit of wax is one thing like I pretty much only wax under when I do hurl, like ostrich hurl or peacock hurl or dubbing. That's pretty much the only times I use wax. And to start my fly, when I, when I Start a fly, the first thing I do, you know you got your four inches of thread out your bobbin. I run the wax over just to secure my thread on and that's it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I do have to say, as I was working the pokey Mm-hmm. I started working higher up on the shank, closer my fingers, where I could lay down more pressure into it. Yeah, yeah, now it took like a whole new form, or like I don't feel those bumps and grooves everywhere, like it's perfect, much smoother than it was even moments prior to me realizing that. But you can see the GSP like Settles down and smoothens out. Yeah, that was cool.
Speaker 1:That dude that right there, that that technique is gonna be probably the most Most Influential or have the most substantial Effect on your outcome of your flies. Yeah, that under body means everything. Okay, it means everything, whether you, even if you are dubbing but Like you, can't get a clean, silk or tensile body without having a smooth under body. It's fucking impossible. Anything especially tensile, anything underneath, like when you tie in feathers, like the stem of the feather, you know you tie it in and you lay it back a little ways. When you lay a tensile over that, that stem will stick out Without doing this. So when you're, as we work forward, you know, tying our flying forward, you can't you'll keep on a burnishing. Oh, so sometimes what I do to that I I didn't explain that to you which, like I'll do a layer to, like I said this is probably seven to nine layers. Yeah, I'll do like three layers and I'll burnish it, and then I'll do two or three more layers and I'll burnish it again to get a head.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you just keep everything super smooth. A lot of prep work and a lot of detail, but to me it helps me tie a better fly man. I mean if, if I knew a better way to do it, I'll do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know enough. Okay, well, I feel pretty confident on Like. This is just dramatically smoother now. Yeah, like to the finger, I would almost say it's like perfectly smooth, but obviously yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, that's what I was. That's why, yeah, I mean it's silky smooth.
Speaker 2:Silky smooth, my friend. There you go so.
Speaker 1:Moving forward. I would say, like that pressure that's. I'm glad you said something about that. You know you really want to have a very firm Broke to smooth that out. I mean, that's, that's where your files things that you're using.
Speaker 2:What is that? Is that an asset? Oh shard. As an agate? Oh okay, collected over millions of years ago.
Speaker 1:So I, that's probably handmade, but I mean, like a lot of the. I Got mine from Chinook win outfitters, which is up there in BC with you. She sent to me there there. There, man, I never had one. I don't.
Speaker 1:The needle works great. I've used this fucking needle. Yeah, I've only probably had this agate for a year, year and a half. The agate, see how thin it is, one way, yeah, and then it's thick and there's got that angle. You can really get some. You know, you can keep it thin and put a lot of pressure on it and really smooth, and then you can kind of widened out. You could, as you tie more, you'll understand how this thing really can Smoothen your bodies out. Yeah, yeah, going back to that, you know, like I said, like the way I've done it it's just my experience over my years of time like it's this, this isn't the only way. Whatever you, whatever, I can teach you that you can apply to anybody. That's what I tell them and use it it. But if it doesn't help, you don't fucking use it. I'm not, I'm not you. Yeah, you just gotta. This is a never-ending learning process. I've tried for the vast majority of the last 10, 15 years, especially to really tie the perfect lie. And I, I have never done it, mmm.
Speaker 2:Never had some deep shit right there, man, you know.
Speaker 1:I just that's just the way it is. But what wouldn't you put that much effort into it, you? You feel that when you're swinging it, you do.
Speaker 2:I Like that I.
Speaker 1:Get a lot of shit swag, though. Brother and I lose a lot of flies so a lot of people would go motherfucker, you just bit five buck an hour tying that fly. You just put it in the tree limb and broke it off.
Speaker 2:I wish it, I got another one here, but it's worth the effort to me it's like gambling you got to play to Lose. You know, in a sense, like or not, but you got to play knowing you can lose.
Speaker 1:That's a good start, yeah yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, man, yeah, that's a good way to put. It's definitely a gamble.
Speaker 2:Especially like I've tied. So if I take a streamer that I tied and it took me, you know, half hour hour To tie and it's in a tree, but the whole day I've been just sniping little holes in the you know, I feel good, I don't know. It's like break it off, tie on a new one. You know so if you're, if you're at the point where you're at least able to fish most of the time, then losing a fly is just Another day at the office really it's part of it.
Speaker 1:You got to pay to play brown.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I went a little too hard and we'll pretend we didn't do that. But there's some, that's all right. I see it. Your fuzz, my little fuzz is.
Speaker 1:Lick your finger and just wipe it down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, life goes on.
Speaker 1:There you go. I happen, brother, it happens. Okay, all right, now you, you kind of understand classical the fly you tied. What I did was a flat tensile tag. I'm sorry, the fly that you sent me a picture of that we're kind of going off of, it's a flat tensile tag. Is that what you want to do, or do you want to learn how to do? Have you ever done an oval tensile? Or what tensiles do you have? I don't even know. I don't give a shit.
Speaker 2:I Don't care. I have pretty much nothing. I have this tensile. I do have lots of I've like a lot of holographic Tensils, but I got this one. Yeah, just golden silver tensile, it's just flat. Okay, yeah, this is flat, it's pretty thick.
Speaker 1:Is it?
Speaker 2:very thick. That's medium if we're talking Okay.
Speaker 1:No, you're perfect. Like that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, um, typically what I do?
Speaker 2:I do look, so I do have more than I shouldn't say. That's all I have, but I do have like a two per thin silver.
Speaker 1:There you go. That's what I'm saying. Like, typically, when I do a tag and I know I'm going to do straight One color, like as a tensile, being gold, silver I use small. Okay, the only reason why I use small is because I can get a cleaner look for a tag and I'm not taking up With the medium. As you start wrapping it and as you tie more you'll, you'll get what I'm saying is like anything medium, bill.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like as a medium, as a rib. I really want to separate the ribs like super wide, because I don't I. My perspective in this is we're getting deep now, we're getting fucking deep. Yeah, when you use, like any of the mediums or large tensils, you, you add a lot of flash if you keep your ribs tight. I don't like a shit ton of flash, unless I'm doing a full tensile body. So when I do ribs, any of the mediums and stuff like that, you'll see I it If I keep them, the shorter I keep them, the more flash it gives, so that it makes it really stand out as a tag, though, like you can get two turns with your medium and you're done. But when you tie it off, you're adding so much bulk that it, it makes it a lot harder. So if I know I'm using it just for a tag, I use the finer stuff, small, because I can get super clean wraps and I don't have very much build up to change in my body. Does that make sense? So that's the only reason why I was asking you what you have, because I typically for like tags, I use fine which is either small, I use smaller, fine, the. All those are a whole different ballgame you got. I use fine, small and medium on the same play a lot of times. But that's a really intricate rib. Yeah, you know, um, one thing that I can say that I do, that's very different from a lot of people. Um, man, is I get very intricate with my ribbing? Yeah, I do. Um, so, a lot of times, like there's a reason for it, though, like One is fucking cool, I think it's cool. But two, you're building a way more durable fly. So a lot of times, especially in the d style or the space style or the classic style, flies you.
Speaker 1:You run your rib one way, you run your hackle the other way. You run a counter over the over, or Let me, let me think about that, but I'm trying to explain it the best way I can explain it. Um, well, shit, this camera doesn't show it, it's not gonna show it. Well, that last lie showed you this one. Yeah, there's, there's three ribs on it.
Speaker 1:Hmm, so I do a rib this way, which with a flat tensile. Right in front of that flat tensile, on the front edge, I have a hackle and I wrap it for. So I wrap a tense or I wrap my rib forward, I wrap my hackle forward, that's on the front edge of that tensile. I run a another rib Counter wrapped so it binds that hackle stem down. So if it breaks I can still fish the fly. It's not gonna mess anything up. I could trim it. And then a lot of times, after I do the counter rib, I'll do a a rib in front of the hackle stem. That binds that Counter rib down. Hmm, so it's got two layers of protection. Does that make sense? It does, I hope.
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:So a lot of stuff I do. I mean it comes out like looking really fancy but at the same time there's a purpose for it. You know what I mean Like. If there's not a purpose for it, I don't see the point of doing it a lot of times. Yeah, you know what I mean Like. So like, some of the ribs get really fancy and a lot of my flies, but there there is a purpose for I'm getting a look I want. I think it looks badass when you have a rib laid out and you have a, and then it looks like between two ribs A hackle pops out but you can't really see the stem because it's buried between two ribs. But there's also a counter rib in there that you you can barely see and it's tying it all in together. It's like weaving it fly together. Yeah, if that may, you know it's really is like weaving a fly.
Speaker 2:But it it does make these fans.
Speaker 1:But, fuck, man, and why I do that and get that fancy dude. I fucking like we're talking about shitting a tree. Well, if I can get a fly out of a tree, man, I'm gonna get that, I'm gonna rip it. Well, shit, man, I beat the hell out of my flies, I beat the fuck out of them. But I can fish him for a long damn time too. Yeah, if a steelhead ruins my fly, I do not give two shifts, that's I don't. Yeah, there's, there's a big difference. But knowing how well I cast, you know, shit, we're all. We're all human beings. We all get to a groove and some days we're not in a groove and we beat the fuck out of our flies. I do, yeah, and when I'm not feeling it, man, I'm fucking banging them on rocks and limbs and shit. Yeah, no, no, no. Fuck you, you pick up your fly. If it's still fishing, shit. Okay, there it goes.
