Tied this one last night for a competition, but i'm not happy with it, so i'm gonna have to retie it.

Lets see if anyone can figure out why its ****?? There are at least two obvious reasons why its substandard

For anyone who hasnt tied whole woodduck wings, dont try it on a hook this big. The stems are flat, and when tying them on tend to twist so they lie flat on the top of the shank - it took some choice language and a bit of ingenuity to get them finally to sit like i wanted them.

Anways, a lesson in patience and mastery of the wings, if nothing else.

Thanks for looking

Eunan
Heres some photos of the process, as well as the finished article at the end.

Tag tied in on underside


Tag wrapped and thread (70 denier) underbody started - i go up and down several times with the thread through the process of tying the fly (same on salmon flies. After each layer is put down, i burnish the thread wraps to make them smooth


Crest tied in - you dont see it so well on the final fly as there is more yellow to come from goose slips on top of the crest


Married, yellow, red and green goose and woodie for the second tail


butts tied down to a taper at the head of the fly


Black chenille butt, rib and hackle tied in on the underside of the hook


To even out the underbody, and make it smooth for the floss, i did a couple layers of uni-stretch and burnished them


Floss body wrapped, by hand, no bobbins here.


Hackle, rib wrapped, and wing finally tied in. Took about 6 efforts to get this done


Forgot to take pictuers of the married goose shoulders and topping going on, as well as the hackle and herl head, so this is the finished fly, in all its flawed glory

Eunan,

I always enjoy looking at your work. What a talent! I am definitely not the person to critique your work. However, you are obviously not happy with this one and looking for some feedback from some of the members. The only thing that I can see is that it appears that you ran out of room up front and crowded the eye of the hook much more than you do on most of your ties. Everything else looks perfect to me. Again, thanks for posting up pictures of your ties, they are truly amazing!

While i certainly could have left more space at the head, that is not my main concern. The head on photo shows the eye not blocked, so i'm pretty happy with that aspect.

The other problems are aesthetics. how it looks....

I'm thinking maybe the shoulders and topping are supposed to be the same length as the tail and maybe sort of touch. Maybe the hackled didn't distribute evenly. That being said, I couldn't come close to tying that fly.

Eunan,
That is horrible! Send it to me mounted it in a frame and include a signed card so I can properly dispose of it.
The art work is beautiful, and you and the folks you are competing against have standards that I can't even begin to understand. I'm curious from a historical point of views, do you think that tyers of the MOM era paid the same attention to detail, or has the tying evolved into an art form since?
Mike.

Beautiful...I can only aspire to tying such works of art.

Quote:

I believe they paid attention to detail in that the flies were presentable and in the cases of imitation, resembling the natural they wanted to imitate.
But for contest purposes, i think tying is now an art form. There is no way i'd be tying fishing flies with this attention to details.

Thanks all for the comments

The reason i'll retie it is thus

Both sides of the wing are out of alignment. You can see the near side (as the head points right) is slightly futher back than the far side. Therefore, the white and black bars arent perfectly aligned and there is bleed through. Secondly. I'd like the thick white bar of the wing to align with the thick white bar on the tail.

A smaller hook is required, as well as a slightly shorter tail, because tying the flat stems of the woodie is nigh on impossible.

I"ll post the next one when i get it tied.

Eunan