What's New

New Partnership — by Shawn Davis — posted on Feb 28, 2010 08:30 PM — 0 comment(s)

I am happy to announce that I have begun a new partnership with a gifted woodturner named Booker Brooks.  Booker is President of the State College Woodturners Guild.  I look forward to his artistry and skill taking my displays to another level.  As I am able, I will begin adding examples of his work to a new section of the site specifically devoted to displays.

Booker has the same passion for turning wood that I have for tying flies.  As I do, he loves beautiful things and values good craftsmanship.  In the short time I've known him, he's already expanded my perceptions of what is possible with my displays, and both of us are eager to see how far we can push those possibilities. 

Pictured at right is a red mallee burl just the right size to make a base for one of my flies.  The resemblance of some of Booker's burls to corals or streambeds is as beautiful as it is uncanny.  I can hardly wait to begin having my flies displayed on such exquisite pieces of wood.

Click here to see the range of display possibilities I'm now offering.

 

Fly Fishing Show (2010) — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jan 25, 2010 07:30 PM — 0 comment(s)

I again displayed my work at the Fly Fishing Show in Somerset, NJ.  For the first time, I demonstrated flytying instead of hookmaking.  I tied a Gray Ghost and a Fire fly.  I tied both flies in hand (without a vise), an interesting spectacle for many showgoers who had never seen this classic technique demonstrated.  My good friend Jens Pilgaard, a great tier of both classics and artistics, was particularly happy to see me tying in hand, because he was the first person I ever watched tie in hand.  While there are obvious added difficulties when tying in hand, there are subtle advantages as well that often escape notice and should not be ignored.  The tier has a better connection to the fly, for instance, and is able to move it in ways a vise cannot.  Also, the tier may quickly alternate between tying with the left hand and the right hand; the vise is not in the way.  This charming technique, seen by so many as a great handicap, is one I am finding I quite enjoy, and I may well begin to do much more of my tying this way.

 

The John Silver — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jan 03, 2010 05:30 PM — 0 comment(s)

Wire-bodied flies have been in use for quite some time.  I was first exposed to them during a trip to Colorado in 2002 when we routinely fished the Copper John with great success.  The fly never fished well for me, however, upon my return east, so I set out to make some improvements.  First, I wanted to make them smaller and more subtle, so the biot tails went and I used instead the much finer wood duck flank fibers, not just for the tails but for the wing case and legs as well.  Second, I wanted to place the bead where I thought it belonged, at the thorax rather than the head.  This meant the peacock herl also had to go.  Third, I wanted the wire to be less obvious, so I substituted the thinnest wire I could (34-gauge) for the standard, thicker wire often used for the Copper John.  Finally, I took the copper out of it.

The Copper John comes in darker and lighter shades, but essentially it's still orangish-brown.  So I used silver wire and a silver bead, and the John Silver was born.  Why silver?  Well, one day I was marveling at the coloration of trout, how their reflective sides make them practically invisible on the stream bed.  Being flashy is a pretty non-intuitive but extremely effective way of camouflaging oneself.  Rather than simply having scales the color of the stream bed, trout reflect the colors around them and thus blend into any stream environment, be it brown or tan or olive or whatever.  I reasoned that a reflective fly would do the same, cause it to blend in with any environment and thus look natural and dynamic in all situations.  Nymphs blend in with a different trick, by being translucent.  But reflectivity and translucency accomplish a very similar visual effect if you think about it.  Or at least that's the way I thought about it.

Even though I liked my new fly, I confess that it sat in my flybox unused for over a year while more proven patterns graced my tippet.  But during an early Baetis hatch the spring of 2004, I found the catching going slowly and the fish finicky.  Sadly, these are the conditions under which most new patterns get baptized, that is, when nothing else is working.  I put on the John Silver in tandem with the old standby, a Pheasant Tail nymph.  It was a memorable competition between the two, with 4 fish coming to hand by way of the Pheasant Tail... and 16 by way of the John Silver.  In years since, the John Silver and its younger sibling, the Gold Rush, have become the two best producers in my flybox.

