GO-TO FLY??

riverman wrote:
Nice TR, Stan. Got any links to images of Picket Pins, Moby Dicks and
other generic Maine flatwing streamers?

--riverman

http://globalflyfisher.com/streamers...g/mobydick.htm
http://gula.org/roffswaps/recipe.php?page=PNW2000&id=22
--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps

Nice writeup Stan.

Riverman, look he

http://rareandunusual.com/foxsquirrelpicketpin.html

http://www.globalflyfisher.com/strea...g/flatwing.htm

CD
--------------------------
Chris Del Plato
Long Valley, NJ

Stan Gula wrote:

Anyways, we have a favorite streamer out here in Western Massachusetts
created by one of our local tyers, Dave Goulet, that goes by the name Moby
Dick. (However, given it's similarity to the Picket Pin and many Maine
flatwing streamers, it's hard to say it was 'created' rather than 'evolved'
or 'adapted') I have fished the Moby Dick all over and with it have caught
many types of fish in all kinds of water.

I still have two Moby Dicks you gave me at the 2001 Maine clave. Good
looking flies. Am going to have to get over my streamer block and fish
them soon.....

"Stan Gula" wrote in message
news:A1qXe.18567$265.16297@trndny07...
...I commenced to look up the history of the Picket Pin fly to see
where the name came from, and it turns out there's a small animal, a
ground
squirrel, the Uintas Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus armatus) that has the
nickname Picket Pin. I guess these things like to stand up in the meadows
and from a distance they reminded somebody of an abandoned picket pin.
There are several other ground squirrels in the Rockies that most likely
share the nickname. The Picket Pin fly gets it's name from the use of
this
little critter's tail fibers which are used for the wing. Us poor East
Coasters, not having a ready supply of Rocky Mountain ground squirrels,
use
the plain old common gray tree rat's tails...

I'd wondered about the origin of the name myself.....ever since I was first
taught the pattern by The Malignant Dwarf nearly twenty years ago.....but
never bothered to research it. As you've doubtless noticed, I learned to
spell it "Pickett", thus leading me to believe that it was named after an
individual. It's etymology being related to picket lines never occurred to
me. By yet another of those odd coincidences that crop up all the time, I
learned of my error just about five weeks ago while reading Robert Dunn's
"The Shameless Diary of an Explorer" (Dunn does a splendid job of describing
his participation in Cook's* abortive expedition to climb Mt. McKinley).
Much of his description centers on the never ending horror of having to deal
with the expedition's hopelessly inadequate horses.....a task he was
apparently well qualified for; at least by the end of the ordeal, if not
necessarily before.

His diary entry for July 13, 1903, includes the following passage;

"They had climbed Yenlo the day before, eating gophers--picket-pins, King
calls them--while the 'skeets ate them."

Ah ha!, thinks I. Dunn mentions them a couple more times in the book, but I
don't recall now whether he made the connection between the gophers and the
pins used to picket horses explicitly or I sort of figured it out for
myself.....and I'm not about to check every dog-eared page in the book to
find out.

Of course, all of your work and my stumbling luck still leave us none the
wiser as to who developed and named the pattern. Little help, anybody?


Interestingly, I've encountered a couple of references to this pattern in
the fly tying literature over the years, and to the best of my recollection
all of them called for squirrel tail in the wing.

Wolfgang
*Yeah, the same Frederick Cook who later fraudulently claimed to have
climbed McKinley AND reached the north pole. Dunn, who went on to more or
less distinguished writing and military careers, had the ****-weasel pegged
pretty much from the beginning.

Wolfgang wrote:
Of course, all of your work and my stumbling luck still leave us none
the wiser as to who developed and named the pattern. Little help,
anybody?

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/feat...s/part115.html

--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps

Mike,
I hate to say it, but it has to be the size 12 Parachute Adams. Everytime I
get in a rut or a jam, I pull that fly out and hook a trout. Sorry to be so
banal and predictable, but I must have a thousand patterns, and that one
always works.
Bruce B.
Poulsbo, WA
"Mike Bernardoni" wrote in message
...
If you had one fly that you was your favourite, that produced the best
for you, what would it be?? Mine is a bead head fly called "Ryan's
Butt".
Mike

THat's why I asked the question. Everyone has a favortie "Go-To Fly".
{:O) MIKE

Bruce Ball wrote:

Mike,
I hate to say it, but it has to be the size 12 Parachute Adams. Everytime I
get in a rut or a jam, I pull that fly out and hook a trout. Sorry to be so
banal and predictable, but I must have a thousand patterns, and that one
always works.
Bruce B.
Poulsbo, WA
"Mike Bernardoni" wrote in message
...
If you had one fly that you was your favourite, that produced the best
for you, what would it be?? Mine is a bead head fly called "Ryan's
Butt".
Mike

--
"Garlic used as it should be used is the soul, the divine
essence, of cookery. The cook who can employ it successfully
will be found to possess the delicacy of perception, the
accuracy of judgment, and the dexterity of hand which go to
the formation of a great artist."

- Mrs. W. G. Waters, The Cook's Decameron (1920)