Josh has not only raised the bar, he has set the standard, and I for one love that.  I am lucky enough to use his wares exclusively and my flies, which I take great pride in tying under the same principles are better because of it.  Like Charlie Craven says, “why tie shoddy flies, tie beautiful flies your proud to fish”.

Josh has a tremendous product with a few colors  that I feel have fallen under the radar a bit, so I am here today to help some of you get a better understanding of what types of flies other than the bigger hair bug streamers that this hair is extremely useful for.  The tying influencers online regularly miss the mark on the various uses of materials, well because most of them honestly don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about, or lack the experience to convey the many uses of said material.  I feel qualified in saying this as I tie flies just about every day of the year, with a 20 year average of 2,000 dozen flies a year, give or take.  I think you could say that I might have a little insight on the topic, but I won’t go any further on that, I will save that for a rather pointed future rant.   

Most folks think that a material might only have one or two uses based on a specific pattern they have seen tied before or read about.  But truthfully, the beauty of many if not all materials is they possess many uses, the only caveat being is the person seated at the vise needs to explore them with their imagination and creativity.   

At first glance, one might easily deduce that this hair has one use, and that is for tying spun or stacked deer hair streamers.  But the discerning tyer recognizes that is just one of it’s uses, as it truly is a great choice for down wing dry flies like caddis and stones, despite being substantially longer than what you would traditionally need.  But if you dive even further, you will soon realize that this hair is also a great substitute for comparadun or upright wing flies as well.  Add in that it is lovely for smaller muddlers and oh yes, medium to larger sized extended body dry flies and you now have a handful of alternative options with just one hair.  

As you can see, the hair itself is very straight, uniformly dyed and extremely soft, an attribute consistent with every patch Josh stamps with his logo of approval.  For the tyer, this makes it very enjoyable to work with.  Extended bodies, and hair bodies for most dry flies can be made with ease as the hair is not coarse, brittle and oversized.  There is nothing worse than trying to perform finer work with deer hair and having to fight it every step of the process.  Hair bodied dries take practice, but they are increasingly more difficult when the hair you have possesses  the aforementioned attributes.  Curved hair is equally as difficult to work with, and if its is coarse and brittle which is usually the result of either being over bleaching, tanning, dyeing or all of the above, well it becomes an exercise in futility.  

Aside from those very important qualities, Varner offers this hair in a plethora of colors,  nineteen (19) to be exact.   So there is a very good chance you can not only cover many of your favorite streamer color combos, but you will also have all of your bug options covered.  For some clarity, here are the colors he offers in 3×4 patches of this hair:  Ash, black, bleached, blonde, brown, charcoal gray, cinnamon, copper, dark olive drab, ginger bleach, golden olive, gray, natural, olive, pearl gray, rust, sculpin olive, tan, and yellow.  A couple of my absolute favorites are ash, cinnamon, and dark olive drab but honestly you could use natural exclusively and cover a ton of bases alone.

Charcoal gray sounds like a rather obscure color to many, but if you enjoy fishing the Slate Drake hatch (Isonychia) which comes about early to mid summer and again in early fall, well you can understand the importance of this color.  You can literally use this color hair for the body, wing or both on any style of “Iso” imitation and have a solid fish catching machine in your fly box when these rather large bugs are about (size 14-8).  For our June Newsletter, I will highlight a couple of patterns that I prefer to fish whenever those bugs are around, using this color of hair, I promise.  

As the pictures clearly articulate,  Varners Big Bug Deer Hair ties wonderfully elegant comparaduns, downswings like caddis and stimulators, extended bodied mayflies, and of course various styles of muddler;  I personally love it for my Foxy Muddler pattern which I intend on updating with some new colors courtesy of this hair.  Mid season grade hair is a prime candidate for all of the above but truly shines for your bigger bug imitations in my honest opinion.  And you might even find that some of your smaller denier threads will flair and spin this hair with ease.    

Despite being offered in two grades, (#1 and #2) I can say with a great degree of certainty even the #2 grade hair is light years above any hair you will find from any and all of the established companies who offer tying materials today.  Simply put, this is the best hair on the market and as I always convey whenever purchasing natural materials; take the time to search out the best you can find and spend your hard earned money on it, you will never be disappointed.  

This month I will demonstrate how to tie an extended body Hendrickson pattern using some of this hair and CDC fibers.  There are so many options in how you construct an extended body mayfly, and they are all great in my opinion.  Extended bodies are an acquired skill that take practice, which is the only way that you can get better at anything.  If you want to take a deep dive into these style of flies, two outstanding tyers and teachers offer up a rather large list of flies for you to learn.  Barry Ord Clarke, and Davy McPhail would be the two folks whom I would steer you towards in shortening that learning curve.  If you haven’t yet subscribed or bookmarked their Youtube channels, I suggest doing so as they will both make you a better tyer.  

