Rat Faced McDougall

When visiting British flyfair a couple of years ago a bought a book by Harry Darby -Catskill Flytier. Harry Darbee are one of those guys responisble to that we today have something called the Catskill style dry flies. In his book he has a list of flies "Darbees deadly dozen", among these we find soem Deer hair bodied dry flise which were one of Harry and Elsies trademark. I have tried to tie the Rat faced McDougall before in my early days, not very succesfull though, it was before I got the proper material etc. Last week  I finally got my sticky ones on one of those Deer hair packers, so now it was time to try it out properly.

As with all old flies there is a story, I love those. In this case I found about how this fly got it´s name, found it in the book offcourse.

"As I was ting up an order of Bastards late one evening in the summer om 1939, Percy Jennings a amateur flytier from Cold Spring Harbor. Known among anglers for the time he cought a 3,5 pound brown on a backcast, came by our house. He looked down at my vise and asked why I didn´t tie the same fly on a smaller hook. He thought it would work better for the local trout population. I said, "why dont you do it" So he did, and it was while Percy was tying one of these that a young friend of his daughter, Mary Dimock came by. She saw the fly and said "Boy that´s got personality."Percy, knowing that the fly had a troublesome name among our more gentle fly-casting friends, rose to the chance and challenged Mary to give it a name. She was up to the chalenge, saying, "I think it´s a Rat Faced McDougal." And so the fly was dubbed."
-Catskill Flytier Harry Darbee with Mac Francis

Rat Faced McDougall -Original pattern
Tail: Ginger Cock Hackle fibers
Body: Cliped tannish-grey deer hair
Wings: Cream grizzly hackle tips
Hackle: Ginger cock

This is one of these flies you dont want too loose in your first backcast, it takes a while to get it proper. I fisrt tie in the tail, then the body in two portions. Then  Istart the cliping, which takes a while, and dont forget to watch that tail, you dont want to clip that off. Well, I´m quite satisfied with this one. Now let see if Percy Jennings was right about it´s "troutability".

Mojo Night

Sometimes i get a great urge for some tying, and tonight it came to me . I used the mojo to make som "promised to friends flies". I made a batch of Catskill dry flies for my friend Martin Stout, a great tyer that recently discovered the magic behind the gems from the charmed circle of the Catskills The other part of the batch goes to another friend Mikael Larsson a fantastic photographer and charcoal artist, with some luck he will find some time to draw my Catskill dry fly patterns. I will keep the chubby ones crossed.

Atherton No:5

Quill Gordon

Red Quill



Conover

Over and out
Niklas

Great Feathers

Great Feathers in this case is a company truly worth it´s name. I try not to mix up my writing too much with making advertisement for my suppliers etc.. but.. This time I really feel that I need to make an exception. I meet David one of the staff members in Somerset for the International tying symposium, Great Feathers had a both there just beside where  Iand the other Vikings were tying. We got in contact when I helped one of their customers to find som decent stuff for some serious Spider tying. Since then I have been in contact with David a couple of times. First time was when I needed a nice black hen cape, David sent me nice pictures and gave med lots of time over mail until I finaly decided. Next stop just the other day, I am in need of a Coachman Brown cape, I think David must have given me at least an hour of his precious time just to get me lie 15 pictures so I could make a decision. Wow, this is what I call a salesman, it wasnt excactly what I was looking for but I will order it anyway, I loved the colour, and as you other tyers know, we cant get enough of the gadgets...

Great Feathers sells loads of different feathers, they got Partridges and othe gamebird skins from Cookshill in Enland, capes from Bobs and Collins and loads of other stuff...

Check them out www.greatfeathers.com.. They have their own forum aswell, I think I will try that for a while, there are some serious tyers on that forum.

Later
Niklas

Ps.. nope I didnt´get paid for this!

Life is about more than just flytying...

... some times we need to let the vise take a rest, why not try some fishing. My friend Gunnar from the fishing club and I have for a long time talked about that I should follow him to his secret grayling place in Gysinge. I have never really belived that it was possible to catch nice grayling this far south.. I was wrong...