Speaker 1:There you go right out, you know. So, like I said, there's, there's a reason to it. You get, you can get very, you can get very intricate, like that. The other thing when, when you do that and get that intricate, intricate with a fly, you really understand. I am three ribs in and a hackle, so four things in and keeping a super slim body, guess what? You learn a lot. You learn a second back, you do. You know you. You do what when you're tying that in, whether you tie it in or wrong or right, if you tie it in wrong, you learn how to shit what. What can I do to make it better? You see, like man, all the shit.
Speaker 1:I've learned is from mistakes. I've made up tide millions of flies. I'm learning from mistakes. So the way I'm doing it, that's just where I'm. It might change in 10 years. I might find some better way. Somebody I come across and talk to you has a better way of doing it to me and I'm like shit, I should have thought of that. But in my thought process and the way I'm doing it now, this is what I'm doing that works for me and it makes a nice clean fly and it takes a lot of time and it makes a nice clean fly and it's the more you do.
Speaker 1:You tie in four ribs or three ribs in a hackle and tie a chronometer. Yeah, your chronometer is going to be the cleanest fucking chronometer you've ever seen. Like a lot of people Like I. I started giving some away at my local lake because I was catching the shit out of fish and handing them to other guys and stuff and I'm like damn, that's clean as hell. And they're like like it's a coronet. I'm fucking used to tying a spay fly to get super fancy with it. And they're like I doing that, taking that initiative and putting that much effort into these flies for the fish I'm really passionate about, plays over into all my other flies too. So when I tie a coronet you know what I'm saying it's like it's so much cleaner than they ever would have been before. Yeah, I had a. I've put this much into these flies. What's that mean? I hope that makes sense, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been. I don't know if it's just my Natural sense or the way my brain works, but everything you say makes sense to me, so hopefully that no, or it's other people.
Speaker 1:But oh no, man, I did, yeah, and man, I, I'm a kind of an overthinker and my brain kind of Like we're talking about in the beginning. You know, I've had a lot of help lately and I've been through some shit, going through divorce. Man, I'm trying to be the best me I can be and I've learned a lot of stuff about myself. My brain a lot of times thinks faster than my mouth moves. Yeah, I just want, I just hope I'm, I'm Explaining the way I'm explaining it in a way that Is somewhat useful, somewhat understandable, that you know I'm not a way ahead of you. Yeah, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think. Uh, you have to worry about me. I've been picking up what you're putting down, so don't stress.
Speaker 1:But I ain't stressing as far, okay.
Speaker 2:All I got is two different sized tinsel's medium and Pretty super thin. I'd say it's perfect.
Speaker 1:I'd say do the super thin first because we're gonna this is just a tag and then we're gonna tie in tails and body and stuff like that. Do you want to do a full tinsel body?
Speaker 2:Um, that one that I sent you, that like, uh, one with the grizzly hackle. I think we should see, when I don't remember if that has it or not.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's a full tinsel body. You're good buddy, good one. A very hard thing is Creating a tinsel tag, tying in a tail and created a tinsel body. Getting a smooth transition is a very difficult thing, which it's. You're gonna learn a lot and I love it like that's a fuck. Yeah, dude bro. Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 2:And I'll fish it tomorrow and I'll tell you if I felt back in my balls tingling because of it.
Speaker 1:Hold on, did it just cut me off my send? My zoom microphone was off. No, it's, it's still. Oh, okay, we're rolling. Okay, uh, hold on, just sick, let me find my.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna keep it you ever in those little Fluffies, the Burnham? Yeah, do you ever do that? I don't.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm going to leave. No, you're good Um the tinsel.
Speaker 2:Well, once you got stuff on it then you don't want, if I can put a flame near it.
Speaker 1:Yeah prior. There's gonna be a little bit of a difference in In what I'm doing then what you're doing, just because you said you have mylar tinsel. Right, it's plastic. Yes, yes, I, I use full real metal tinsel. Crazy, all right. Yeah, it's a, it's a Dip. This is just part of. I'm a lucky son of a bitch and I have Access to a lot of really different stuff. Every time I tell somebody I use real metal tinsel, they like I've never even fucking heard of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, never Option. I think, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:So when you go like, when you like, really when you get into the super classic stuff that they're all using real metal tinsel, they're not using marlire. There's not much I mean as a as effective fishing and anything like that. It doesn't have any Difference at all. The difference is is the characteristics of the material. Mm-hmm. Try metal Compared to plastic Wrapping around a hook, what does the plastic do that metal doesn't do bends. Yeah, so it's. It's easier to do mylar, which is like I'm not. There's nothing wrong with mylar, I've done it forever. When you do real metal, you get a truer sense. It's a feel of what you're doing is yeah, like I, I can pick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:That's all right, that's all. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all I, you know yeah yeah, and that's all that's. That's all I wanted to say, that you know. I just want to be able to give everybody a new and understanding that Of certain things that I'm doing, when I'm doing it is different, then it's a different technique because it's a different material.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know I really shoot for straight lines. Like men, I want, uh, perfect segmentation. If I'm doing ribs, I want, like in metal, when you, when you're wrapping it, full tensile battery, fuck it. Well, this is where we're at. We're, we're gonna tighten a tag using a. Uh, like I said, I'm using a full metal. You're using the mylar Shit what the hell happened that? But there's a it's, it's Using real metal and being able to put it on edge. You can get away with mylar of kind of being I don't mean this bad. Well, you can be a little bit sloppier. Hmm, when you, when you're using real metal, you want you know, as you're, it's the same with these Thrig reps, as you're laying it, you want edge on edge.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You can get away with not being edge on edge with mylar. You can't get away with being edge on edge and not having a smooth underbody with metal, because that underbody will.
Speaker 2:Do some peek it out. Yeah, yeah exactly It'll bend up, force it to open up or something, and exactly perfect.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I do it differently to Compared to a lot of the super traditional, classic ways. There's a lot of times like if they were doing a full metal body. They'll tie the metal in up here, wrap it down like thread and then wrap it up. Well, guess what? It hides everything.
Speaker 1:So my goal is to run this and do this as clean as possible to where I don't have to do that. Okay, you see what I'm saying like. So, when I wouldn't, once we do our tag in Higher tail and there's gonna be a little bit difference. But I'm gonna show you a way to tie a metal tensile when I don't have to start up here, run down and go back. I'm gonna tie it in here and just move it one way. My basic idea and kind of fly is to work my way back, Start there and then tie in everything and work my way forward in one kind of smooth motion. You tie everything in and as you tie it in you can lay it out, but everything is moving forward. Once you get back to your thread, you tie it off and you're done. Yeah, does that make sense? 100%.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, it's just different because I'm like that's just my style, like I said, like a but a, a lot of the classic guys. I do the same, I use my technique in my style, but where in in all the classic tires, I see the way they do stuff. Hang on, can you hear my son's video game? No, okay, cool. I got my earphones? Yes, nice, anyway. So I can hear it just barely, but, um, anyways, I can hear it just barely, but um, anyways, the all, even the classic guys, all of them, whether it's silk or or tensile, they start above, they tie down where they wanted to start and then they work their way back up. So basically they double layer everything. I don't do that. You add so much bulk Doing that, I don't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a functional fly to me, you know, intruders are kind of different because they got their stages and you know, and they and they got that big plume. They're trying to just get everything to kind of stand up Lies. Any fly tied on a hook, kind of the more slim, sparse it's tied With with you can add imitation bulk. Silk Hackles, all that stuff can add imitation bulk. But the same idea I'm going for is a thin, sparse tidefly, a thin, sparse fly tie you like that. That's all backwards. A thin, sparse tidefly Does everything you want to. It's going to sink as deep as it's possible, going to sink At the right angle and swim the best possible way. It's going to swim If you keep Everything as thin and sparse as possible. Yeah, your wing is what it is. You know I mean everything on top. But you don't want to add any bulk buoyancy Drag that has lift on a fly Is not good In my Opinion of what you're trying to get. When you're spay fishing, swing fishing, all that stuff, that's your line, your haze, your leader length, all that stuff comes into account To getting your fly where it needs to be. But your fly needs to be fishing.
Speaker 1:In my opinion, or what my goal is in tine of fly, is to get that fly to be fishing as deep as possible and staying as low in the water column in the fishest days as long as possible. So the bulk Drag, anything, any lift like I never want, like if I had a shooting head. I never want my fly to be above my head ever. If it is, then I mean there's got to be certain occasions where that that's a technique that can work, but that's not my goal of a fly. I want my fly to be at least in my head length, or as deep as my fly line or my tippets or tips are, or below that it's. It's a confidence thing and a Functional thing. You know what I mean why? Why I fucking fish a t17 if you're probably going to be fishing at the height of a t7, yeah, you know what?
Speaker 1:I'm saying so. There is a functionality to the fly. If your fly is not functioning right, then you're. You should have looked and you know if I can fish a t11 or t14. But if I can fish a t11 and have my fly Dropping down to where t14 is, I'm going to fish that t11. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's just. That's just it's. It's easy for everything else to. It's easier casting, easier fishing your flies fishing better. That's my goal, you know. Hopefully that makes sense, brother. Like I said, I'm not sure. Nope, I feel it.
Speaker 2:I feel it. I um, yeah, well, let's do the tinsel, then you go revved up there.
Speaker 1:Don't have in metal tinsel. When you Mess it up you can't. It's hard to get it on mess like I don't know where my end went. Oh, there she is. She just popped out, somehow got underneath all my other shit and in metal.
