APOLOGIES EVERYONE

I am afraid that a lot of my pictures have disappeared. This is a problem with Google or Blogspot and the Google +1 thing. All the posts I +1ed have had their pics wiped. I will get them back up asap.

Bored? Try Recycling.

I have been quite ill recently. A month ago I was diagnosed with severe pneumonia as a result of a blood clot on the lung. I have pleurisy, which is nice and part of my lung has collapsed. The antibiotics are working, but only at half the speed they should be and I can’t walk across the room without puffing like Stevenson’s Rocket. It ain’t a lot of fun and at times I am quite bored.

To help pass the time I have watched a couple of Davie McPhail’s fly tying videos. He is truly a master of his art.

Watch them on You Tube at:-

http://www.youtube.com/user/DavieMcPhail

Anyway. I got to thinking, as one is apt to do when presented with hours to fill, and decided that I would tie a few flies myself. Nothing unusual here as I knock the odd combination of fur and feather together every now and then and call the resulting ensemble something pretty, then  pronounce it a fly worthy of fishing.

This time though I decided that I am fed up with having so many semi-destroyed flies lying around; ill-tied efforts of some commercial enterprise that have fallen to bits whilst being cast and never even so much as been sniffed at by a fish. I looked out a few and stripped them bare. It is the resulting bare hooks that I will recycle and use to tie up variations of the flies they once were. The aforementioned stripping is a little time consuming, but then in my case that is essentially the idea, but once achieved a perfectly serviceable hook is left. I liken it to collecting spent brass cases and reloading one’s own centre fire ammunition.

Here is an example of my efforts – from start to finish.

This is the sorry state of a shop bought stoat’s tail that fell to bits without even seeing the water!

Here is the stripped hook. A size 8 double. I am starting with double salmon and sea trout flies.

Here is the final reincarnation. Not really a Stoat’s Tail in the traditional sense, but then I have hundreds of them so this one has an orange beard and tail and a pearly body. I haven’t made the throat hackle as full as a proper stoat’s tail either. Another coat of varnish and it’ll be done. The head’s a bit big but it’ll fish ok. I pass the thread under the wing a couple of times to make sure it doesn’t stick to the body in faster water.

So there you have it. Lay bare those redundant flies and recycle my friends recycle.

Damn…………………now I’m bored again………………..and still ill. Oh well.