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By Anthony Naples, on April 23rd, 2011
Grizzly Quill Paradun
Hook: Standard Dry Fly
Thread: Gray
Abdomen: Grizzly Hackle Quill
Thorax: Adams Gray Superfine Dubbing
Tail: Grizzly Hackle
Hackle: Grizzly
Wing Post: White Antron
This pattern came to me in a flash as I was sitting at my tying desk tying up some standard Parachute Adams dries. I had just stripped some hackle fibers from the stem to use as tailing when I looked at the hackle quill that was left behind and thought “That might look good as a body”. Of course, quill body flies, and quill body parachute flies are nothing new – but I hadn’t previously seen this particular combination before. However, knowing that fly tyers are an innovative group – I’m sure that this pattern has been independently created many times over – and I claim no credit for “inventing” anything new.
I am a parachute fly convert from way back , when I sit down to tie mayfly dry flies I almost always tie parachutes. There are exceptions of course, but I’d say 90% of the dries that I fish are parachute patterns. There are several reasons for this: 1) I was a victim of the “parachute-pants” fad of the mid-eighties and this brings back fond memories of childhood, 2) I love the image of the parachute – it makes me think that the fly is slowly drifting down and landing on the water delicately, 3) The construction is easier than those pesky Catskill style flies, with tail and hackle proportions not being quite as crucial – there’s a little wiggle room, 4) They work.
As to point 4 above – They Work – I personally believe that the parachute fly is primarily an emerger pattern. The body rides below the surface of the water – like a dun stuck in the film or a drifting nymph exploding from the shuck. The subsurface impression of the fly is quite different from a high-floating standard dry. The look of a standard dry fly from below is basically an image of refracted light, a pattern of bright light and shadow where the hackle and tail are resting on the water. The parachute fly presents a completely different view to the fish. Because the body of the fly is subsurface, the fish sees the body and not just a pattern of light and dark.
By Anthony Naples, on April 8th, 2011
The Funneldun is a dry fly style rather than a specific mayfly imitation – tie it in sizes and colors to match the hatch, or tie it as an attractor pattern. The Funneldun was originated by Neil Patterson as an easy way to tie upside-down duns. As an added bonus, it makes use of those large hackles on the sides of that rooster neck that you usually can’t utilize for reasonably sized mayflies. I don’t know about you but my dry fly necks all look a little used-up in the middle. Tie it with or without wings. When using wings feather fiber wings such as duck flank are recommended. I used mallard flank dyed wood duck in the Hendrickson Funneldun (above top left).
The unique hackling style differentiates the Funneldun from most other dry fly patterns. An over-sized hackle is used, and it is “funneled” forward at an angle of approximately 45 degrees from the hook shank. According to the originator this was done in an effort to get more of the hackle’s surface on the water – as opposed to just the hackle tips.
Tying Tips:
The over-sized hackle is tied in at about the one-third mark on the hook shank, then a thorax of dubbing is installed on the front third of the hook. Wrap the hackle and then use thread wraps to “funnel” the hackle forward over the thorax (which will support it). Wrap in a hackle-fiber tail – this needs to be wrapped a bit around the bend of the hook, so that the fly sits on the hackle and tail properly (as in the picture). The body is then dubbed from front to back and the fly is whip-finished at the tail end. The hackle can be clipped in a “V” on top (as it sits in the vice), this will of course be the bottom of the fly when it turns upside-down. I didn’t clip the hackle on these flies pictured, as they seemed to land and rest just fine without the hackle trimming. Due to the elongated hackle profile – you may want to tie these flies on one hook size smaller than usual.
As an aside, for all you tenkara fly fishers, if you get tired of fishing it dry, tug it under and call it a tenkara reverse-hackle fly.
Reference: I found this pattern in the book, Collins Illustrated Dictionary of Trout Flies , by John Roberts. This is a fairly thorough compendium of fly patterns, that makes a nice addition to a fly tyer’s library. It is not a fly tying instructional book however, and it assumes that the reader is already a proficient fly tyer.