Speaker 2:That's not good, yeah because then it kinks it and whatnot.
Speaker 1:A that too, and I'll get stuck and you can't pull shit out Finger no clippers. Oh, this is, I'm gonna tell you, everybody always gives me shit when they see me using finger no clippers. I tie a lot of. I tie a lot at the fly tying shows and stuff. And I was like you use finger no clippers. I'm like everybody always says, man, I should have thought of that. But I use, I use this shit out of finger no clippers.
Speaker 1:So I tie my, my tag in my. So I got small Silver, I'm gonna tie it in and I'm gonna work it back towards my hook point two or three turns and then I'm gonna overlap and then start working my way back forward. Now, when you have a nice cigar shape, I could see you have a nice joint shape. When you have a nice joint shape and you're working your way up, brother, you're doing good, okay. So what I always do too Is I work my thread. Oh hey, I don't quite a ways further Forward than where I expect my tinsel or my tag to end and then you can unwrap it to go back eggs.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, I just also figured out this. Tinsel is gold on one side. I didn't actually notice that At first, but so I'm doing gold. But that's just going to be what it is. I'll do you look like a?
Speaker 1:You're gonna. You're gonna tie the baddest ass chop fly ever that existed. No, I'm just giving you shit. Sorry, I'm gonna fix my chair real quick. It's all my carpets. I'll fuck that, but I need my chair. I'm gonna shut my door again. Rich rice. We hope your brother Will come talk to him. Please, damn kids. No gold. Uh, sorry, let me. I'm gonna grab a shoe real quick. Yeah, no worries, I'm a dirty ass. He'll be living on. I'm on that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm on those nicotine pouches, the zins. Well, we said that we can get zins, but we can only get the three milligrams. But I have this other brand, clint, oh damn, and there are four milligrams which it's not much more about. I've gone in the two kilogram ones and those sit you down and they're not fun. I don't know where to tie this in. There's a way to stop and let you catch up.
Speaker 1:I kind of like I kind of want to teach you Can you chew kopenhagen?
Speaker 2:We don't get kopenhagen up here. What Canada? Let's not talk politics here.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. I just want like really it's sad. All right, Andrew. Well, I've done some.
Speaker 2:Here's a deal on lots of other chews. Um, I mean, I used to chew it, but there's gonna be your good luck.
Speaker 1:Charm is after we're done with this, I'm gonna send you a few flies. Give me your address, I'm gonna swing up there and I'll send you a can of kopenhagen or two.
Speaker 2:Oh geez, I have multiple friends that will.
Speaker 1:It's, it's, it's just for good luck, brother, you got it I. One of my things this is I know it's fucking stupid One of my things is you got to pay your homage to the fishing god. So every time I'm fishing on the river, my chew goes out in the river and I let him know, like here you go, fishing gods, here you go, and here's your tobacco offering, here you go. And if I haven't caught a fish in a while, it's like shit. I haven't paid my god, I'll pull my chew out and I'll throw it in the river like shit.
Speaker 2:Oh, there we go, there is.
Speaker 1:It's just a stupid uh, uh, I don't know ritual I got when I when I still had fish dude, I for the longest time had to always have the one pair of socks on, so I understand.
Speaker 2:I always like, fuck, I forgot my socks. Today, I'm fucked, no fish dude yeah, yeah, I Shit.
Speaker 1:I might as well go back in the truck.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how far up would I go with this tinsel, since it's just a little tag?
Speaker 1:You're good brother, um, wherever you want, your still Hail to start.
Speaker 2:Okay, I feel good there. Then. Yeah, perfect, that's. Yeah, that's all you do, basically right at the hook point.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go right Slightly forward mind you this perfect I I always On, Like the Alec Jackson or even these blue herons. I like to be A little bit above the hook point. Not much. You know what I mean not, not crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a 16th away and since my god, there we go.
Speaker 1:That's honestly, man, one of my, one of the things to you, though. With like that, my style is I like, ah, how do you explain it? Um, like long, everything long and kind of exaggerated in a fly. I guess that's kind of the only way that I like or can explain it. I just like things to be a little bit long.
Speaker 2:Oh, I heard that that's already one of my nicest tags, so so I always go the big uh tensils. So there we go, food for thought. I've honestly already we haven't even done more than a tag in Basically Holy shit. Two hours and I already like that's the best thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1:Well, no, man, like I said, man, it's so much to learn to this. And man, um, I've had motherfuckers calling me cockier, egotistical or Not very many man, but it bugs the shit out of me when people say that I'm not Egotistical or anything. As long as you're learning I'm, I'm very experienced in what I do. That's it that. That doesn't make me better than anybody, that doesn't make me worse than anybody. That doesn't make shit. This is just the way that I do it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like a lot, of, a lot of people Brown upon, oh, like I was talking about, if you don't run a tensil or a silk down and back, you didn't do it right. Kiss my ass, kiss my ass, I, I can make it. I, I can do Similar and make my fly. Come out and fish the way I want it to fish, tying it the way I want to tie it. How the hell does that make me any worse than you or better than you? I'm not better, I'm not worse, it's different. Well, and I'm experienced, like, like I say, man, I mean you know, and, uh, when you're Fuck it. All round up, I'm 41 years old and I've been tying flies to the six. That's 30 fucking five years of tying flies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty impressive in itself. Sorry, I just spilt a little bit and then I was like what to use to wipe it up and I grabbed my son's sweater. You'll mess it up anyways, right? Oh, that's right.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying, son, that that thing will be dirty before you know it. They'll look at it. It'll be dirty. Right now, exactly, it's already dirty. I think what I did on on that fly Probably the other half of this tail, as I I tied in um tail was, uh, purple dyed, golden pheasant tippet.
Speaker 2:Well, they're going to red dyed. I'm just taking what I know perfect.
Speaker 1:No, you're perfect, perfect here. I mean, this is honestly, it's going to be better. What Tying, well, tying gps man? Oh yeah, yeah, I time. Oh, no, hang on, let me see like in oh yeah, turn around. Supposed to be says I can turn it around. There we go. It looked right back at me oh, there we go. Like I said, here's all my Flytine shit. Like every one of those drawers has shit in it. There's hooks shit. Here's my desk. I got shit everywhere and that whole thing's full of tying materials. And then there's that too underneath my desk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looks like a fly tire's been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is above my desk and there's behind my desk. Those are all flies, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, no shortage in flies.
Speaker 1:And then that's where I was going here. Here's my, here's my boxes up, tying up.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I like those boxes. I guess a lot of these boxes. Yeah, that's pretty sick, but I mean like, oh, here's the, hold your hook down and all, so it's not just like.
Speaker 1:Oh, and they're super traditional. These are Wheatleys. Okay, I mean, these are the real deal, mm-hmm, but I mean those are. Those are just a few of the gps I've tied.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're gorgeous.
Speaker 1:Gps man dude Next oh come on. Turn around Next time we tie a fly together, brother, it's I know. Um, you said you're trying to gp here recently or next time, buddy, but they're my uh. Yeah, they're my thing. I'm a I'm a gp kind of song bitch. I fixed this shit out of them too. Man, oh, I don't, I shit. Do you know what a winner's hope is? No, a winner, well, here, a winner in hope is a pattern developed by bill mcmillan, kind of pretty famous pattern as tens of body.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, then yes.
Speaker 1:I tied a gp and a winner's hope variation, which is really hard, like as we do a tens of body, you understand, like that's all tens of body. It's probably one of the hardest. Fuck your fly, that's. I do crazy, but it's fun, like I learned, like you learned one thing too, yeah, one thing I do.
Speaker 1:Like man, I I never, I never not try like if I like something or if I'm inspired by something and I give it a try, yeah, what the hell's gonna go wrong. Yeah, worst thing, worst thing that happens is I learned something. Okay, so I do the same thing when I do gpis, like a lot of guys. When they do gps, they cut a v into their tippet. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Into the yeah.
Speaker 1:You make their eyes. This is a technique I use for all my tails, whether it's a tail or even like if I use a golden Crest and then I put a, a tippet topping in my tail, I do the same thing Grab your, let me see, you're gonna do this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna rip this off, just so it's gone, okay. Okay, you see I have a tippet, yeah, oh, there you go. You should be able to see that. No, I'm gonna click on my video so I can see a little bit. There you go. The one thing I do like If this was a brand new tippet, I do the same thing.
Speaker 1:I grab where I want. And this is a tail, so I want to be very thin. Gotta see how I kind of split it. Mm-hmm, I grab, I want. What you want to keep is the black marks even, right, okay, so I, so I kind of wiggle A little section out. That top section is what I'm going to use, so I grab it. I make sure those black marks are nice and even Mm-hmm, just those. I grab. The rest of the feather you can kind of see oh, I'm gonna rip, now, I'm gonna rip it, okay, and when I rip it You're not gonna be able to see it in this picture, but I kept that part of that stem still attached.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if I did it the exact way you did, because the part I wanted was more in the center, which happens right.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm Okay.
Speaker 2:But I do understand what you meant, because then, like, that little bit that was attached stays all together on it, exactly.
Speaker 1:And so I can keep a nice pin, but I can keep. You can't really see it there, but you kind of can. You can see where my markings are, even.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to grab a new feather. That's not in the center this time, because now I understand Talking about it. Yeah, oh yeah. It's amazing how, when you don't really tie like intricate stuff per se, and then you start tying intricate stuff, and then you start noticing quality of materials a lot more. Yeah, that's a thing that I'm starting to.