 

The Gold Rush — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jan 02, 2010 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

The Gold Rush came as a natural extension of the John Silver.  While the Silver was quite productive, I wanted a fly to mimic the heavily mottled, translucent tan color of Baetis nymphs such as this one.  So in the summer of 2004 I made a version with a gold bead and gold wire and the yellowest natural wood duck flank I could find.  That version was tied up just in time for a week-long fishing trip with my brothers on some Central Pennsylvania streams.  The weather was hot, the hatches were sparse, and the insects were small.  The Golds I'd tied up were Size 20 and looked really good to me, but I hadn't tried them on actual fish yet.  It became quickly apparent that the fish were amenable to the fly, and it made what would have been just an ordinary week of fishing extraordinary.  The Gold Rush outfished every terrestrial, nymph, and dry we tried combined.  Each day I'd have to spend a few hours at the vise cranking out more if we were to be kept in flies for the next outing.  In years since, I've found it most effective on hot summer evenings, but I tie on in almost any circumstance with great confidence.  In fact, when my Spanish friend Andres Touceda asked me to submit one fly for an article he was penning called, "The Infallible Fly," it was the Gold Rush I chose as my entry.  And while it is not infallible (if only there were a fly that was!), I always expect to catch fish when I tie it on.

 

International Flytying Symposium (2009) — by Shawn Davis — posted on Nov 22, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I was once again invited to present my work at the International Fly Tying Symposium.  There I saw many who have become friends since last year and met many new people as well.  I had a really nice time interacting with both showgoers and presenters.  I became increasingly amazed at how gracious and generous people are, whether old acquaintances or total strangers.  In just the few shows I have attended, people have given me gold, flies, feathers, and more - anything they value and think I would appreciate, and I truly do.  At first, I wasn't sure what I would do with all these gifts.  I certainly plan to use the materials I'm given when the right project comes along (some of the feathers I've received are simply spectacular), but the flies I have decided I will not fish.  Instead, I'm going to begin a collection of them, recording the names of the tiers with the flies as I archive them.  I hope that in time this collection will become a special way to remember the many generous tiers I've met over the years.

 

Shad Fly Update — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jul 24, 2009 01:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

My brother reports that he has now tried every shad fly pattern I tied for him and has caught fish on each.  Most exciting for me was his catching fish on the Kingfisher Shad, which was the most innovative pattern I sent him.  Though he has still not fished them enough to make a definitive statement as to their effectiveness, to this point the flies have been outfishing the standard spinning fare by about 4-to-1.

 

Fishing the Shad Flies — by Shawn Davis — posted on May 16, 2009 01:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

My brother Brian called to tell me he'd had his first chance to fish the shad flies I tied him - he'd gone bass fishing that morning with two other people.  All three started with spinning rods and molded plastic lures and caught a few fish.  Then the wind died down and with it the action.  Brian decided it was a good time to pull out his fly rod.  He tied on the first version of the Zonker Shad pictured above.  He cast it to a few boiling bass that had been ignoring the plastic lures, and caught both of them on the first cast.  In the next few minutes he got into three more fish, landing two of them and losing the biggest of them.  Like a true champion, he blamed the one that got away on the barbless hook.  After the last of those fish, he inspected the fly and found that the tinsel had begun to bunch up at the rear of the hook.  The marabou belly, however (much to my surprise), was still intact after having been in the mouths of five fish.  He decided to switch flies, tied on the second Zonker Shad version pictured above, and promptly got into a very large bass.  This one took about 15 minutes to land, the barbless hook miraculously holding up to a half-dozen dramatic leaps from the water - a really satisfying fight on a 5-weight rod.  The fish was a good 20 inches and 4-5 lbs (my brother of course conveniently forgot to take a picture to verify this whopper).  By the time he landed this fish, the threat of an approaching storm brought the outing to an abrupt end.  But from the time he picked up the fly rod, Bri was the only person to catch a fish.

Now, whether the success of the flies was a result of a fine piece of tying on my part, showing the fish something different after a prolonged period of constant pressure from a familiar lure, or just plain luck, it is regardless quite satisfying to hear of flies convincingly outperforming spinning lures in a warmwater situation.  Most importantly, my brother has now discovered a form of flyfishing that has him eager to do it again and perhaps even tie his own flies for it.

