Archive for the ‘fly tying’ Category

Our good friend Stevie Munn will be appearing as both a tyer and organizer at the Irish Fly Fair 2010 this November.  Being held in County Galway, the Irish Fly Fair runs on November 13-14 and will feature almost 40 leading fly tyers providing demonstrations and lessons. In addition, their will be fly casting demonstrations by Charles Jardine, Glenda Powell and Hywel Morgan.

The Galway Bay Hotel is offering special rates for the event and accommodations are also available at the Salthill Hotel as well as a variety of local Bed & Breakfasts.

More information is available at: http://www.irishflyfair.com

I’d never heard much about “Booby Flies” until a few years ago, when I started doing more stillwater fly fishing. My friend Arron Varga introduced them to me, and when he did, I thought they were pretty weird looking. I still don’t quite understand what the attraction to the fish are that take them, although I’m told it’s not how they look; rather it is the noise or vibration they make.  Personally, I’ve never caught a trout on a Booby Fly – but that just may because I seldom have tried them.

When I first heard about them, I did a wee bit of reading up on these flies and heard a few more things – like how they were all the rage on some U.K. reservoirs for rainbow trout.  And I also heard that some places had banned the use of Booby Flies because of how effective they are at catching fish, apparently.

In the March 2010 issue of Total FlyFisher, there is an article entitled “Booby Trap,” featuring anglers Mike Marriott and John Pass “as they employ a new Booby technique, trying to catch from a water that hasn’t seen a trout caught for more than two weeks!”

In the article, Mike Marriott points out that indeed, many fisheries have banned the Booby. But for a different reason than what I’ve heard:

“The problem is, if you’re fishing catch and release with Boobies, the trout you catch are generally deeply hooked and then have to be dispatched, and for this reason Boobies are banned on many fisheries.”

Mikes go on to suggest that his method of fishing Boobies, which employs the use of split shot, most fish are lip hooked and the fly is therefore easier to remove.

Booby flies are also sometimes called “Dolly Parton’s.” If you don’t know why, you’ll understand the very first time you see one. Basically, they have two round bits of foam on either side of the hook shank near the eye.  They can be dressed in many different ways – some fly tyers will attach eyes to each “booby.”  Some swear by using different colours of boobies, and different sizes for different levels of flotation (the foam helps the fly float off the bottom, when using sinking lines).

I know that Arron has caught a good number of rainbow trout on Booby patterns. I’ll have to get ask him to provide some of his favorite patterns with photos!

That’s the “wee man,” smiling his little heart out after tying up our Copper Oval Tinsel Chironomid pattern.  This time, David did just about everything on his own.  He was pretty proud of himself as well he should be.  We went over our materials list first and  he recalled just about everything we needed.  He set up his vice on his own.  He put the bead on the hook on his own, and then tightened the hook into the vice.  He then started the thread around the shank of the hook.

He tied in the oval tinsel and wound it up to the bead where he had a little problem securing it, but he fixed that up. Then, he tied in his three peacock herl and secured them. The only thing I did was finish it for him with a few half hitches.  I didn’t hold anything for him and didn’t have to tell him what to do or how to do it. He’s getting to be an old pro at this!  Well.. we still need to do a wee bit of work on a few things:

It will still catch fish, but we need to work on getting some things tightened up a bit with David getting used to using a bit more tension.  But this fly is not far off what I tied, all by myself, the very first time, and I was an adult – not a 7 year old kid.

He enjoyed using his new bobbin – a smaller 3″ size that I picked up the other day – a Dr. Slick with ceramic insert. He seemed more comfortable holding and manipulating the smaller size bobbin in his wee hands than the larger one that came in his fly tying kit.

I think I’ll have him tie up a bunch more of these – it will be a good exercise for him to practice his tension while he wraps tinsel around the hook. When he gets it just about right, which I expect he will soon, we’ll move on to tying up some streamers. Then we’ll move back to the woolly bugger and see how well he does completely on his own with that. Of course, David has a say in all of this too – what he wants to tie will be pretty important!

Related:

Chironomid Patterns

Our First Fly Tying Video