By Anthony Naples, on March 4th, 2010
Lately I’ve been messing around with tying “one-animal” flies. That is, all materials come from the same beast, excepting the thread and the hooks. The post that I did a while back on the Casual Dress, got me thinking about this topic. The Casual Dress almost makes the cut – but the ostrich herl head rules it out. The first animal that I attempted is Marmota monax; the lowly groundhog – or woodchuck as some of you may say.
I’ve seen groundhog guard hair mentioned as a tailing material from time to time – so I picked up a patch of hog a few years ago, but never really used it. The guard-hairs are great for tails, but I found that the banded coloration makes for nice looking wings as well. The underfur is quite unruly, it is not easily dubbed – and you really need to use a dubbing loop to make it work at all. That said, it seems to float well. My “extensive” testing ( in a glass of water) revealed that it produces a pretty buoyant fly.
I have to admit that these are some fairly ugly flies. But there’s something buggy about them – I think I like them. Please note that there has been no field testing of these flies. This is merely an experiment at the vise – I’ll update you on the results if and when these make it to the stream.
 Woodchuck Comparadun Woodchuck Comparadun:
Hook: Curved Shank, 3X-long hook
Body: Woodchuck underfur, tied in using a dubbing loop
Tail: Woodchuck guard hair
Wing: Woodchuck guard hair – I tied this in using a dubbing loop like a “fur-hackle”, then shaped it into the comparadun style “fan-wing”.
 Woodchuck Emerger Woodchuck Emerger:
Hook: Curved Shank, 3X-long hook
Body: Woodchuck underfur, tied in using a dubbing loop
Tail: Woodchuck guard hair
Wing: Woodchuck guard hair.
 Woodchuck Floating Nymph/Emerger Woodchuck Comparadun:
Hook: Curved Shank, 3X-long hook
Body: Woodchuck underfur, tied in using a dubbing loop
Tail: Woodchuck guard hair
“Legs”: Woodchuck guard hair – tied in using a dubbing loop like a “fur-hackle”.
By Anthony Naples, on January 22nd, 2010
 C&O by Franz Kline One of my new years resolutions in 2010 is to get back to making art. For various reasons, I haven’t made any art to speak of for about 10 years. It is hard for me to even look at certain paintings without the urge to break out the paint.
 Painting by Esteban Vicente I guess certain minds are on the same wavelength. When I look at the work of artists like Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Esteban Vicente and Jackson Pollock, I just get it. I feel it. Their art resonates with me and I understand it in a non-verbal way. It makes me want to paint.
 Autumn Improvisation by Anthony Naples So I’ve pretty much avoided looking art by these folks for the last decade or so. I went through a phase when I took this inspiration and made my own art. I tried to communicate in the same visual vernacular established by these other artists. And I created some works that, I think were successful in a small way, at this same type of expression. Though, in no way do I claim to be an artist in the same way that those giants were.
Well, lately the obsession has been fly fishing and fly tying. I have never done much to bring the art and the fly fishing together. I just never felt like I could do it in an honest way. I’m not a painter of bucolic landscapes or hyper-realistic fish (though I greatly respect and am in awe of some of those fish painters). When I saw Derek De Young’s fish paintings though something clicked. These were images that weren’t afraid to be full of saturated colors and painterly gesture. I found myself wishing that I had thought of this (and had the talent to actually pull it off). Check out his painting gallery at website canvasfish.com.
Well that is a long intro to present the first piece of fly fishing related art that I’ve produced this year as a part of my New Years Resolution. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get real materials out, but for now I’m content sketching on the iPod touch using the app Autodesk SketchBook Mobile. It’s an awesome little app that’s actually a pretty powerful tool. I can recommend it to any iPod or iPhone users that want a drawing program. It is well worth the $2.99 that it costs. Check out the Flickr group to see some other work that people are doing with their iPod and SketchBook Mobile. Well here it is…
 Dry Fly #1 by Anthony Naples
By Anthony Naples, on October 22nd, 2009
This latest installment of Angling Advise from Beyond is from Floating Flies and How to Dress Them (pub. 1886), the first book by Frederic M. Halford, (1844-1914).