Shad Flies — by Shawn Davis — posted on Apr 11, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

My brother Brian called me from Texas.  He had begun doing some spinning for bass during the shad spawn.  He told me they were using molded plastic shad lures and had had good success on them, but he was itching to do some flyfishing and asked me to develop a few shad flies for him.  After speaking with him for a while about shad size, color, and behavior, and doing a bit of research on the web, I went to work on a pattern.

Zonker strips, marabou, and krystal flash were the most obvious materials to start with, so I first created a fly with those materials tied in at the rear and head and created a belly in the marabou/krystal flash body to give the fly some girth and transparency, which I was hoping would give it the illusion of translucence.  My brother said that the shad liked to swim right along the lake bottom, so I tied the fly with large bead eyes.  I then added a twist I'd thought of quite some time ago but had not yet incorporated into a fly: At the rear of the hook, instead of tying the zonker strip on the top of the shank and the marabou at the bottom, I tied both in on the side of the shank (the same side).  The idea was to create a fly with a tail which would kink to one side and cause the fly to twitch erratically when stripped through the water.  Finally, I noticed that the shad in the photos I'd seen had heavily forked tails, so at the rear of the shank I tied in a second, short zonker strip off the bottom of the fly (again, kinked to one side) to form the second prong on the tail and enhance the twitching effect I was hoping for.  When I tested the fly in the bathtub, I liked the overall appearance, but it didn't twitch when stripped as much as I would have liked.  I suspected that the fly might twitch more if it weren't so heavily weighted, so I tied an unweighted version next (not pictured).  The unweighted version did twitch more, but since the fly had to be fished along the bottom, I decided to retain the bead eyes on future versions.

The next version was tied for increased durability and weedlessness.  First, I tied the bead eyes on the top of the hook (over a few layers of lead) to cause the fly to ride hookpoint-up.  Second, when binding the zonker strip, I ribbed over it with heavy silver wire (this was an unnecessary nuisance - the ribbing separated the hairs in the strip enough that the fly didn't look quite right in the bathtub).  Third, before tying off the marabou/krystal flash at the head of the fly, I twisted it into a noodle (I used a whole marabou feather, rachis and all, rather than individual fibers, for durability).

To this point, none of the flies I'd tied were particularly original, so I decided to make one with a little more flair.  I wanted to make a fly with the same powerful lateral lines that many fish have.  I was also still stubbornly trying to get these flies to twitch from side to side in spite of their weight, so I thought I'd use a stiff feather with striking lines and tie it in in roughly a Matuka style.  So I selected two matching primary wing feathers from a Madagascar Kingfisher.  I again tied the fly hookpoint up, then tied the Kingfisher feathers in as I had the zonker strips in the previous flies, with both feathers coming off the same side of the shank at the rear of the hook before enveloping the shank on either side as they progressed toward the head.  The body was again a twisted marabou/krystal flash noodle.  When I was finished, I loved the way the Kingfisher Shad looked and was eager to find out how the fish would respond to it.

 

Deer Bone Hook — by Shawn Davis — posted on Mar 11, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

Part of the One-Animal Challenge

For my first fly made entirely from the remains of a single animal, I chose the deer as my subject (the reasons will be clearer when I report on the finished fly).  The first task was to make a hook from the deer.  I had in mind at first to use antler, so I secured an old rack from my father, a prolific bow hunter.  As I was inspecting the rack, though, what I was most struck by was a little hole in the skull a few inches from where the antlers attached, above the eye socket.  I'm not familiar enough with deer anatomy to know what the hole is for (some kind of sinus or gland passageway, I presume), but it looked precisely the right shape to me to become the gape on a size-12 hook.  I imagined that bone is like wood, stronger with the grain than across it, so finding a section of bone in which it naturally encircles a hole made me wonder if the grain would follow the curvature of the hook I intended to make out of the bone, resulting in a hook that would have more integrity than one simply carved from an area of bone chosen at random.