Gysinge is an old industrial town, loads of history, nice buildings and surroundings. The area around Gysinge is a big nature reserve with loads of different animals and nice forrests. For the fisherman Gysinge can provide loads of different fishing, Pike, Perch, Sander, trout, Grayling are proborably the most interesting species to try your luck on... enough advertising :-)

To reach Gunnars special place we needed to take the boat, the stream was between two islands. The water was a little high but as I heard a vise man say "the fish like water". Gunnar told me that the dryfly would proborably not give me any strikes, for some reason this particular stream very seldom give  you a fish on the dryfly. Offcourse  Iddint believe him, tried a Royal Wulff, maybe 20 minutes. Then I decided to listen to my guide, tied a small quillbodied beadhead. First cast gave me a nice little grayling, maybe 35 cm. During the 3 hours we were fishing I caught 4 grayling around 35 cm and on just over 40 m.

Offcourse we also found some time to sit in the boat enjoying a nice cigarr and  a cup of coffee. I never thought a place under 50 minutes from my home could provide fishing this nice. Thanks Gunnar, I had a really nice time....

Atherton flies

Godmorning to you all..
The last couple of weeks has actually given me time to tie some flies. After I spent some time on my friend David´s blog reading about John Atherton and his flies I couldnt bringing out the vise, thank´s David. David ties a really mean dry fly and is very devoted to th the Catskill Style Dry flies, keep it up David.

I will get back later with more of theses flies, I did offcourse order the Atherton´s book, The Fly and the Fish. I have decided that I will try to dig a little deeper in to Atherton as a person and a flytier. Atherton is quite interesting he was a wellknown artist in the states, published a lot of covers for papers and posters for events etc

Now I am offcourse more interested in the flies but the thing is that the flies and his feeling for art is connected. Atherton was very keen on getting his flies "impresionitic" he meant that the bugs we are imitating was built up by different colours. To imitat this he worked with mixing up the dubbing for the flies to get the colours that he wanted. But more about that later when I have read the book, hopefully it will come soon :-)

I did try the Atherton No:5 which is the most common one. The fly is supposed to have oval tinsel, i didn´t have that so I used flat tinsel which offcourse doesnt give the fly the same chareteristics but let put this one in the practice category.

Over and out... 

Here we go again

Finally.. Last weekend was the start of small stream fishing 2012. We took a day off and decided to make it a longweekend in Dalarna, see my fiances folks and my fiance went to a Gardenfair. Well I nearly didnt manage to get out off the car before I got into my waders. I decided to see how my little favourite stream looked after the winter. I decided to take it a little easy just to get into the right moode. So I took a cup of tea and a nice Backwood Honey berry cigar, sat down  and just enjoyed the outdoors.

The stream was beautifull, not many bugs in the air because of the temperature but  I saw some rises. Got two smaller Grayling on a Streaking Quill, a quill bodied Muddlerpattern. Later I got two nicer Grayling on a old goodie, a wet Wickhams Fancy.

Now I feel the urge of fishing in every part of my body, I am amazed over the fact that I managed to survive the winter without fishing. As you all now time goes to fast when we are out fishing, I stayed out until the darkness came.

As I have a very understanding fiance I went fishing on the sunday aswell. I am a proud member of Lungsjöån Borrsjöån Flyfishing club, the club had an event on the sunday so I went there got 2 really nice trouts both showed me their best sides. We gathered for some bbq by the stream and had a really nice time. Offcourse I had the tying gear with me and showed the guys some of the patterns I use in this river, The Frey Fox Variant, a Quill Gordon and a little Spider.


We had a nice day but unfortunatly the day passed to quickly. Thanks Jonas..

Steel Blue Quill

Evening...When I was away fishing last autumn in Idsjöströmmen I put together a spider pattern to match some thoughts gathered during my fishing. I have a favoutite autumn dry pattern for the graylings, "The Grayling Steel Blue" I came to the conclusion that I wanted a similar fly but a fly that was in the surface instead of on the surface. So I made a Spider and took the colours from The Grayling Steel Blue, the fly worked really well.

One of the backsides with tying quill flies is to obtain quills. Making your own can take some time, when youré tying fishingflies you dont want to mess with making your own quills. my friend Leon Links introduced me to Polish Quills, prestripped quills in different colours. The Quality and the colours are amazing, so from now on no more stripping quills, atleast for my fishingflies...