Posts Tagged ‘chironomids’

Previously, I made almost once a month trips to Whitecourt, AB. However those trips have not been as frequent for the happy (for me) reason that Colleen finally was able to move to my Province.

On my trips to Whitecourt, I was able to get in some fishing at Carson Pegasus, the Freeman River, and in the McLeod and Athabasca Rivers. Not as much as I would have liked and I still hope to go back to the area and do more exploring, especially of the Freeman as well as waters up by Fox Creek.

I had also hoped to get the chance to meet with The Whitecourt Fly Fishing Club, but schedules conflicted and I was never able to do that. However, this past weekend, Colleen surprised with a plane ticket to Edmonton. It was a short trip where we spent most of our time in Whitecourt, but I also finally was able to meet Ian Bews of the Whitecourt Fly Fishing club.  Ian and I had talked on the phone previously and have shared emails but have never had the chance to meet.

On very short notice, Ian and his wife graciously had me over to their home for a quick visit.  I envy Ian’s fly tying area! A beautiful room with a fly tying desk as the centre of attention with lots of fly fishing paraphernalia hung on the walls including an old prized split cane rod.

While talking with him, Ian showed me an interesting chironomid pattern tied up by John Kent of Fox Creek, Alberta. I won’t say just yet what interesting material is used in this pattern – hopefully John will send along his tying instructions for it.  The pattern is about 3/4″ long which apparently matches the length of some of the chironomids that are present in the lakes at Carson Pegasus Provincial Park.

I’m back now in Ontario and am itching to get out in the next few days here. But in the meantime, a big thank you to Ian Bews and his wife for their hospitality on such short notice – and during the Montreal/Pittsburgh playoff game to boot!

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

Last week, I wrote about David tying up his first Woolly Bugger (sometimes called a Woolly Booger). This evening, David wanted to do some more tying so I thought it would be a good opportunity to review some basics with him and see what he remembered.

Before we started, he successfully named the parts of the hook and could identify the area where the “head” would be. He then recalled from memory what materials we’d need to tie an olive woolly bugger – thread, chenille, marabou, saddle hackle, lead wire and head cement and retrieved them from his fly tying kit. I was impressed! So instead of letting him watch the video instructions, I wondered how much of the directions he would remember on his own. But first, we practiced starting and wrapping thread around the hook shank. David did a fantastic job and had it nailed immediately. I was impressed with his neatness.

With little help from me, he had the hook shank wrapped with thread, the lead wire attached and secured, and the marabou wetted with his mouth and correctly sized for length. He did need some help holding the materials to the hook shank “just above the bend, right Dad?” and getting them secured. But after that, he recalled all the correct steps and in order. If he keeps this up, we might have another A. K. Best on our hands! I’d like that – if he can tie up all the flies I need that are smaller than a size 14. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves at this point.

When he had completed all the steps, he very carefully applied head cement to the head after I tied it off. He did find out how sharp a dubbing needle can be though, with a minor “boo boo” – but no complaints from him.

When the head cement dried, it was time to put the newly tied Woolly Bugger into David’s fly box beside the others. As he always does when he opens his fly box, he exclaimed, “I just love all of my flies, Dad!” And he looks at them admiringly and tries to remember what each one is called and asks me when he forgets. “Right. I knew that,” with a big smile on his face after I remind him of the name of one he’s forgotten.

He wanted me to take a photo of him with his fly box:

As you can see from the smile, the “wee man” is very proud of his fly collection so far, and he indicated that he can’t wait to catch a rainbow trout on one of them next year with his Snowbee Junior fly rod. Lord knows I’m hoping he will finally catch a fish with that that fly rod and reel outfit I got him for his birthday this year, too! And I’m glad that he’s still thinking that far ahead right now, with weather warnings about a big snow storm coming our way, he’s also looking forward to some cross country skiing as soon as possible.

As David went through the fly box, he asked about a couple of different patterns and one caught his attention – probably because he had seen me catch a number of fish with it in the past couple of years while stillwater fly fishing. The Copper Oval Tinsel chironomid. He asked what it was supposed to look like to a fish.

So, we went through the life cycle of a chironomid and how the eggs hatch at the bottom of the lake, and the pupae and larvae stages they go through before becoming a tiny small black fly often called a midge. David was quite impressed and compared this to what he knew about caterpillars and butterflies.

“Do you remember when I caught some fish using this chironomid, how I told you we had to fish it very slowly?” We then got into a discussion about how chironomid pupae and larvae don’t have tails, fins or muscles to propel themselves through the water quickly and depend on other factors to get them to the water surface – often very slowly, and meanwhile are good sources of food for fish.

David then disappeared from my office, only to reappear about twenty minutes later with this drawing I’ve had scanned:

David explained to me that this was his drawing of the life cycle of a chironomid (he forgot one of the stages, but that is ok). On the left, the eggs at the bottom of the lake. Then follow the arrow – the pupae stage. Floating at the mercy of the currents in the lake as it makes its way up toward the surface. When it finally gets there, it becomes a midge – and David decided to add his view looking down upon the water surface too.

Hmmm.. maybe not another A. K. Best, but an entomologist on my hands!