Using a hacksaw, I liberated the section of skull around the hole and began filing away.  A few hours later, the hook was complete.  I notched the shank so the leader would not pull out once it was tied in.  I was very pleased with both the strength of the hook and the style I was able to endow it with.  It has a rather heavy profile because I wanted it to have enough strength in the direction it would be stressed when playing a fish, but it is rather narrow seen from the top of the shank, almost like a cat's claw.  Also, the hookpoint is slightly offset to allow for better hooking.  It ended up being about a size-8 because of the girth of the material.  I think it has a strong, natural beauty, like ivory.  The one thing I'm not so confident in is its sharpness.  Time will tell if it will actually hook a fish.  I left the hookpoint long enough that it could be sharpened after use without losing too much of the point.

 

Fishing the Realistic Stone — by Shawn Davis — posted on Mar 10, 2009 11:00 PM — 0 comment(s)

I awoke the morning after tying my first realistic stones eager to try them out on fish.  I was a bit shocked to find that the weather had completely changed.  Instead of rainy with temperatures in the 30s, it was a bright, sunny day and about 60 degrees out.  A little disappointed that it was not exactly prime nymphing weather, I nevertheless headed back out to the stream I'd fished the day before.  When I got to the stream, I did a little natural seining, catching almost nothing.  There was almost no insect activity of any kind.  No matter - I was thoroughly convinced that I would catch every fish that saw one of my new flies.

The first cast I made into a marginal run - nothing.  I was shocked.  Second cast - again, nothing.  Third cast, nothing.  Then I turned to a more promising pocket behind a large rock - nothing.  So I moved on to the best part of the run - nothing.  Shock turned to distress.  As I fished that run and the next without a strike, cruel reality began sinking in, as it inevitably does whenever a flyfisherman thinks he's finally invented the silver bullet.  Truth is, there is no silver bullet in flyfishing, and this was not the stone's day.  Two hours of fishing, two strikes, two lost fish.  In the end, though, it was a bright, sunny, 60-degree day I'd spent walking a beautiful stream and having my pride broken - could have been worse.

 

Tying a Realistic Stone — by Shawn Davis — posted on Mar 10, 2009 01:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

Now, I've never been one for hyper-realistic fishing flies, though I admire those who do that kind of tying.  But with a fly as large as the stoneflies I was intending to tie, an impressionistic pattern looks embarrassingly unrealistic, and, besides, I wanted to challenge myself.

Rather than copy someone else's stone, however, I used a combination of techniques and materials from various sources, mixed with a little of my own intuition.  The crimped mono tails and antennae are, as far as I know, the invention of Lloyd Gonzales, and I used a variation on his technique for creating an articulated stone that rides hookpoint up.  The legs are peacock wing fibers treated with Flexament and then twisted and kinked to shape, with the butts being used for the wingcases.  The only part of the fly I can really take credit for having developed myself is the segmenting on the abdomen, which involves a simple weave of copper and gold wire.  This technique allows separate colors of wire to be displayed on the top and bottom of the abdomen.  It also causes a slight widening and flattening of the abdomen and a very natural texture on the sides of the abdomen that represents gills quite well.  This simple wire weave is a technique I plan on using on mayfly nymphs at some point as well.  It's hard to tell from the photographs, but these flies are huge, about 2 inches from the tip of the antennae to the tip of the tails.

Overall, I was extremely pleased with how these flies turned out.  My past attempts at big stones always had really spindly bodies and legs and never had the necessary girth, but these turned out well proportioned to my eyes.  They were very time-consuming but quite enjoyable to tie.  Most importantly, I felt that thrill that every flytier craves, when he looks at a new fly he's just finished and can't wait to get out on the stream to test it on fish.  That's pretty special, ranking under only that thrill that comes when the fly actually does catch a fish.

 

The Stonefly Project Begins — by Shawn Davis — posted on Mar 10, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I went fishing on a local stream that I don't usually fish because it's a bit of a drive to get there.  Being Spring Break, though, I had more time than usual and was able to make the trip.  It was cold and rainy, a beautiful day for nymphing.  I used a stream sampling technique I discovered last year which I call natural seining.  I caught a few size-18 mayfly nymphs, a size-26 midge larvae, and a midge adult or two, but nothing close to what I'd call a hatch.  So I fished various small nymphs for an hour or two without a strike.  Finally, fishing with a lot of weight in a slow, deep run, I caught a foot-long brown, only to find that I'd lassoed him around the head with my leader.  A little disappointed that it wasn't a fair catch, but encouraged that I was getting my flies to the fish, I released him from his harness.

