The flies are here ... the flies are here!!

Wow, that was fast. What a great looking bunch of flies. Thanks to
all the tyers (tiers? tyres?), and special thanks to the illustrious
swapmeister.

Favorites so far would have to be BD's Klodhopper (and his bidness
card), Jeffrey Barnes' Sweet Cheeks and Marty Werling's Blue Bellied
Sumptin', because they all look like they'll work on warmwater fish.
:-) As far as trout flies, Hans' Traun Spezial, Opie's Riffle Grizzly
and Wayne's Robert's Yellow Drake are probably my favorites. (All the
flies are excellent; these three just struck me as flies that I would
probably want to tie for myself.)

Notes on my fly: I call it a Madam CDC, as it's got the basic
swept-back deer-hair bullet-head shape of the Madam X, but I used CDC
wrapped like the CDC & elk for the body and "legs" (rather than the
rubber legs on the original). It's something I came up with when I had
a bunch of CDC I was looking to work into a pattern. I figure the fish
take it for a hopper of some sort, though it has also worked by letting
it swing at the end of the drift. I tied it on a #8 TMC 5212 and used
Petitjean "cream" CDC (it's not really cream, but more of a light gold,
which matches the color of hoppers on my home river pretty well). I
used yellow 8/0 Unithread, though in retrospect, I probably should have
used tan.

I expect you could play around with the design and it would work as
a stonefly imitation.


Chuck Vance