Speaker 1:Man, you can make shitty material look good. You can, it just takes it. It takes a lot of fucking work. When you got really good material, it makes Everything so much easier Everything.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Okay, there we go. I found where I want. I'm going to put it all together. Separate it. Yeah, that's what I want. I'm going to rip it. Yeah, I ripped it.
Speaker 1:The stem's still kind of attached. Kind of attached. There you go. So now see, when you do that, what it does is it allows you to keep those markings even yeah. So there, and like I said, I don't know, can you see that I'm wearing my? I knew I kind of were trying to block fly, but I figured, with this shirt you kind of see the background.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looks good, Okay so.
Speaker 1:And seeing how? Where is that? Like, my tail barely goes to the bend of my hook. Maybe just a little bit short.
Speaker 2:Boom, right there, now you laid this down. Do you have to do like a loose one and then wrap down fast, kind of thing, or do you just put?
Speaker 1:So this is only one wrap. So I'll show you, brother, oh, that worked out, yeah. And see, when you tie like that, I put one loose, kind of loose wrap over and then I do kind of one tighter wrap. What I do Is I turn the whole. I have a rotary vice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I turn this fly. So I'm looking right down that stem or right down that hook shank. Now I guess what I can do. I can manipulate this feather by grabbing both ends. I'm not. I'm not pulling it forward, I'm not pushing it back. All I'm doing is lining up with the shank of that hook.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just stacked it and it came out even better than it just was cool.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean and that's you just want to be able to do that and I only get three or four wraps on there, like next. Three or four wraps are super tight. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 2:Okay. Not a lot of little confidence on that Sick.
Speaker 1:There you go, brother. Good Like for, like I said, I just you want everything to be in there, you want everything to be in line with that shank. It's offset a little bit current. You know, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics are very similar. If you're, anything you set is kind of off center or off kilter, the water grabs it a certain way, is going to pull it a certain way, yeah, so. So that's why that's my, my biggest perspective of of what I'm doing is so when I look down that shank, my tail is right down the like, you know I can see my hook point and it's right in the middle of my shank, or pretty damn close to my tail. Straight she's going to, she's going to be fishing fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's a good little technique to pinch either end, and you kind of like almost I lifted it up a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:It's sat down. It's not like a half off center. Yup, wasn't like half off to one side, half off. You know, it's just. I'm looking straight at my fly from like a top point view and it's just all straight, it's just. I can see the the hook bend because it's, it's beauty, perfect.
Speaker 1:That's what you want. So now, since this fly we're going to run a tensile body, I am going to work my thread all the way forward Nice, tight, securing wraps covering as much as the tails I want. And see, when you have a kind of a cigar shape, I can get in 15 wraps because of my threads open, I can come here and I can trim it off and I'm not going to have much bulk. Some maybe using the heavier thread, you might have to wrap that whole button section of feathers down your shank to keep the bulk in a shape up that you want. See what I'm saying. So it, depending on the thread you're using, you're still looking to create, you're just building up one more layer, but you want to keep the same shape.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I feel like I can almost go all the way. So I go all the way forward and then all the way back. You want to go?
Speaker 1:almost all the way back. You want to leave a little bit of room where you are going to tie in the tensile. Luckily in this fly, well, we got to do a hackle, so we're going to tie in the body, which is a tensile, a rib and a hackle, so there's going to be a little bit more buildup and that's kind of why you know, if you do this, this layer that we just did, it creates that separation to be a smoother transition.
Speaker 2:You know one thing that I remember when I realized it, like people like yourself, you know I'm wrapping a quarter of the speed that you are, and the thing that I never really thought of until it dawned on me was that you have that kind of thread control where you can lay so fast side by side where I'm still like I mean they go side by side, but if I go too fast I'm all over the place.
Speaker 1:I catch myself backing up and doing stuff all the time but if I see that, I just wrap that fast because, well, a couple of things Experience Like, as I'm wrapping, I'm every wrap, I'm pulling thread out and lengthening my thread so I don't have to wind it real down tight and then pull it and then wind it down tight and pull it. But if I see anything that's not super smooth, I back off, get to where it was smooth and I start again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay, so sorry. You said one time back towards the the butt. I'm stopping just a few wraps prior. Yeah, and that's to tie in my next material. Yes, sir, okay. So yeah, I'm about for three, three wraps from the back, perfect.
Speaker 1:So your next material I always what I tie next is going to be what I consider my dominant material. If it was going to be a rib, it's going to be my dominant rib. The rib that I'm going to set first, that sets the spacing for all my other materials, but in this case it's a body. The only reason why I say that? Because, like dubbing, you don't have to do that. You know, my dubbing is not a dominant thing, like I'm not worried about my spacing or anything because it's tentative, or silk, if I was going to do silk.
Speaker 1:The reason why the next job material is because I'm still working my way back to my tail and tag junction. Mm, hmm, once I work back to my tail tag junction by tying in my most dominant material, in this case being a tensile, once I get there, I'm never going to go back farther, and when I wrap that material first, that's going to set the next edge of my body. Mm, hmm, does that make sense? I think so, because it's going to. Even so, though, if I'm tying my body and next it's going to, that first wrap is going to cover all the other ribs, any other material coming off this slide. That first wrap is going to set their starting points as I work my way forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Just want to make sure that makes sense. It's like I said, my brain and shit works my way. It doesn't always work the way of others. I want it to be understandable. See, in my case, because I'm using a suspender thread, I'm going to have to go down to where my dam, where I cut my tail off. I have to work my way back up and build another layer to get my thickness down. While you're where you are burnish your silk or your GSB I'm sorry, that'll be. My next thing is I'm going to burnish, so take your needle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just rub the schnitzel out of it. Now. I'm still being very firm on the whole rubbing it back and forth on all this thread, burnishing it as you say, but not as tough. Yeah, you can feel it, though you can tell when you're done and enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, like I was saying, like with mine being thinner, it really comes super opaque, like when you burnish it and everything's really nice and smooth, like it's almost clear, even with a layers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can definitely see that other or that pheasant tip it just shining through now Like it's almost like there's nothing there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what you want.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, the more you know, the more you know.
Speaker 1:Well, it's just like I said, if I knew a faster way to build stuff up and make everything be super smooth, and you know, it's kind of like you're prepping everything's like a prep for your next material, once you get lined out. And, just like I said, it's kind of just. In my case it's just experience, you know. So, like I said, we left three or four turns up above there. Now we're going to start tying our things in. The next material is going to be in this slide, a flat silver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I'm going to be using my medium or still go small.
Speaker 1:You can use medium. I would. I'm using medium on this.
Speaker 2:The other thing I guess about the mylar pencil is, if you pull it too hard, it stretches, which then if it's really shows that you've stretched it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what that's the most. That's my biggest dislike with mylar you can't overstress metal no.
Speaker 2:All right, so now I can work Hold on One thing.
Speaker 1:I just did that I I always expect everybody to notice, but I always forget they don't. I cut an angle.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I normally would have a minute for this, but just to even cut an angle on your tinsel. So now you can lay it down.
Speaker 1:It just keeps those. What it does is when you play those first couple of wraps. They're kind of the hardest and if you have a real wide tinsel, especially and especially where your thread stops, at that point and your first wrap is the bottom, or wherever your tinsel starts, is going to be really wide and it's going to leave gaps. If you don't cut that angle in, you can't keep those first few wraps really tight to make it look like it's super clean and they're all your edges are touching. Hmm.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that'll wrap. Always practice wrap to make sure it doesn't mess the materials up at the back.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's where that that angle comes in is like once you get really good at understanding that angle and like said mine, is I cut it really steep, like I get like half a scissor length of an angle.
Speaker 2:Okay, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1:So those first couple wraps, that, those first couple turns, are really thin layers of pencil, yeah, and I haven't got back to my junction between my tail and my tag yet. I still have a couple of turns left. So now I'm going to start tying in my other things and I'm going to work it back. As I'm tying in everything, I'm going to work it back right to that junction of my tail and my tag. Okay, even if I haven't tied everything in, that's as far back as my thread will go, because that's the starting point of my body. Yeah, so this tensile, that's going to you know what I'm saying? That's set your, that sets your Beginning point of that next material, as it goes on. Okay, so we're going to on. In this particular case, I had this fly, I had a, an oval with. I think it was in front of. Whether it's in front of behind, we'll deal with that, but it was an oval. And then a hackle. I'm going to go ahead.
Speaker 2:When you say oval, you mean.
Speaker 1:An oval tensile. It's kind of like a rope.
Speaker 2:Okay, I do have, like, yeah, a golden black kind of ropey thing that's quite thin. Is that what we're? Got to work. Okay, that's what we're going to use, unless I magically a lot of these. It's funny because a lot of these like pin your tensile stuff, were like stuff I got when I first started tying flies in, like Starting fly it's for sure. Oh yeah, and don't ever use them. But now we're. This one's like a almost a white. What is this pearl? Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1:I love pearls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this one as well, I think you can. Yeah, all right, we're using Pearl, then you like it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no reason. And kind of the only reason why you're using like an oval, an oval tensile or kind of a rope material tensile is because that you're going to put that hackle, I'm going to put tight end where the hackle goes in front of it. So I'm going to, once I let we layer our, our tensile body, then we're going to layer oval rib. That oval rib is kind of like a dam the whole way up. If you use a flat tensile or a mylar, that edge is so small that that hackle can you have a super smooth surface underneath it and then you have a super smooth surface that hackle can slide over it around it. When you use the oval kind of the ropey stuff, once you set it, that's where it's going to be and as you're tying your hacklin, you can lay it right next to the edge and not have it move. It looks like it comes right off of it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I do, yeah, so I got a medium and a micro tensile.