Most folks are content tying and fishing standard straight hook imitations for the Hendrickson hatch, myself included.  But sometimes having something a bit different can save the day on pressured or finicky trout.  An extended body pattern although a little more involved can often be the trick and even though I would say this size is about as small as I like to tie extended body flies, it can prove to be worthwhile.  Most importantly, you will learn another set of skills that you can add to your tying library.  And this particular set of skills is one that works well if you take part in fishing the biggest bugs of the season; brown, green or golden drakes.  Won’t be long now, and these bugs will be on the water.

But, craft fur also has some nuance when tying with it that can be frustrating to the tyer if you aren’t familiar with it.  Some brands can be rather slippery and easily fall off the hook when tied in place.  Because it is light and soft, it can also foul very easily if steps aren’t taken to support it, and can collapse rather easily, which if you are trying to build a larger profiled fly will require some resourceful engineering into the pattern.  

Not all Craft Fur is created equally either.  I use Craft Fur from 3 major sources, and as you can see from the picture they have their pro’s and con’s.  Hareline Extra Select Craft Fur has the widest range of colors and is relatively easy to locate.  It is a good quality fur, but although it comes in the most range of colors you get the least amount of material per package and sometimes ends up having the shortest fibers.    Semperfli has a pretty wide array of colors to choose from including the most barred options minus a couple colors.  They provide you the second most amount of material per package and is rather long and consistent.  Fulling Mill hands down has the superior product in this category.  Not only is it the longest and fullest but they give you the most in a package.  Fulling Mill’s however does seem to have the most underfur which often gets discarded, and they offer the least number of color variations.   But, if they have what you need for a color, then I would spend the money and purchase their craft fur every time as it is in my opinion the best. 

In this month’s tying tips installment, I will go over not one, but two tips you can implement to decrease or eliminate the likelihood of either of the highlighted problems craft fur can provide. 

In one of his recent videos, he tied a classic Mickey Finn streamer, and it brought back memories of my youth.  I will forever love those classic bucktail streamers of yesteryear, and especially those “optics” that my dad always referred to as a kid.  They required a little practice to become adept at the skills needed to construct them properly, but once you got the hang of it, they were rather simple in nature and highly effective.  And, you acquired a new tying skill that was a foundation for more to follow.  There is just something about those less complex designs that makes those flies “hit” a little differently.  

Despite there being literally dozens if not hundreds of classic recipes, I have a fun one today to share that also hits a little differently.  The 3-B Bucktail is short for a blended bucktail brown. This is a fly I came up with when I was a bit younger, ok several years younger. I devised it to combat my inability to properly dress the wings on classics like the Black Nosed Dace or Mickey Finn.  Once I got the hang of it, I eventually moved on to those classics with a bit less trepidation.  Today, I tie them a hell of a lot cleaner than I did in my teens so I spruced this guy up a bit and am sharing the recipe with you all today.

Traditional bucktails are of the variety of just one solid color of bucktail or a series of colors distinctly separated and tied in succession.  I like dimension and varied colors in my flies, and the 3-B is one that fit’s the bill.  But don’t immediately dismiss the concept as a workaround from sound technique, it uses the same skills needed in preparing the wing of a Mickey Finn, just with a little more forgiveness.  And that forgiveness is a great way to start out with if you have never tackled tying bucktail in this manner.  Once you get the hang of it, then I suggest moving on to those 2 or 3 toned patterns and keeping those colors distinctly separate from one another.  In the meantime, tie some of these up as you follow along in the video and you will not only have learned something new, you will have a great little fish catcher to add to your fly box.  

Today I want to highlight the funnel wing technique of tying with CDC.  This technique eliminates the often rather bulky stem of the feather from the equation, and affords the tyer the use of only the most important piece of the feather, the barbs.  When tying your wings in this manner, you significantly decrease any unnecessary bulk, making an already light pattern even lighter and much more of a finesse imitation.

In order to do this properly you will need a few of things.  The first being a pair of closely matched CDC feathers, both in size and good quality.  Try and choose a pair that have an abundance of longer fibers, with minimal to none that are broken.  If the CDC you have is rather sparse, you can always add a third or fourth feather to the stack as we are going to remove the stem.  

The second part is a tool that will allow you to grasp the fibers uniformly so that you can trim away the stem.  For this you can spend a significant chunk of your play money on a Swiss CDC Clamp, plastic material clips or whatever other new gadget the industry has in the pipeline.  The former will run you anywhere from $45-$55 depending on where you purchase and the latter about half that, but you will get several as opposed to one.  Or, if you are a bit thrifty, you can purchase a multipack (https://a.co/d/7OAY87d) of various sizes for under $15.  You will not only have more than you will ever need, but you can use them for a variety of other things in the house like chip bags, bagged baking ingredients or paperwork.  Just be sure to get the ones that have straight edges without any indentations or other varied surfaces as they will not work as well.  A selection of sizes will come in handy for a variety of other materials as well, and if the spring wears out, simply toss it in the trash.  

