Hot off the vise

With winter approaching, I've been trying to fill the box with nymphs and midges. I started doing some reading on mayfly nymph(particularly Baetis) imitations that people are using overseas, mostly because tying PTs and HE nymphs bore the hell out of me these days. I found some cool ones from Czech Republic and Poland. It seems like a common trend over there is some sort of shell back, thin thread ribbing, and a coat of epoxy, and also keeping the fly very narrow so it sinks fast in the water column. I was messing around and came up with these. I'm going to tweak them and clean them up a little. Then of course I'll need to see if they work!

Size 16 standard nymph hook
Tail -Coq De Leon or Pheasant rump feathers
Hareline scud back material (clear for the body, brown for the wingcase)
12/0 black thread (ribbing)
A mix of various color Hare dubbing
Legs - I tried Hungarian Partridge and Pheasant feathers
A coating of epoxy, and then a coating of Hard as Nails


I also had good luck on red zebra midges over the weekend so I decided to try the Rojo Midge pattern I found online. The one I found had the red bead but that pearl glass bead did so well on those zebra midges last weekend that I decided to stick with that.

Size 20 curved nymph hook
Red 8/0 Uni-thread
UTC silver x-small ultrawire
peacock herl
glass bead (craft store)
white Antron (wing sprouts)



Also, I had mentioned earlier in the week that I was knocking out some flies for a few customers. Here's a big batch of rubber leg copper johns. I left the legs extra long figuring that the guy could cut them down to whatever size he wants. Below that, a bunch of custom woolly buggers that were ordered. These are all in the mail.




In other news, It's been such a busy week and I realized that I'd be a crappy parent if I didn't post up Michael's Halloween picture. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but my son is absolutely obsessed with cows. Not sure why. It started about a year ago and now my house is full of cow print everything.


He was actually super exciting on our way to drop him off before work this morning because some cows were right up along the road. You should have seen the look on his face. Priceless. He was talking about it all night.