Quill Gordon

What could be better to start up the blog of 2011 than with a true classic Catskill Style Dry fly. The "Quill Gordon" or "Gordon Quill" Theodore Gordons legacy. This is one of my absolute favourite flies to fish and tie, both offcourse equally important. Gordon tied this fly in different shades and sometimes with a gold wire to get a bronze shade to the body.

A couple of weeks ago I got a copy og John McDonalds "The Complete Fly Fisherman". In this very heavy volume of flyfishing history I found loads of intresting stuff to read. It´s easy to get kind of afraid of the book at first sight as it is loades of pages and small letters. But I assure you, it is great and full of nice small talks and letters.

Here is what  Gordon wrote to G.E.M Skues on May 7, 1906
"I would like to have you try the following. Body plain quill, peacock, light color, hackles and tail, light blue hackle, wings wood-duck plain, mottled from a good sized finely mottled feather, using double for each side of the stem. I usually varnish the foundation to strenghten the quill. It is a light blue quill with wood-duck wings, and I will gamble on it killing, if dressed to suit the water..."

As well as I love to tie the classics by original recepie, I also sometimes love to play a little and do some changes to them. One idea I have had for a while is to put a boddyhackle on this lovely pattern. With a body hackle I believe this fly will work even better in rough water. I didn´t wan´t it to bushy though so I stripped one side of the feather before wrapping the bodyhackle. I didn´t want to strenghten the hackle with wire or thread either because I wanted as much of the quill possible still visible, so I gave the quillbody a small amount of clear superglue before wrapping the bodyhackle.

I´m really looking forward to try this one on Trout and Grayling hiding in the rough water. Will do my best to try and remember to tell you how it worked.

Red Quill -Wet

This fly is one of the really old ones, it is said to be on of four flies used by Lord Edward Grey. The fly is a creation from the wise of Thomas Rushworth who tied it for the first time in 1803. Later it was also tied as a dryfly, one of F.M. Hallford´s favourite flies. The dry fly is also represented here on my blog.

It is fished as an imitation of the Blue winged olive spinner but with it´s reddish-brown body it also represents several other spinners. It can be an invaluable fly on a river when the trout is bulging, feeding on nymphs. Though it looks more like a spinner it can also be very effective during a hatch of duns.

I tied this batch for a Wet fly swap on http://www.sparsgreymatter.com/. So these will be sent any day over the pond to one of my favourite tiers Jim Slattery, and shared to guys like Andy Brasko. Hard to get more competent feedback possibility than that. Hrm, got a little nervous there..

Tail: Reddish-brown hen fibers
Body: Stripped peacock quill dyed reddish-brown
Wing: Starling wing
Collar: Reddish-brown hen hackle

Winter nights

You relly need to talk your self into some positive thinking on days like this. The snow that we got last week now melting away and leaving a mess. Well a good thing is that it´s easy to talk yourself inte sitting down at the vise, reflecting over the past season and making plans for next. I just love sitting by the vise dreaming away. At Bffi  I got something to dream about, I got a really sweet offer making some DVD´s with Roland at http://www.sporting-scene.com/ so now I´m kind sitting and making plans for that, very exciting.

Made this little bug tonight for a Swap i´m attending. I call it a "Lazy Man´s Black Gnat"

I will leave you with some words from one of my heroes Theodore Gordon:

" It is a bitter winter´s night and I am far away from the cheerful lights of town or city. The north wind is shrieking and tearing at this lonely house, like some evil demon wishful to carry it away bodily or shatter it completely. The icy breath of this demon penetrates through every chink and crevice, of which there appear to be many, and the wood-burning stove is my only companion. It is on nights such as these, after the turn of the year, that our thoughts stray away from the present to other scenes and very different seasons. We return in spirit to the time of leaf and blossom, when birds were singing merrily and trout were rising in the pools. We remember many days of glorious sport and keen enjoyment, and then somehow our thoughts take a turn and leap forward. Spring is near, quite near, and it will soon be time to go a-fishing. We want to talk about it dreadfully. O for a brother crank of the flyfishing fraternity, one who would be ready to listen occasionally and not insist upon doing all the talking, telling all the stories himself. But if we cannot talk we can write, and it is just possible that some dear brother angler will read what we say upon paper".

Catskill dry... almost

Felt like I wanted to try to make a nice dry fly with a classic Catskill look but made for a neater presentation, also wanted  a body that gave the apperance of a segmented body.

The wing is made of Hooded Manganser flank that I found at Joe and his Dette Trout flies, similar to Woodduck but darker. For the tail I choose Coq de leon barbs, great for tails long, stiff and nicelly multicoloured. The effect on the body was created by using two stripped hacklestems of different colour, one rhode island red and the other from a really dark rooster neck. After wounding these two stems I coated the body with superglue to get a nice shiny and durable body. Before tying in the hackle I tie in a Turkey biot, the hackle is Dun Whiting saddle.

After wounding the hackle I started on the getting the neater presentation on the fly. I start to force the hackle underneath of the fly to a V-shape, I do cut off some barbs sother won´t be to many barbs on the sides. When satisfied with the V-shape I fold the Turkey biot over to help the V-shape to stay in place. This will now make the fly to lie much neater on the watersurface. Well now it´s up to the trout or the Grayling to judge if it works or not...

Herman Christian frame

Made this frame with some known flies from Herman Christian. Hard to find patterns with his label on them in the books. Anyway, Herman was one of he pioneers within the Catskill Style flytyers. He was known as a great fisherman, a guy who caught the bigger ones. Was a close friend to Theodore Gordon, learned to tie flies by taking apart Gordon´s flies. More about Mr Christian here.

Just finished

I like to have some stuff with me to help me to get that right atmosphere when tying at events. Next weekend on Friday I will be at "Call of the wild´s" to show some Catskill patterns and talk a little about them. For this occasion I chosed to make a frame of Theodore Gordon and two of his more famous patterns, made three of them. Why Theodore Gordon? Well, In my opinion he´s the guy behind the "Catskill Style" flies and as it is that I will talk about during the show....

Mosquito

Was searching for something new to try out this morning. Scrolled through one of my favourite books "The Dettes" by Eric Leiser. By the way, my copy is actually a signed first edition that I bought from my friend Joe Fox grandson to Mary Dette, yep the shop is still running Dette trout flies, check it out..
Well, back to my search...Found this little "bugger" that I believe will make a great contribution to my box. Will make some in smaller sizes #16-18 for the fall fishing for the Grayling. This one however is tied on a #12 Allcock W170 and will make a contribution to my demo portofolio. Tied it in true Catskill Dry Fly Style.

A little something.... Made one just before this one, proborably one of my better ties.. But one of the wings slated slightly so I just wanted to fix it a little... Yep I teared it of, shit happens doesn´t it?