Speaker 1:Use a medium.
Speaker 2:We use the medium Okay, and that's the pearl one, so that even works out even better.
Speaker 1:And one thing I do. It was going to be really hard to sell, but this is like a fine detail of this All your ovals are basically a tensile wrapped around a cord. Yeah, like this. Yeah, I take my fingernail clippers, I don't cut it off, I just barely pinch it and I pull it to where I just have a cord. So when I tie this in, it's only wrapping that cord and it lays flat.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, separate.
Speaker 1:If you were to tie it like a hackle stem. You know there's not much give in that hackle stem. The cord allows you to tie it in and you're not getting any bulk. Yeah, but you want to make sure that once you pull the cord, that your last like a wrap or two touches actually the tensile. Oh yeah, you know what I mean. You want that where the cord and the tensile is starting to be right, about where that transition is. So when you start it, you're not wrapping any cord, you're just wrapping tensile forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. Now I'm kind of at that junction. Is that okay, or should I be trying to move things forward?
Speaker 1:That's fine, that's fine. So if you got to that junction now, anything we tie in, you're going to tie in moving forward, okay, and?
Speaker 2:last question Should my cord be laying on top of my tensile almost like, or should one be lower than the other? So it's out of the way in the sense.
Speaker 1:So kind of here's how, like your body tensile doesn't matter where you started at. But if you were to take this fly out of advice, like see my tails here, if I were to take this fly and rotate it to where I'm looking, right down the tail hook everything. But if I were to go to where my tail is, you've got your hook shanks round like that. You know what I mean. I always tie in my ribs and stuff at about not at six o'clock, like five o'clock.
Speaker 2:Just off. Okay, I'm not. Yeah, I can tweak that there.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, not five o'clock, it would be seven o'clock.
Speaker 2:I got what you were saying, yeah.
Speaker 1:You want to be. So when you wrap, yeah, so when you wrap that first wrap forward, the bottom of that rib should it should look like it starts at about six o'clock, yeah, and then you know what I mean it.
Speaker 2:Just it makes it smoother and easier and cleaner looking and then if we're talking, you know what the water wants to push it left or right, it would. That would yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yep. So now we got our, now we got our oval ribbon, now where we tie that in, and I'm going to say point is you, I'm a far back, as I want to go every wrap I do, for from now on, this lives going to be moving forward Right, and I'm going to tie in a hackle and in this case, I'm going to use one same purple, dam Rizzies.
Speaker 2:Now I have like two kind of capes purple, grizzly capes I think, maybe even a third somewhere kicking around, but I guess we want to go for like the straightest that we have. We might not have the nicest taper, the nicest taper, okay.
Speaker 1:So, as you bend these feathers out, you want to have a knife, as long as they're even, or as they get a little bit larger going to the front, because we're going to tie it in by the tip. Okay, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Not a dramatically stubby one, right Okay, not like a hen hackle. Yeah, all right, this one feels like it's the one. She's looking at me smiling. Oh yeah, oh, no, found a nicer one. That's the one I'm feeling it. They called my name. Get back here.
Speaker 1:And I always try to use hackles. If I know I'm going to use it as a hackle, I do. My dam does not to use like super nicely shaped tips, because when you they're like tying in a hackle tip, when I love all hackles as a hackle tip wing, but finding a nice shape like this is about as perfect to the hackle for wings. I like kind of more rounded, you know what I mean, like the like this those are what you want. I mean size dependent, you know what I mean. But you kind of want that kind of round edges, those. If you have those, save them for hackle tips. Okay, wings, but in my case, like I said, you see that tip Kind of all curves, yeah, yeah, that's your, your like me. That's not, that's a, that's a hackle. Good, we're good, that's not yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're brushing your fibers downwards, so I'm going to do the same Get the. Just exposing the the guts, yeah.
Speaker 1:And where I get the guts or that stem. That's where my tying point is going to be, yeah, and I'm going to tie it in Suddenly right the way I want to lay it and then, in my case, I'm going to have my hackle lay in front of my rib. So as I'm tying in, I'm going to have it right in exactly height to that oval. So if I'm wrapped my oval forward this way and I want it to stand above, I'm going to wrap it on top. If I want to lay below it, I wrap it in below it.
Speaker 2:Right now you have your shit upside down. Someone go upside down as well. So we're wrapping forward with the with the oval right Yep. So I want to tie it underneath, correct, yep? And then does it matter which way my cup is for, like my, my hackle.
Speaker 1:It doesn't. In this case it won't. Okay, I won't stress when you, when you get to collars or like tying a traditional spay a lot of times I strip one side of my feather, yeah, and in this case I'm not, because it's, it's not a soupy or super webby hackle that I'm tying. I'm tying kind of tying in more of a stiffer, not dry fly hackle, but kind of more rigid hackle.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to keep the whole tip and everything tied down and I'm just going to do nice tight wraps all the way forward.
Speaker 2:Still attempting to get this thing to lay where I want and not did it. All right, I'm feeling good.
Speaker 1:Once I get to a certain point I'm going to. I just like to tip off, but there's still fibers that I'm going over, so it creates the same bulkiness.
Speaker 2:I'm going to just leave it on because it's going to help this transition for where my cord stopped, or my yeah, my cord, yeah, and now you can. That's meant. This is why they tied intricate flies back then, because they didn't have Instagram to go on, so they had time to tie these things, true. I mean for sure, and teach the someone their first fly and like, all right, so first and this is where, yeah, our plus in there would be like, oh my god, no, okay. So I go all the way forward.
Speaker 1:I lead like just I stopped it just before my thread has stopped. Okay, so just a few turns, because now we're going to wrap the ford and if I have to cover the thread to get to that end I'm not hurting it, but it will leave it to where my thread, as soon as I start wrapping, it's going to be tying that material off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so now I'm wrapping my tents. So oh yeah, oh yeah, making sure everything's edge on edge. I guess like that first wrap, like you kind of got to almost backtrack it slightly over itself to really make sure you get that full.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why I cut that angle in it. And see, when you use real metal, like you can feel it. It pops into place and you can feel it. You can't feel it, mylar.
Speaker 2:No, and I'm seeing there's like a little bit of a bump triangle thing that's trying to, so I probably wrap too much over itself. Not laying it side by side Probably.
Speaker 1:So it's edge on edge, moving forward. Those first, that first wrap and second wrap are your hardest.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm edge on edge now, and that's that's the. There you go, that's the. Yeah, you can feel it. Yeah, I'm liking that. Oh, I want you it popped, it pushed itself into edge on edge, yeah, okay, yeah, now I see the real advantage of that Metal. Well, maybe the metal as well. I was thinking more of the just having such a perfect thread base.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's yes, that's everything, because if you don't, it's going to show through.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I've worked my way up to the front and so now I need to tie it in, yeah, without creating bulk, but tying it in, it pushed like. Now I'm like right at the very front, so I should almost backtrack one and tie it in yes, upper, yep, okay.
Speaker 1:And the hardest part with real metal tinsel is coming over that hook return. When you have mylar you can make it look it looks a little bit cleaner. It might take a few turns of backing off and tightening everything back down to get that or that return comes nice and clean. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass. So then next, yeah, you wrap your oval forward, like I said, I like.
Speaker 2:Do you need to put some on this? We're good to cut what's that? I can cut my yes.
Speaker 1:Yep, and, like I said, I like to do wide turns. It just keeps. You know, one of the things about just about any hackle is it adds bulk and drag lift and we're the same way.
Speaker 2:We wrap that tinsel, we're wrapping this cord, yep, okay.
Speaker 1:You know what I can say. You want to be pretty nice and wide wraps.
Speaker 2:It's even easier to. Yeah, I guess everything starts with a good foundation. Yes, because this is now makes it way Everything easier, way more naturally parallel or not parallel, but anyways, even Sometimes, even there you go. Sometimes it's hard to wrap and talk. I get.
Speaker 1:Now, one thing I suck at doing Just folding hackles with my scissors. I always Fold as I'm tying, so as I wrap forward, like this part of this hackle wants to roll forward, I grab these fibers and twist them toward their rolling back.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I can cut my cord off too now. Yes, sir, and then that position oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, so you don't pinch and pull them to like make them sit one direction per se.
Speaker 1:I kind of I don't know, as you wrap a hackle, you know, like, how do you like? There's kind of a bottom side and a top side of the feather. Yeah, I want the bottom side to be facing towards the back of the hook and I want the top side to be facing the front of the hook. So if I'm wrapping it, folding it, I just kind of let, I'm trying to make the natural curve go towards the back of the feather. So all the, all the fibers are flowing towards the back of the feather, back of the fly.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know if that's doing it a hundred percent, but I'm not going to hold up on it. Oh, you're good. It's looking good though.
Speaker 1:There you go. That's all that matters.
Speaker 2:Oh, somehow we went from behind the cord in front of the cord. Out there, I feel it, with like a little more practice and skill. I would know more of how I want my hackle to face this moment, but I think it's doing it really well, considering, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1:Looks damn good man. And then once I get to the front I always do like a turn or two extra. You know what I mean. It's kind of over your hackle, just kind of make a good clear stopping point. But when you do a couple turns you're kind of just making that a nice even segment.