The last tool which I say is optional, and others would say clearly is a necessity is a folding block or material table.  Same situation here, you can purchase one or many of these for as little as $10 all the way north of a $100 as some are discontinued and hard to find.  Or, get yourself a sheet of block foam, cut it into a triangle and run a slit through it at 1/2 inch or 1 inch intervals.  There are a litany of foams to choose from, in a pinch you could adhere a couple sheets of 6mm foam together and cut it to size after for under $10.  Feel free to get creative but don’t think for a second you need to spend a ton of money on some crazy tool to accomplish the task, it simply isn’t necessary.  What this tool brings in is the ability to fold your fibers over onto themselves, and remove the stem with double the amount of fibers going into the winging process.  I say optional, because you can accomplish the same task without it merely add double the amount of feathers for more fibers, and perform the task twice, or in this case use a block and grab them all in one shot.  You pick what you like.

Two very key proportions come into play when tying dry flies, the length of the tail and the hackle size.  Tails are generally equal to the hook length and hackles are 1-1/2 times the length of the hook gap in most instances.  This takes into account if you are wrapping your hackles in a traditional manner.  

In many instances, especially when fishing to selective trout on flat water, the hackles are often trimmed  on the bottom of the fly to let the fly ride flush in the surface film.  But in situations where you are fishing faster, broken water a collar or palmer hackled fly will float better.  In those cases the general hackle standards are of greater importance.   

One very important detail in choosing the correct hackle is figuring into the equation the additional length the hackle will gain when wound on the hook as a result of the body material it will be wound through or on top of.  The thicker the body of the fly, the longer your hackle barbs will protrude, and thus can play a role in how your proportions end up.  This is a very overlooked byproduct when selecting hackles.  That is why if you look at many of the classic Catskill style collared patterns, most of the hackles are wound over a portion of the hook that is only covered by thread.

In the case of many of the palmer hackled patterns like an Elk Hair Caddis for example, the hackle size chosen is typically the same length of the hook gap with the body of the fly taken into consideration, or slightly shorter.  How the hackle is tied in can aid in taper or uniformity throughout the body of the fly, which could be several topics in succession.  (Maybe this will start a series on hackling, I will wait to hear from some of you on that).

Over time, many tyers have adopted the idea of reverse hackling their patterns for a couple of good reasons.  One it improves durability of the pattern as you counter wind wire through the hackle to ensure that it won’t come unwound as easily.  But most importantly, it allows the tyer to add the hackle in at the end of the tying sequence near the hook eye.  If the hackle were to break at all in the winding process, you can simply attach a new one and start wrapping as opposed to cutting the entirety of the fly off and starting over from scratch. 

Hackle preparation is rather elementary and can be done in a number of ways.  In todays world, we are spoiled.  The consumer can now purchase preselected prime feathers by companies like Whiting that are sized to tie a specific hook.  Whiting 100’s are a great resource for the casual tyer and commercial guy/gal as well, I use them every season.  But I also sort feathers from full capes and saddles equally as often so it pays to understand the process.  

Get yourself a post hackle gauge and with your saddle or cape in hand start sizing some feathers.  Once you find the sizes you need, pluck them from the saddle or cape and set them aside. When tying the hackle in by the stem, you want to strip away the barbs below the mounting point.  Historically, this was done to remove those fibers that have web to them and are not ideal for dry flies.  Today, we are spoiled with many of the genetically engineered hackles available that literally have none.  Not all are like this, so it still helps in the long run to take a look at the feathers you will be using and remove the unwanted barbs.

Once you have chosen your feathers and removed the unwanted barbs, you then want to prep the tie in point.  You can do so one of two ways. the first being to strip a few barbs from the side of the hackle that will come in contact with the hook when wound, or simply trim the barbs close to the stem.  Either method is done to ensure that the first turn of hackle doesn’t splay the barbs out and keeps the hackle perpendicular to the hook.  

The only caveat with the former method of stripping barbs from one side is the tyer must pull the barbs from the correct side of the hackle.  This decision is made based on the recipe; either shiny side facing forward or rearward when wrapped.  The easiest way is the trimmed method which is used most often today.

Now, to further send home the concept, watch the BT Candy tying video as it clearly demonstrates the method. This pattern is a great attractor fly for small stream fishing, and one I never leave home without. It is an homage pattern to Fran Betters, and his Ausable Bomber, tied in the same manner with a few substitutions to create a darker bodied fly.

I don’t think a lot of the patterns within including the style of the one I will demonstrate today gained much steam as it goes against the norm for hook design.  As you will see, the key to the cripple is the side bend in the hook to imitate the natural curve of the insect as it lies on the waters surface.  Will a fish still eat the fly without the bent hook?  Sure, and I have tied them both ways; bent and unbent.  But, they look a bit more interesting and natural with that bend, so why wouldn’t you do it?  It has no negative impact on your ability to set the hook either.  

So why the Brown Drake? A recent DIY fishing trip to Canada my buddy John and I hit the hatch and spinner fall about as perfectly as you could hope for, and this particular pattern was one of those that worked best. As I say in the video, I tie them with both tails and with shucks, so spin a few in both styles and have some fun.

Some advice fishing the cripple, a little twitch now and then will illicit a strike.  Just do so softly and ahead of your target as if you run the twitch like a proper stonefly it might very well get refused.