Salmon Fly

I ordered some feathers from http://www.aaronmostojfeathers.com/ and they turned up about two days after ordering and they were an amazing quality, so I started on a fly that I had seen in a few books. Did make some changes to suit the material that I had and then I decided to tie it on a 4/0 hook, even though I had a 7/0 that the pattern requested. I really like how it turned out and plan on getting some more peacock eyes to set if I can make the 7/0 version.

 

The 2nd fly as promised

This took some time to actually get around to photographing. It is another freestyle fly to practice a few techniques and get ready for some real patterns once I get together all the material required.

Initially I did not have the throat, but since the mohair did not comb out as much as I wanted I added the throat to try and balance the fly. The topping on this fly was almost where I wanted it, but it seems to disappear at the head and that is something that I need to work on still with all my flies. The tippets in the tail seems to short and splay out. I can not wait to get the right size peacock herl as this looks really bad. Also, it would have looked better if the body had some tapper to it.

Freestyle - salmon fly

This is my latest fly off the vise. It is more of a practice for getting the wing to sit properly and trying out body types. I actually put the topping in boiling water this time to straighten out the stem so it would sit straight. I still have an issue with getting it to sit how I wanted it to. I am really happy with the fly and hope to have a photo of another fly I tied over the weekend up later this week. Also, I finally found a mono filament that makes a good gut substitute, also three is better than one.