Speaker 2:All right, this looks like I should stop now, so that's what I'm going to do, and then just catch it and Mm-hmm, boom, you are caught. I'm going to poke out some of these. I didn't want caught. You try to end it so you have no more fibers on your stem. Are you at that level?
Speaker 1:I can't, I do do that.
Speaker 2:You can almost like backtrack and rip where you need to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, yeah, for sure. You know, if I were to lay a feather out, it would be. You know, I always add, like if I just lay it flat across the body and we're going to tie it in, I always add like a half inch for a couple extra turns, I don't know. Hopefully you can see that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yours are going back, mine are kind of sticking straight up, but I'm not going in, that's all right.
Speaker 1:That's all right. Yeah, a lot of that could a good way to fix that is. Oh, I kind of, as I'm tied in too, as you can see, I kind of keep folding them pressing them back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're definitely sticking a little more. No that I'm doing that. Perfect. This looks sexy with the pearl and like you can almost not see it, but it's there.
Speaker 1:Yep, I could. Yeah, I love pearl, anything kind of pearly uvious dude, it's fucking badass. So that's pretty much. I mean, that's the hard part of flying. Now we've got a collar and a wing, pretty much. So in this point, like for me using GSP, I could either right about. Here is where I'm going to switch my threads. I'm going to you right now just because I don't have very much buildup front, but if I had more buildup than I liked, I would tie in my collar with the GSP and once I tied it in, I will because you're working your work thread forward I would tie in the collar and then tie off my GSP with thread I plan on using.
Speaker 2:Sorry, let me just make sure I fully understood that so is it?
Speaker 1:is it very bulky?
Speaker 2:It is slight. If what we're doing has been trying to keep the bulk down, I would say it's on the heavier bulk side of bulking Okay.
Speaker 1:So what I would do now is we're going to tie in a collar, so don't change your thread yet.
Speaker 2:Okay, I don't really so I guess I have like some UTC yeah In the year or something.
Speaker 1:I just never, I never finished my flies with, with GSP. Very often I just don't Um, because I just, I like, I like a, uh, I like redheaded flies. Uh, just kind of my thing. But I my the two colors I use are either red or black. Yeah, but when I tie, when I get here, I just want so it's. I don't want a white head. So that's why I basically add this, and you know, being 60 knot, it's still super thin and you're not adding much bulk. Yeah, it's just kind of the way I was on it. So, with you, though, if you're having a little bit of bulk now, we're going to like typically, right now, um, uh, I use a kind of a longer hauler. I mean, dude, you can use anything, you can use keel, you can use whige and you can use peasant, golden ring, neck, whatever.
Speaker 1:I just want something that's going to. You know, like the idea I had behind the slide is to kind of have a purple glow, like, literally, imagine this fly sitting in the water, that that tensile body is going to really reflect off that purple hackle. Yeah, I like that, that's what I want. So I want to keep the similar color, but I mean, if you want to add some contrast or add a different color wing like the overall fly that you send me a picture was was purple. I've always heard steal it. I've fucking loved purple, so that's where I'm going with it. But my next hackle is going to be just a little bit longer and kind of encompass everything and it's going to be very sparse because it's kind of just leggy. You know, that's kind of what I'm going for and in my case I have. I have some purple peasant peasant rump patch. But you could go with black Anything. You could go with slapping, slapping any, like you want a web ear, but longer hackle than what you have.
Speaker 2:Well then, that's a good question what do I have? What do we have here?
Speaker 1:So in my case you see that this is just rum. That ring, that grump, see how long those fibers are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to put on the ficking out on me, but yeah, that's ring neck.
Speaker 1:See, I just used that. But I had purple Okay, Died purple Beauty.
Speaker 2:So find one that's not to me.
Speaker 1:That makes me feel like yeah, something that's going to be longer than your hackle, your body hackle, yep, okay. And if you've got those blue ones in there, any of those blue feathers that are in a ring neck, those will work sweet.
Speaker 2:Negatory oh, there's some ficking feathers.
Speaker 1:But if you got a natural one of the brown ones, it's all good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not going to yeah, yeah, I mean. So how am I prepping this feather? So that's my tip and I'm pulling off all this stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you want to keep. You know where. You want to get the fluff off. First of all, I don't like the fluff much. So when you get down to the fibers because that's going to be, you know, you got to think your last rep, that's the length of those fibers are going to be Okay. And on collars I typically only go, you know, three to five turns. You're not trying to get a lot of buildup, you're just kind of adding depth to your fly and kind of a the hell is it called? You're kind of adding bulk, but without adding bulk. You're kind of adding the illusion of bulk.
Speaker 2:And so I lay it down on the top, just straight back, kind of thing. It looks like that.
Speaker 1:And then we're going to, and then we're going to wrap it just like a hackle I tie, wrap you thread, tie it down, and in your case, you're still using the GSP.
Speaker 2:Right now is when I would switch to my other thread, so I'd wrap that maybe twice and then switch to my other thread.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, would you go 70 or 140? 70.
Speaker 1:Well, use red because you're there, so I love red, red heads or something about a red head of fly my grandpa. One of the things he always told me was always put just a touch of red somewhere on the fly. A lot of times I just put it at the head, fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I only have one, one bobbin holder that I really like, so I use my old gotcha Apple pliers to switch it out. I do the same. Don't lose that tension. Gotta have tension, that's right. Not too much, but just the right amount Thread control man Thread control. All right, then you just tie it in, like you would tie in your next Yep Same thing.
Speaker 1:Well, use your thread. I always tie it in with my thread, so I would have left my my. Just hang Apple pliers, yep, and then just tie it in. Okay, once you get like two or three wraps over the thread, the other thread, you're good.
Speaker 2:Doing like tying a classic, to make you feel like it's your first day tying.
Speaker 1:Man, as long as you're learning, that's. That's the one thing I'm always learning and improving, always All right.
Speaker 2:There we go, more than a few wraps. But that's okay, that's not good. This is not going to be a showpiece. Fly. This one's just that learning fly.
Speaker 1:That's how you get to the showpiece life. Yeah, just learn, okay, yeah. Now turn them off your front. Yep, you're okay, there you go.
Speaker 2:I just bring this up to the right behind there, and then I could have probably given myself a little bit more space.
Speaker 1:That's all right, I think it'll. Yeah, oh, you're crowding the head.
Speaker 2:We're a little bit in the vicinity of crowding the head, but there's still actually a little bit of room, so I'm not feeling too bad about it.
Speaker 1:No. So now it's kind of the same thing. I just kind of fold that feather. It's easier with the feather than it is with the hackle to kind of fold it to where you got everything laying back.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, Okay, oh yeah, I can see it like definitely wants to lay down when you rub it. Yeah, when you touch it the right way, it wants to do it. It's really nice when a hackle wants to do what you're trying to do. Yeah, that's a good feeling. All right, this is starting to shape up, though I don't know how this whole listening to people type flies is going to really work out. But what's really cool to me is that now it will be on YouTube, so if someone is listening and then decides they want to watch what we're doing, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it helps them be better. Man, I didn't get to where I was without a lot of help from a lot of people.
Speaker 2:I didn't. That's looking dirty.
Speaker 1:So I mean literally, you could end the fly right there.
Speaker 2:Should probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the next thing I did is I added a couple just hackletip wings.
Speaker 2:I have a bad habit Like I just covered everything. Is that a bad habit to like work your, cover your?
Speaker 1:stem. Yeah, no, that's a good habit, because if it breaks it's still all going to be there, but that stem breaks, that stems everything. So I kind of do the same thing. I just don't cover up. I kind of cover up one or two turns of the stem, but not all of it.
Speaker 1:Of your color, you know, this fly kind of my idea behind it was have that inner glow and everything. So I don't want to add a big like super thick, bulky wing, so I want kind of a thin, sparse wing. That body hackle is going to have a lot of lift, no matter what we do. Just that's just natural because it's got so much drag. Something that really stands up, you know, like a hackle that really stands up has lift. If that hackle the good part about it is is in what we use it's very thin, so it's going to collapse very easy. Guess what? Wait, wait till you see this in the water. It's going to have all kinds of subtle movements that you didn't really see.
Speaker 1:The hackle adds a bulkiness, so it looks like there's a lot there, but there's really not. So you're doing two things there. You're adding a lot of visual enticement to the fly, but you're also adding by having it very sparsely tied, you're going to have it to where it's going to sink and fish as deep as it possibly can. You know what I mean. Like you have all the A lot of bulky fly doesn't need to necessarily need to be tied.
Speaker 1:Bulky just has to have the appearance of bulk. So, like when I do dubbing and stuff like that, if this was a dub body fly and you have just a rib through it, I really pick out the dubbing. I really pick it out because all that is when it's super sparse and comes off the fly it adds a lot of bulk but there's really not a lot of bulk so that that fly will fish right. Hope that makes sense. You're adding a really buggy look to it, a really lot, a lot of movement and lifelike-ness to the fly, but you're not adding a lot of bulk to where the fly is so bulky that it lifts up or does it's going to be fishing right. That's what I'm kind of, what's kind of going forward this fly, like I said too, I don't know if you can see these Like I'm doing super thin, but I always do. When I do hackletip wings, I do four.
Speaker 2:Oh, even if mine have a curve to it, because I have another one that's straighter.
Speaker 1:You want to like a curve one, it's not bad, but you just want to have opposite curves, so like if you're looking at your fly and your vice right now, you want that wing to curve down and the same with the backside. You kind of always want that, like in my case, like this feather. See, I have some feathers that curve this way and these feathers curve that way.
