Primp my Fly

mjones32

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Jun 29, 2014
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18
Elk Hair Caddis is always my go to dry fly & I often like to try and fluff up the fly, but the Elk Hair always wants to lie down flat.....

Has anyone else found a way to make that permanent....like some kind of hair product or heat or anything ?
 
Tie a small ball of dubbing behind the hair so it is forced upward.
 
Try building a little dam of dubbing behind the wing similar to comparadun style flies. You can even make that a hot spot if you desire. I like bright green YMMV.
 
PS. I should also mention do not use alot of elk hair keep, it sparse. That, thread control and placement are keys to a well tied fly.
 
Trouble is I buy my flies on ebay. I'm wondering if I can somehow tweak my existing stock.
 
E-bay flies are....ebay flies. Can't help.

If you did tie your own flies, the most important thing is selecting the right hair for the wings. The best wing material for an elk hair caddis is err......deer hair.

Selecting hair labeled "comparadun" hair or coastal hair is a good place to start. It won't flare as much as spinning hair, and has a medium texture for just the right amount of flare for most caddis wings.

Good article to read to select the right hair.
 
Yes, get some frogs fanny and some shake. The wet stuff doesn't work well on caddis imo.
 
^ yup, frogs fanny or any other powder dessicant works great. I used gink for several years when I was starting out because that was I all I knew about at the time and it worked ok but only after letting it dry for 5 or 10 minutes on a fresh, dry, unfished fly.
Once you use the fly for a little while and it dunks a few times in heavy water, or you catch a fish, the gink wears off and it sinks. Applying more gink on a saturated fly was a futile effort in my experience, and I believe I mentioned this difficulty for the first time to Bruce Fisher at pca on my first trip to Penns, and he handed a bottle of frogs fanny. I've been using it ever since. If your fly is soaked, just pinch it on your shirt (or a microfiber towel, which I do have now), and brush the desiccant on the fly vigorously, and it's good as new.
Imo, of your fishing cdc dries especially, you have to have this stuff. Also dh comparaduns, ehc, etc. Gink does work well for hackled dries in my experience though, but only on a fresh fly.
Another tip: buy two bottles of frogs fanny (or other powder) at first. When a bottle is full, a lot of the dessicant gets wasted when using it. Once a bottle is down to about 1/3 capacity, dump a little from the other full bottle into the near empty one a little at a time and keep your working bottle around 1/3 to 1/2 capacity. I've gotten much more use out of frogs fanny this way, and the stuff ain't cheap.
 
https://www.headhuntersflyshop.com/product/fly-agra-floatant/

Flyagra is the bomb floatant - clean it up with a little frogs fanny every once in awhile. Must have if you fish a lot of CDC flies.
 
Any advice for "pretreating" a fly in the vise? Speculative Friday evening thought train that may lead nowhere...
 
so......I decided to 'treat' an Elk Hair Caddis with boiling water & try to set the hackles to fluff out.....

I tied it to some mono, dunked it in boiling water & then pushed the hackle forward and it seemed to set without the hair shrivelling up or anything.

I then tried the fly out down at Ridley Creek FFO....I caught a chub 🙂
 
The elkhair caddis is a pretty easy tie. I would suggest taking the plunge instead of buying you next ones and get a cheap vice, some tan and brown thread, tan and brown dubbin, a piece of elk hair, and a hackle in grizzly or brown, some size 16 and 14 dry fly hooks and go for it.

Probably be under $50.00 depending on how cheap you go with the vice, lots of how to videos on youtube for that pattern. then before you know it you'll be addicted like a bunch of us on here, and then in time you will be tying all kinds of crazy stuff. LOL

 
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