Then I had a serendipitous moment: My very next cast, I snapped off my flies on an overhanging limb.  That may not seem very lucky, but in my unsuccessful attempt to retrieve my flies, I found two other flies.  Usually flies I find on the stream are rusted and the best I can do is salvage beads from them, but both these flies were freshly lost and fish-worthy.  One of them in particular caught my eye - a big stonefly nymph with a huge tungsten bead at its head.  Now, my home stream does not have stoneflies in any numbers, so tying and using them has been an afterthought for years.  But the stream I was fishing this day had both stoneflies and the type of fast and deep pocket-water and holes that lend themselves to big stonefly nymphs.  Having just lost my own flies and come to the realization that a lot of weight would be needed to get to the fish, I decided to give the stonefly nymph a shot.

The first new hole I came to, I jiggled it through some slow, deep water, and BAM - a foot-long brown hammered the fly.  After that confirmation, it was still a rather slow day of fishing, but that big nymph resulted in 3 fish brought to hand and one large fish lost due to a lazy hook-set.  And the pattern itself was pretty uninspiring - surely I could do better at the tying bench that evening.  So before I left the stream I did some brute-force seining, kicking over stones upstream of the seine, until I had a few nice stonefly specimens.  Then, it was off to the tying bench...

 

The Anglers' Club of New York — by Shawn Davis — posted on Feb 17, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I was invited, along with Bob Mead, to visit the Anglers' Club of New York for a special evening of tying.  It was exciting to be in a place with such a rich angling history, and I spent much of the evening getting guided tours of the Club's artifacts by enthusiastic members.  It was clear that Club members are just as passionate about excellence in flyfishing as I am.  Not only do they deeply appreciate the history of the craft, but many members are also great innovators themselves, making their own contributions to our sport's great history.  There were far too many great pieces to truly appreciate in one evening.

The tying demonstration went well.  Between Bob's realistics and my artistics, we had the extremes of the flytying continuum well represented.  A member tier, meanwhile, demonstrated practical tying, so the evening was not totally lost in whimsy.  It is always surprising to me which aspects of my tying appeal to people the most.  This evening, what members wanted to see more than anything else was how I make the signature inlay for the heads of my flies.  It was, in fact, the first time I'd demonstrated that technique for people, and they seemed impressed by it.

A truly memorable evening with a fine group of people.  I very much hope to visit the Club again.

 

Fly Fishing Show (2009) — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jan 25, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I presented my work at the Fly Fishing Show in Somerset, NJ, the largest such show in the world.  The show was well attended and I met too many fine people to name individually.  Some excellent tiers and craftsmen were displaying their work, and as usual I only wished I'd had more time to spend at each of their tables.

Visitors to my booth reacted enthusiastically to both my finished work and my hookmaking demonstration - a very encouraging response. 

I was also happy to have my wife Brenda with me at the show.  Too bad she was taking this photo and not sitting next to me for it - she was undoubtedly the highlight of my booth.

 

Masters Fly Collection — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jan 15, 2009 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

A donationI was honored to be asked by Tom Zacoi, curator of the Masters Fly Collection, to donate some of my original fishing flies to the Collection.  I donated five flies, three flies in the Curly style (a Green Curly Worm, a San Shawn Worm, and a Tan Curly Caddis) and two flies in the Wire-bodied style (a John Silver and a Gold Rush).

 

International Fly Tying Symposium (2008) — by Shawn Davis — posted on Nov 23, 2008 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I was honored to have been invited to the prestigious International Flytying Symposium, my first major show.  At the show, I met some of the most amazing flytiers the world has to offer, making many new friends along the way.  I was fortunate enough to be located next to Chris Del Plato and Lee Schechter, two extremely warm people and great tiers.  It was exciting to show Chris my newly tied Gray Ghost necklace pendant, displayed publicly for the first time, because he aided me immensely in my research of Carrie Stevens's patterns.  I also had the pleasure of meeting three gentlemen from Spain, Jorge Rodriguez Maderal, Andres Touceda, and Manuel Torrecillas.  All are excellent tiers (Jorge of artistics, Andres and Manuel of realistics).  They did things right, even bringing over some nice Spanish red wine for the show.  We had a good time both during the show and at the tiers' banquet.