Speaker 2:So you want two of each?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if I got two of each, but as close you can get, even if you can find one, but one is okay.
Speaker 2:Actually, I guess this purple. So we're going to pretend we have that and we're just going to stick with the, because I guess you want two on one side that curve to the one side and two on the other side that curve to the other. Correct, yeah, they're going to be in the market for more grizzly now.
Speaker 1:It goes the same with any hackletip wings too. It's tough, so typically like, if you're doing hackletip wings, I always buy necks.
Speaker 2:Because then you get both sides.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So, like this is the neck skin, this side will naturally curve this way and this side will naturally curve that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my friend went half on half, so he has the other half that I need. Right, we won't call them names, no, I get it, buddy, I get it.
Speaker 1:I just. I have a big flytie show every year down here in Oregon and Albany and we tie on it every year. I went down last year and I was tying acroids and forgot an orange hackle. You kind of have to have an orange hackle to tie that fly and I ran out. My buddy Joel was there and he was tying something different, but he happened to have an old orange hackle. I still got it. He dyed it and everything, but it's the most gorgeous orange fricking hackle ever. But he still pissed at me. He's like dude, I thought I'd lost that. I'm like no, I got it, I got it, it's over here. You're going to come get it, buddy, because I ain't giving it back, yeah.
Speaker 2:Out of my cold dead butt.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So when you get your hackles, you know I I'm not going to get it. I I both sides. So I have four hackles here, yeah, and I make sure the tips are all even. That's your most important part. So then I grab it a little bit before and now I'm. I'm right. Now I'm gauging where I want those tips to ride, just to be caught.
Speaker 2:I put two one way and two the other way. All correct.
Speaker 1:Yep, all right, then you even out the tips. So typically what I do is I lay like my front side wings, I I get these tips even, then my far side wings, I get those two tips even, and then I put them together and then I even all four tips.
Speaker 2:This is where you can see that. Yeah, See mine. Don't want to do what yours are doing, but I'll pretend they are Okay.
Speaker 1:And no water, it won't matter, but it really won't. And actually after you swim it for you know, a day it'll look absolutely gorgeous Like you tied. You meant to tie it in that way, but hackletip wings are awesome because they move so much and when you have four wings up on top, one that's adding that lift on the top of your fly to where your hook bend floats down. So you're all your lifts right there.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, there we go, hey, perfect, yeah, you did it.
Speaker 1:So now you want to grab them a little bit below where you want to tie them in. So now I kind of gauge.
Speaker 2:How far back do you think I want it? Sorry, I was in the middle.
Speaker 1:That's where I'm going next. Like my tips, I basically want to be even with that, that my tail, or just touch forward. I mean certain flies. You're going to want them to be longer than your tail, but in my case, where I'm looking at this fly, where I like my hackletips to sit is just right at that tip of my tail or just a little bit below before. So what I do now is so I gauge that. So, like I said, I think our advice is the same. I get all my stems in line in this hand. I get it where I want. They're pretty damn close. Now come in here and grab with this hand. Now I'm going to rip all that shit off. So I'm just got the stems and you got to be careful because if you don't hold it tight, you'll uneven those tips up and you'll be pissed.
Speaker 2:Then square one, probably looking for new hackles too. At that point it could happen. Yeah or sure. I just need my poker to pull out the fibers I can't, that are in my finger, that I want out Right.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you got to do that For sure. And then what I do too. You don't have to rip a shit ton off, but I like to get an inch or two of this and then I'll cut it. Yeah, I got to deal with all that bullshit on the end.
Speaker 2:You know, cut it and then also keep it. Yeah, if need be, for sure. Get out of there. You know, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm feeling pretty good about that. Once it's my 10,000th time doing this, I'm sure I'll be the best, but for now, yeah, it just takes some time.
Speaker 1:Like I said, it's learning. So you got your hackle tips like that. Now I'm going to grab the back of it and, as you can see, all my stems are condensed. Yeah, and now what I do is I'm going to take my finger, my rabbit, here, and then I'm going to use my thumbnail here and I'm going to fold it. I'm going to put a little crank in there and I'm going to keep cranking and I'm going to go up into the actual hackle fibers just a couple of kinks. See what I'm doing so.
Speaker 2:We're trying to kink it. So the feather like I have it here.
Speaker 1:So now can you kind of see that? So now, how I'm holding it? There's a kink right in here that what's that's doing is allowing those that feather, when you tie it in, to lay super tight to the body. Okay, now, this is the fricking hardest part is, once you kind of get that kink in there, you grab your wings, even tips back up in the stems, and now what I do is I do the same thing as like before, as I turn my fly to where I'm looking right down my hook shape, I'm going to grab those and I'm going to do all your stems like you kind of want it to be the your far side of your wing, those two hackles that are supposed to be over there, those two stems right on that side of the eye and the two hackle stems that are on your near wing, right on the inside of the eye. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:100% easier said than done, I would assume.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it takes just a little bit of prep. Once you get them over that or close to it, I do a soft loop and I tighten it down, and I do one, two, three, four and I see where they're. At Once I get them there, dude, I can really grab them and move them toward a lay. I want them to lay, but they didn't lay the way it was.
Speaker 2:Which is normal. Okay, am I doing some fricking funky shit? Yeah, super funky shit. Oh, I think somehow in the midst my, there we go, ish. Oh, no fun way, I'm fricking able to get much better than that Chacaz Dude. That's pretty fucking deadly. It's doing it. Ish. That's where you are. Raise room for improvement. There's one hackle that like bows out of the pile. Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1:Once they get wet, it'll look good Well.
Speaker 2:I did it. Holy shit, that's pretty damn perfect for not being perfect. Yeah, okay, okay, it's right here. Yeah, so you do play with your shit a lot. You're like, definitely, oh, that worked even. And then, once you think you got it where you want it, you're see, now looking at my flies and like the feathers kind of tilted All of them are tilted a little bit to the yeah.
Speaker 2:Center. Well no, instead of being like flat straight on, they're all like just off, yeah, tilted. So if I just keep playing with that, I pulled it a little bit.
Speaker 1:I mean, you don't have to set them all at once. I like to set them all at once. I just think it a lot of times is easier, but you can set one side and then set the other two. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, oh okay. So I like I was having that tilt where the like if you looked straight up and down from the top view, looked from the top view, they all kiltered to one side and I literally grabbed all the stems and rotated it and now it's perfect. Now it's as perfect as I think I can get this. That's where you want it to be. Oh no, there's one. So if there's one, like now, I don't know if you can see that, but one is sticking out to the left.
Speaker 1:You can grab that as long as you're tied up, tied at your head.
Speaker 2:Pull it out and put it back onto the.
Speaker 1:Well, you can kind of just bend it as you need it to. You know, like if it's cocked out this way, you can grab it, tilt it up and then pull it down and back and get it to where you want it to be.
Speaker 2:Oh, just literally moved it to the other side. Done.
Speaker 1:It can be. Yeah, and I don't know if you can see the top of this I kind of grabbed the two that are on each side and I kind of separate them. So I got my two on the far side and two on the inside. I'll kind of split them like that, like a V when you're looking down at the top, and then I'll stroke them back into place like this.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Grab them back in. So I did notice my tips would go a little bit past the tail now, but I don't think I'm that better.
Speaker 1:That's all right. You just don't want to do it super long, all right. When you put stuff really far past the tail, you just have the tendency sorry, my phone said it all went 20% which is all good. When you have the tendency to go really past that hook point, if it's super long, when you're casting it it'll wrap up in your hook. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, this is like it's not very far, it ain't going to do nothing, it's not going to be an eighth. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I'm pretty satisfied, considering it's my first one on this and that's freaking doing good. I don't even fish this tomorrow, I might just tie another one. Yeah, we're going to keep it as a memory. Okay, now I can get my hands off.
Speaker 1:Yep, now you just start shaping your head. That's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now when shaping our head holy shit, that's pretty fucking on it. We're shaping the head. Is there anything I'm trying to do? Or just trying to have a nice clean, almost like a cone?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Mine, always kind of do a bead or like make it look like a little egg. That's just my personal preference, but yeah cone is very traditional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, as we're wrapping up our heads here, I guess we're also kind of wrapping up the podcast, but I definitely appreciate all the time you've given me on this.
Speaker 1:No problem, man, I'm sure the hell out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would definitely be willing to do this again.
Speaker 1:Let me know when brother.
Speaker 2:Great on.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I do. I don't do a whip. Finish with tool.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I use my fingers.
Speaker 2:I actually recently sat down with myself to figure out, because I was like I can do it with my fingers. I know, Do you know why I do it with my fingers? Because you're more precise. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Okay, yep, it's that third control, I think. Sometimes the whip finish, you know that you'll add a really bulky spot to your head and you don't like it, and then I can control where every wrap goes, typically do two. That's just where I do.
Speaker 2:I can just go to the tool. I can try to prove it right now. What point do I have to prove?
Speaker 1:It's just preference. I never, when I learned how to tie, I learned how to whip, finish with my fingers. I've never had a tool. I probably couldn't use the tool.
Speaker 2:I taught a class on salmon flies, just like a handlebar, like super simple, just talk a little bit and whatnot, and it was a lot of fun, even the oil from oh no, there's a bit of black paint on my whip finisher and it definitely tarnished my head a little bit. I'm not carrying that much, but someone out there will see it and know we'll laugh this won't give a shit. This won't give a shit. Same reason why I haven't cut my hair in a while.
