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.

There is no denying their effectiveness in catching trout, once you get the hang of fishing them, adjusting weights, depths and levels in the water column that you employ them, you can catch fish rather regularly. All of this can be accomplished in a few hours time if you are a good listener, have an open mind and are willing to put the time into developing this skill. And wholeheartedly, this one skill can be the catalyst in shortening the learning curve with fighting and landing trout; it no doubt was for me.

Despite not fishing nymphs nearly as much these days, I do however still enjoy tying the flies that fall into that class of patterns, and even still have some ideas kicking around in my head for future patterns I may play around with. One thing is certain, I am always open to tinkering with the many patterns that I already conjured up just for fun’s sake. The Quill Bodied Jig is a simple jig pattern that gained popularity at the beginning of the Euro nymphing craze that hit us late comers to the party over here in the U.S. It is a rather simple pattern that like many euro based nymphs just catches fish despite not looking like any specific food form (a characteristic of many of these types of flies).

In this tutorial I demonstrate a variation of the fly that adds another layer to the original pattern. Nothing groundbreaking or complex, just something fun to tie and fish. Spin a few up for yourself and go catch some trout, it’s been a long winter here and like myself, you are probably looking forward to longer days and warmer weather.

Streamlined, thin, with a vertical silhouette rather than a broad profiled water pushing fly. I knew at the onset it had to use craft fur as the primary material and it needed to be a bit less flashy as that was sort of the goal. Borrowing from some ideas of others, and well making it a bit different the Blade Runner was the end product.

I fish this fly mostly on an intermediate line, but you most certainly can fish it on an integrated sink or even a floating line if you’d like. For a smaller bait, it swims nicely, can be retrieved in ways that can make its swimming action erratic, and on the pause she comes alive due to the craft fur based recipe. So grab a beverage, nestle up to your vise and give this one a shot, you won’t be disappointed.

If you fish the Farmington River, you are familiar with the winter/summer caddis (Dolophilodes distinctus) that hatch nearly all year long.  There is a long history of regulars that used to dry fly fish the river almost daily as well.  This particular hatch emerges with adult males that are winged, and females that are wingless that skitter across the water to the edge to find a mate.  What they lack in size they must make up for in proliferation and taste as the trout never seem to pass these things up.  

For the last 25 years I have spent many a day fishing this hatch and trying to refine a pattern that was easier to see and as effective if not more than the original foam emerger.  What that fly made up for in its ability to fool fish it significantly lacked in visibility.  You simply cannot see it well which detracted from my willingness to fish it as I grew older and my vision wasn’t as good.  

The Farmington Special sits flush in the film, but the hi-viz parachute post rides high and really sticks out in the foam and film, and some days you can see the wakes of fish chase this one down.  Dead drift or twitched this one is hard to beat and you might find that your local tailwater has these as well.  On a wide gap Firehole 413 short shanked hook, I fish an 18 most of the time for reference.  

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. 

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.