This was the first time I'd done a hookmaking demonstration publicly, and showgoers seemed quite pleased with it.  I almost got an entire hook made at the show!  A number of people returned to my booth many times throughout the two days to check on my progress on the hook, allowing them to appreciate each phase in the process.  It was an immensely enjoyable show, and I received many gracious and encouraging comments about my work.

 

Natural Seining — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jun 20, 2008 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I use the term natural seining to mean seining without kicking stones around.  I simply stand in the current, hold the seine in one spot for about ten seconds, and then lift it out and see what I've caught.  Then I'll move to a different type of water and repeat.  In still water, I push the seine through the undisturbed water.  When I first tried this, I was amazed at how many bugs I could catch this way during a good time for hatches.

The advantages to this type of seining are many.  First, I only catch bugs that are actually in the current at the time I'll be fishing.  I also get some sense as to the relative frequency in the current of each type of bug.  If I keep the top of my seine just out of the water, I catch emergers, duns, and spinners in addition to nymphs.  I see bugs that are small enough that I might not have noticed their prolificness otherwise.  I catch the empty shucks of nymphs and larvae that have already hatched.  I get to inspect up close the subtle size and color variations in the insects the fish are seeing.  Best of all, it doesn't take long.  If there are hatching insects of consequence, I'll find out within two minutes.  Not only does that change my fly selection, but it also impacts which types of lies I will fish and how I will fish them.  So even if nothing much is going on, I'll still have gained valuable information as I tie on my standard rig and begin fishing.

This style of seining has changed the way I approach the stream and gives me great confidence when I tie on that first fly and make that first cast.  And every fisherman knows that self-confidence is a critical factor in catching fish, especially when that confidence is actually grounded in reality.

 

Clearwater Junction (2008) — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jun 07, 2008 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

I appeared at Clearwater Junction, a show put on by the Theodore Gordon Flyfishers, to raise money for stream restoration programs.  The show was located in Roscoe, NY, the cradle of North American flyfishing.  The event was sparsely attended but featured an amazing array of great tiers.  I had the pleasure of sitting between Mike Schmidt and Bill Chandler, both really good people and tiers.  I also met Ted Patlen, Steve Thornton, Chip Drozenski, and Roy Christie, to name just a few.  Up all the way from Louisiana was by far the most colorful personality at the show, Bud Guidry.  Bud is an especially gifted and prolific tier of salmon flies.  I had the pleasure of custom-making a hook for him, and wait with anticipation to see what he does with it.

The highlight of the show, though, was meeting Joan Wulff, who stopped by my booth for a few minutes without my recognizing her.  Feeling sheepish, I later had the opportunity to formally introduce myself to her, and I was in awe to be in the presence of such a flyfishing legend.  She was kind and gracious.  One of the few flyfishing books I've read is a collection of articles by her late husband, Lee Wulff, and it greatly influenced my perspective as a young flyfisherman.  Lee being a pioneer in catch-and-release flyfishing, it was fitting to meet his widow at a show devoted to improving the health of trout streams.  I was humbled to have met her, and honored to have been able to donate a photograph of one of my flies to be auctioned for the cause.  My grandfather and father grew up fishing in the Catskills as well, so by its end the show had become a personal pilgrimage of sorts for me.  I only wish I'd had time to do a little fishing while I was there.

 

Ithaca Fishing Day (2008) — by Shawn Davis — posted on Mar 08, 2008 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

This was my first flyfishing show, just a few months after I released my first flies to the public.  It was sponsored by the Leon Chandler Chapter of Trout Unlimited and held in the modest confines of the Boynton Middle School cafeteria in Ithaca, NY.  The show was quite small, and attendance was hampered by some horrendous Ithaca weather, but I had a personal reason to make it my first show: It was at Ithaca Fishing Day in 1996 that I tied my first fly.  One of the great aspects of the show is that they have a group of tables set up to encourage anyone and everyone to sit down and tie a fly.  Many gracious volunteers risk the well being of their precious tying tools and materials to make that opportunity available to complete neophytes.  To those volunteers I owe a great debt of gratitude, because it was there I sat, recently graduated from college, among a group of small children, and cobbled together my first olive Wooly Bugger.  So, when Chris Stull asked me to present my work at the 2008 show, I was happy to oblige.  Some of the most enjoyable and memorable visitors to my booth have been children, because they engage my work in a whole different way than adults do, asking questions and sharing emotions without inhibition.  I hope that my work will someday inspire some of those children to find the same satisfaction in flytying that I've found.