Speaker 1:Me too, man, I almost did. Before we did this video. I almost shaved and trimmed up and like fuck that.
Speaker 2:It's cold. Here you get what you get. Oh man, actually, what kind of glue do you use? I use this vineyard sealer. Vanish clear stuff, I don't know, it's what I use. I use this sealer.
Speaker 1:You got sealer. Yeah, that's the best shit there is.
Speaker 2:Can you get it at your stores? I?
Speaker 1:have a bunch coming to me. I just gave my last bottle away and I didn't realize I gave it away. I thought I had another bottle or two. So right now I'm using that hardest hole penetrator which is very close to sealer. Once you open it it thickens up way quicker than the sealer. I don't want a thick head cement. No, I want it to. I want, as you see, I've already done around once I like to do at least two or three times of just super fine coats that really suck way down in, like when you turn the fly you should see your thread wraps and that's letting that glue get way down in the head.
Speaker 2:I guess it also kind of like, once you've got everything positioned to those particles that we're using, it will kind of get a little bit of glue on them and hold yeah At all.
Speaker 1:Like when you use either the sealer or this hardest hole penetrator. You can really tell Like it just wrapping at once, like I said, like doing real thin coats. It sucks it in so much that when you can see your thread wraps and the glue, you know it's getting down in there.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm proud of this fly. It looks deadly. Sure will be Now. Would you ever fish this in dark? Well, not muddy water, but you know harder viz what do you do for? Like a harder viz today, Like tomorrow on YN, definitely be seeing less visibility in the water, Would you still fish?
Speaker 1:It depends, it really depends, man. I don't. I never go to a river assuming a fly. Fair enough, I wait, dude, I got more than I can ever fish, so I always let what I'm feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you open the box and you look at it.
Speaker 1:It will just. I, literally I can always stand on the river and look at it, depending on it. You know One thing I can tell you there's one place where this fly in particular is fish with the silver body but dark profile. Everything where it's really going to stand out and do really well is clear water. Yeah, this fly is going to be a definitely a kick ass fly in clear water because it's not a lot of shine, but I mean it's a very natural thin. You know, it's not nothing overbearing about this fly. There's nothing super flashy about it, you know.
Speaker 1:But if I could see this fly three feet away or a foot and a half away, anywhere from a foot and a half to three feet I'd fish it If I felt a little bit of confidence. But if I only literally got a foot and a half of visibility but no, I'm not going to, I'm going to want something big. So, vancouver Island, you got to be close to the coast. So like, if your waters start turning, if they're brown, you're fucked, yeah, but if you got any kind of steelhead green to it and have fish in any kind of duty, if they're there and they see this anything, they're going to fucking grab it Like that's the most. There's nothing true that I've ever felt about man is when I can. When I got a nice steelhead greeny, fucking water and, honestly, where I like to fish and where most of the fish are like doesn't matter the river level or whatever, but, dude, like, if you, you know you start walking out in steelhead green water, you could see the bottom, you could see the bottom, you could see the bottom and right at that edge where you can't see the bottom, that's where they're all going to fucking be coming. I'm telling you I've got millions of them and I've watched guys where you like.
Speaker 1:I remember we were anchored up my drift boat a couple years ago with me, a couple buddies, and it was a nice steelhead green water and I put the boat up and it was maybe three feet from the boat, you couldn't see the bottom and everybody was bombing the other side because that's normal where they kept stealing. I was like you, motherfucker, I go watch. I looked really my buddy, go, jay, watch this. And I casted six feet for the boat and dropped it down and fish on. I was like you, motherfucker, I go, but they're still head, they're, they're traveling the path of leases. In said that's the inside current, that's as long as you can't see them, they can't see you. That's where they're going to be. That's a huge, huge advantage.
Speaker 1:So, like a fly, like that, like this, would work really well in that type of situation. But when you, like, are literally searching, you know, hide, shitty water, you got to go big, you just got to. You have to elicit a mean, nasty take. You're not getting the soft subtle. You will get a soft subtle take, but I mean you just got to be fishing something that's going to get something aggressive where, because what I found in Rivers, pushing a lot of water, the fish aren't feeding, still don't eat anyways. Salmon don't eat anyways, least on our rivers, on a coastal system.
Speaker 1:I'm lucky enough on, like, if I go to Eastern Oregon and fish way East, where those fish have traveled fucking three, 400 miles to get to where they're going, they turn back into trout. They're the grabiest fish. They're completely different fish than right out of the ocean, fresh You're. You're going for two different animals. You're just trying to elicit a grab. So in big dark water fish are moving a lot. You got to piss them off to get them to grab. They're not grabbing out of what the hell is it they're not grabbing out of you know curiosity or any other thing, or old habits or anything You're. You've got to piss them off. You just got to. And if they're not pissed off, they're not going to grab. That's just. That's just what I found with High water, yeah, and moving fish.
Speaker 2:Talk man, that is probably the most on point fly Like, just looking down at it, it's just so well, it's mint and it could be improved. Which is the coolest part is like I can. I can tell where I could have probably put in a little more effort, or like now I have the knowledge, or more knowledge, like. But it's like looking from the very top just straight down, I can't see the hook, I can't even see the tinsel because of the feather.
Speaker 1:There you go, see how I did See how I did my wing, looking down the top.
Speaker 2:Yeah, See, I don't have that going. I have a straight no that's all right.
Speaker 1:No, that's fine, you'll get it. You can do that with your fly right now, as you grab the two on the one side and you pull. You just pull down like this and you grab two on their side, pull down and just put them, and then you just kind of comb them back together.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I only like that. What you have is perfect. I only like that because when they're not tight, touching like this, when they're split like this, they move a little bit. They have a little bit more room to move, feel like don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. I do want to get on your first one. Just learn, just learn, brother, that you know what I mean and and that, dude, there's, there's way more techniques. You know, I set feathers and sometimes you get one that just fucking won't work. You could take, tip your needle in there and you can bend that. There's so much to manipulating these feathers that people don't often know. But if I wanted these to ride lower, I could take my my needle point while I got this hook in the vice and they're not sitting right, I can take the tip of my needle, go in here and grab this and re curve them. See what I'm saying. Like you can really there's a lot to it to get to be able to manipulate these feathers the way you want them. I just want them on top and I want them to have a lot of dance. I I've I'm always a guy that those, those wings are going to move, but they're not going to just like be like all this, you know, like all over the place, they're just going to be just subtle movements up here.
Speaker 1:The adds a super life likeness to this life. Yeah, that's that's what I want. Subtle movement is is is what I want. The next thing you're looking at is color. I don't care what anybody says, I don't know why in certain river that God damn pink and purple fly work better than anything else and we go 10 miles the other way and they fucking want a green. But, scott, you're just, it's just the. It's the way it goes, rather. But you know once you, but fishing and fly you have a ton of confidence in is everything. So, like this fly right here still had love purple, it's got a nice, you know pencil body, so it's got enough flash and up as as to grab attention. It's going to fish just fine and it's sparse, it's going to sink in fish well.
Speaker 2:Dark. That looks good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brother, that's what, that's what matters more than any. You like it, fish it, and I guarantee you, if you catch a fish on it, you'll remember it.
Speaker 2:I feel like I already remember it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That's what it's about. You know, I come to the time bench and I tie. When I tie, steel head flies and I'm sitting here doing this and bullshitting with you. It reconnects me to a time when I was on the river. I can't be on the river right now. This is as close as I can be. Fuck it, I'm going to have fun doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. Well, jason, I do need. I'm supposed to go fishing tomorrow. When my friend realizes that I was supposed to go fishing with him and I stayed up this late, he's going to be like what are you doing? But you're all good, I'll give it. Really, the second it wakes are that alarm will go off. I'll be as wired as ever, so it doesn't matter. Hell yeah, brother.
Speaker 1:Well send me some pictures, let me know how you do, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'd actually tagged you in a little poster thing, but we'll see it. I'll take a few more photos. But yeah, no, I really appreciate it. So much fun doing this and like, not only did I learn a lot, but I feel like a lot of people will get a little bit out of that as well. So I'm so surprised how well this turned out. But I guess, obviously, with a bit of knowledge and a bit of effort and a couple of hours, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, like I said, man, it's one of those things too. I get a lot of my buddies give me shit because I like it. You know we'll go on live and my phone will die. And I haven't even got to the collar and are like, miller, where's your fly? And I'm like, here it is. I'll show you a picture later because I just take my time, I enjoy it, you know you.
Speaker 1:You you get out of this what you put into it. You're willing to put a lot of yourself into it and a lot of time and effort. I, at least, when I do that, I get so much more out of it. You know that and that's my perspective. I don't try to rush anything. I do what I feel. This is a release to me, this is my relaxation and, and when I'm tying these and I'm talking with you and talking with other people, it, like I said, it connects me back to what I love to do and it puts it. I can tie in this fly. I can literally in my mind see a perfect run where I want to put this yeah, you know what?
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, 100%, dude.
Speaker 1:So it's just a. It's just a way to reconnect with all the things that we love to do, and I love steelhead fishing. If this gets me as close to steelhead fishing as I can be today, hey, that's where I'm at.
Speaker 2:And that's beautiful. All right, Jason. Well, yeah, I got to go. You have a great day, brother, and we'll you too, brother.
Speaker 1:Cheers. Oh yeah, have a good night, andrew. Have a good night, bye.