New fly tying season: what to work on?

On Nov 28, 5:35 pm, spittendrigh wrote:
The fly tying season started for me today. I haven't tied
a fly since April. But I did visit the ladies sewing store today,
where I bought scissors, thick claret-colored thread for ribbing,
various spools of metalic tinsel and a bunch of long thin
'beading' needles, which I tie most of my fly bodies on these
days. This weekend I'll drive down to West Yellowstone and get
a bunch of bird skins for tying soft hackles.

And I find myself wondering: what should I work on this year?
I still tie lots of standard patterns, but like many of us, I do
like working on new designs most of all. So what do you think the
most important,
still-outstanding and unresolved design problems are?
What the most important fish foods that don't have a satisfactory
imitation yet? If you could close your eyes and say the magic words,
presto, what would you like to see in the fly bins next year?

Something I have been working on this year for Smallies here in Maine
is the classic hares ear sort of pattern. Once I got it to a place I
liked it, I found an old article in one of my 60's field and stream
Mags that talked about leaving the turkey feather from the wing case
un-clipped and making it "profile" a little more like a head. This was
THE best tying tip, and fly tying variation I have gotten so far. I
then varied the pattern a little more by using golden pheasant neck
tippets for the tail. I bet I doubled my catch on this fly as soon as
I started changing the pattern to this new style.
Well things were going pretty good until I tried tying a few in Olive
colors.... HOLY CRAP!
I went through half dozen in one day, tied up a bunch, and my business
partner tried some too. This has now become our go-to fly for
smallies. It worked good on warm water trout and salmon too, but the
small mouth bass just ate them up.
http://www.mainetackle.com/FOD/Olive_HaresEar.htm

I have started to think more about this variation for some other
patterns now as well. Something I was also hearing from my customers
was that Sebago lake Smelts had more of a purple-ish or blue-ish tint
depending on where you fished than other fresh water smelts.
What was happening was the rainbow smelts were mixing up with regular
smelts a little (I think). The Salmon guys were saying they couldn't
find any good representation of the Smelts specific to Sebago lake
here in Maine.
So I started working on Purple smelts... of all things. Blue ones too.
http://www.mainetackle.com/FOD/Purple_smelt.htm

I like tying new patterns as well... and like it better when they
work. Its hard to do, but if you clear your mind of any patterns you
have learned, look at a bug picture, or a preserved critter in
alcohol, and start thinking of how you can imitate what you see, with
your materials..... You will have a million projects to work on.

Sometimes we just sit in the shop and tie stuff on. No books, no
patterns. Many things just look outlandishly insane... and go in the
fly tying seconds pile for .10 cents each. Some look good, or have a
few parts we like, then we explore that a little deeper, and start
focusing down.

Tying for me, is just getting ready to go fishing.... which is almost
as good as fishing.

Lloyd M
http://www.mainetackle.com