 

The One-Animal Challenge — by Shawn Davis — posted on Feb 12, 2008 04:30 PM — 0 comment(s)

The Peacock Only

A fellow on a web forum devoted to classic and artistic salmon flies challenged forum members to tie a fly made from the plumage of only a single bird.  The concessions were that the tier could use any hook, floss, and thread he wanted in addition to the one bird.  The idea was really a thematic one, but I took the challenge a few steps further. 

I decided that I would tie my fly without the use of any thread or floss.  That meant that the actual cordage used to tie the fly had to come from the bird as well.  I chose the peacock as my bird, and proceeded to tie a fly using stripped herl in lieu of tying thread.  The body was tied of sword fibers, the throat from fine herl, the wing from the tail and breast.  The most difficult part of the tying process was keeping the herl from unraveling, because it is quite slippery once stripped and I needed about 8 herls to finish the fly.  In the end, the fly was quite beautiful, sort of a mutant dobsonfly spey.  I named it the Peacock Only.

I was quite pleased with the fly, but not entirely satisfied.  After all, I had used a machine-made iron hook and had finished the head with tying cement.  I made it my goal from that point forward that I would someday tie a fly with only the materials from a single animal, hook and all.

 

The Curly Worm is Born — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jun 24, 2004 05:25 PM — 0 comment(s)

The Curly Worm began as a protest against two effective but aesthetically insulting patterns, the Green Weenie and the San Juan Worm.  Besides aesthetics, I saw two major problems in both of these classic patterns:  1) Real worms are not shaped like sticks, and 2) Real worms have a writhing action in the water.  I set out to fix these problems, and after a little experimenting I came up with the Curly Worm as an elegantly simple solution.

The Curly Worm is no more difficult to tie than the either of the other flies I've mentioned, and has a much more satisfying profile and action.  The fly is tied very similarly to the San Juan Worm, with two tie-in points and a bit a vernille tag extending from both the back and front.  But between the tie-in points, the vernille is spiraled freely around the hook shank, giving the fly the appearance of a corkscrew.

The corkscrew profile not only looks like a writhing worm but also gives the fly a writhing action as it tumbles through the current.  Fish this fly one time in a fluorescent chartreuse and you will instantly see how much better it behaves in the water than other worm and caddis-larva patterns.

The simplicity of this fly ought not to diminish it in the eyes of the fisherman, because its simplicity disguises a surprisingly natural three-dimensional profile and action.  Its simplicity, however, comes with a caveat: While tying the fly is not difficult, tying it correctly (see section below) is important to getting the desirable profile and action in the water.

For those tiers who like to make things more complicated than the fish need them to be (and I confess, I am often one of them), variations on the Curly Worm are easy to imagine, particularly for caddis larvae.  The simplest version of the Curly Caddis involves moving the tie-in point at the head back slightly, clipping off any tag end at the head, and then winding coarse dubbing or marabou around the hook to form the head.  I prefer to use marabou over dubbing because of its action, leaving the feather tips fairly long at the head to give the effect of long, crazy legs protruding from a fluffy head and thorax section.  If the tier prefers a more natural look, the legs may be tied shorter or simply omitted.

Other even more realistic variations are possible, and I will display some once they've been sufficiently fish-tested.  But there is beauty in the simplicity of this fly, and I still fish the simplest versions most.

 

Curly Worm - Tying Instructions — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jun 23, 2004 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

Materials:

Hook: Any hook sized 12-20 with a gape wide enough not to be fouled by the vernille loop.

Body: Vernille (sizes 12-16) or Micro-vernille (sizes 16-20) in colors chartreuse, tan, brown, wine, red, olive, black.