We’ve all heard of Frederic Halford and our first thought is that he was a “Dry-Fly Snob”, this may be true, I don’t know. But after casually perusing the pages of this book – I am very impressed. I am no expert in fly fishing history, so maybe it’s just me but, I am very surprised by the state of fly fishing and fly tying in the late 1800′s as evidenced by Halford’s book. Basically – It’s all there. You could throw away all your modern and “innovative” books on fly tying and use this 120-yr old book and you would catch fish. I honestly don’t think you would be at a disadvantage if you stuck to the patterns outlined in Halford’s book.
It’s all in there; mayflies, caddis flies, midges, terrestrials (ants), quill body flies, thread-body flies, extended-body flies, down-wings, etc. Look at this pic below – this is a very serviceable caddis imitation.
The advice I’m presenting from this book is a bit humorous. It seems that good dry fly hackle has always been expensive and difficult to procure. In the following passage Halford discusses this and presents his solution. I have to think that he was laughing when he wrote this.
Of all feathers required for fly dressing, the hackle is the one to be placed first on the list, as being the most important, and, unfortunately, at the same time, the most difficult to procure. For floating flies cock hackles are so immeasurably superior, both as to their natural gloss and transparency, as well as the greater ease with which they are freed from moisture in fishing…
…Common barndoor fowls seldom produce such hackles as would please the critical eye of the connoisseur, and when it is remembered how few in number on any bird are sufficiently small to dress duns, some idea may be formed of the almost insuperable difficulty of accumulating a really serviceable stock : in fact, it is almost impossible to get cock hackles really fit for fly-making purposes, except by purchasing them at considerable cost from professional breeders, or from the fishing-tackle makers. I can only make one suggestion on the subject to amateur fly-dressers, resident in the metropolis, who do not care to pay the fancy prices asked in the shops, and that is to try and induce some of their country cousins to keep and breed fowls of the kind required, especially for the production of dun hackles.
So all you need to do to have a great supply of good-quality hackle is to convince your country relatives to breed them for you – good luck with that!
View or download Floating Flies and How to Dress Them in various formats at:
By Anthony Naples, on June 11th, 2009
 Size 24 BWO Traitor The Traitor: A Style for Small Parachute Flies
Well, I’m in the process of planning a fishing trip to Colorado. So I’m thinking back to the last trip to CO, and the flies that worked. Inevitably, I never seem to have enough of the flies that are working – so I want to avoid that situation this time around.
With that in mind, I find myself thinking about a small parachute style pattern that worked wonders last time. This fly is a small olive bodied parachute – it accounted for quite a few nice rainbows on the Yampa tailwater below Stagecoach Reservoir. The only problem was that most of these were not on the end of my line. The fly indeed fooled a bunch of fish – but more for my friend Larry, than for me. So I’ve named the fly The Traitor.
The Traitor is a fairly standard parachute fly. The major differentiating feature is the way that I form the body. The body is formed by twisting a strand of Uni-Stretch Floss into a “rope”. Dubbing a slim-body can be difficult on tiny flies – so I tried to find an alternative and came up with the idea of using the twisted Uni-Stretch body. In addition to allowing me to form a slim, smooth and tapered body, it makes for a nice segmented effect. As an alternative, you can achieve a similar effect with antron, instead of Uni-Stretch – but you’ll need to split the strand thickness in half for small flies.
I tie this style in sizes from 20 to 24. I’ve had luck with it primarily during hatches of tiny BWO’s and midges. Tie some up olive, gray and cream and you’ll have a good selection for tiny bugs that you might encounter. Below is an example of a Traitor Midge tied with a cream antron body and cream wing-post. Leave off the tails for the midge patterns.
Read the rest of the post for the recipe and illustrated step-by-step instructions.
Click here to read the rest… »
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