Thread: Tan (or another color that matches the color of the hook as closely as possible when wet).

 

Steps:

1) Wrap the entire hook shank tightly with thread.  Tie in the vernille on the near side of the shank at the bend of the hook with one solid wrap, leaving a tag protruding from the side at the rear of the fly.  Make a tight wrap just behind the tie-in point and another just in front of it.  Then wrap tightly and evenly up the shank to the head of the hook.

2) Spiral the vernille loosely around the shank 360 degrees.

3) Twist the vernille counter-clockwise before tying it in on the near side of the hook.  Twisting the vernille puts a springiness into the material which keeps it from collapsing backwards when fished.  It is also important not to incorporate too great a length of vernille into the spiraled section, or again it will collapse awkwardly when fished.

4) Tie numerous tight wraps just ahead of the front tie-in point and finish the fly.  Trim the tag protruding from the front of the hook to the correct length.

 

Curly Worm - Fishing Tips — by Shawn Davis — posted on Jun 22, 2004 12:00 AM — 0 comment(s)

The Curly Worm is best used to imitate terrestrials (such as inchworms and earthworms), aquatic worms, and caddisfly larvae.  It is, however, also an effective fly during mayfly hatches.  In fact, I’ve experienced hatches in which a plain Curly Worm in the correct color and size significantly outfished much more detailed mayfly imitations.  I also suspect that a small version could be effective during midge hatches, but I have not verified it.

I prefer to tie the fly unweighted, but I have done OK with beadhead versions as well.  If I need to get it down, I will instead place split shot 6 inches or more from the fly, allowing the unweighted fly to twist and tumble naturally in the current.  When fishing it in tandem with another fly, I always use the Curly fly as the trailing fly, because when tied in the middle of the leader the Worm loses much of its tumbling action in the water.  Finally, I attach this fly to my leader using the non-slip mono loop to allow the fly as much freedom of movement as possible.  This fly works best with the deadest drift you can achieve, allowing the current to give it life.  It is flyfishing's equivalent to a knuckleball.

When fishing during a caddis hatch, try trailing a Curly Worm or Curly Caddis a few feet behind a bouyant and easily visible caddis dry fly.  In this case the dry is essentially being used only as a strike indicator.  The major advantage of this rig is that the dry-fly indicator is much closer to the fly than would be possible with a more obnoxious indicator, allowing the fisherman to present to difficult lies using the requisite stealth.  This rig also allows the Curly fly to undulate up and down in the water column with the currents, imitating the actions of both emerging pupa and egg-laying adults.  This technique has proven especially effective for me when fishing midstream eddies at close range – the dry keeps the Curly fly swirling in the eddy for what seems like an eternity, all the while acting as a very sensitive indicator to strikes beneath.  This is the best method I’ve ever developed for fishing eddies subsurface.  There have been times when I have taken fish after fish out of a single eddy this way.  The same is true for deeper holes with unidirectional current.  For these, I place split shot on my leader above the fly to get it down to the fish, then cast above the deep section and let it drift down to the fish, rolling and tumbling on the streambed.  This technique is often deadly.

Finally, a brightly colored (chartreuse is my favorite) Curly Worm has tremendous educational value to the novice.  Even though the concept of nymphing is relatively simple, the technique usually takes an angler years to perfect.  I'm convinced that one of the primary reasons is that, unlike when he's fishing dries, the fisherman can't see what his fly is doing below the surface.  Without being able to see his fly, the fisherman must rely upon the fish to teach him which cast and mend produce a good drift and which produce a bad one; and since the fish respond to such a low percentage of casts, especially for the novice, it takes him years of trial and error to learn what his flies are really doing underwater.  But the chartreuse Curly Worm is so visible in the water that a novice can use it to rapidly sharpen his knowledge of his drifts.  He has only to watch the fly and see how it drifts; its bright color and three-dimensional profile will quickly tell him whether it is tumbling naturally and whether it is reaching the lies he is intending it to reach.  I have learned more about my drifts in one week of fishing the chartreuse Curly Worm than in a year of fishing nymphs I can't see, and that is no exaggeration.