FLYMPH FORUM

As you know by now, most of my tying and fishing just goes on in my brain. I just tried an idea that usually crops up in bed; twisting dark and light/bright copper wire to be used as a rib. I often rib my Hare's ear with twisted copper wire as it gives a nice result. I tie in the wire doubled and wind a layer , or two, to get some weight. After dubbing the body, I twist the two strands of wire and rib the body. I watched Lars Olsson using this technique. Now, if I use differently coloured wire I can get subtle variation in the ribbing. I just twisted dark and bright 0,1mm wire (one end in the vise jaws and the other in my hackle pliers), and the result was pleasing. I bet we will se this kind of ribbing on a fly from Master Shuck in the near future...

If you use just the twisted rib, you won't add much weight to the fly. Next step would be adding one strand of krystal flash, or something, to the mix.

Just playin'

dd

daringduffer wrote: Next step would be adding one strand of krystal flash, or something, to the mix.

Or a small amount of dubbing.

redietz wrote:

daringduffer wrote: Next step would be adding one strand of krystal flash, or something, to the mix.

Or a small amount of dubbing.

Why not, indeed? Maybe some wax and then touch-dubbing fur from some dead animal, or sparse sparkling synthetics..? Or some magic cdc..?

dd

Ruard has some pretty useful information on here about using twisted dubbed bodies off of a Clark Block kind of set up, albeit using the same length (and therefore colour) of wire, but no reason two different wires could not be used.
I use twisted very fine copper wire that is quite red in colour for a lot of my PT nymphs. The wire is from an old radio transformer and is very fine, so even doubled and twisted it does not look too big on #14-18 nymphs.
Hans has some very nice "faceted" wire he uses on occasion. It is a vintage wire that is flat in section, but each flat section is very short and neighboured by a section at right angles to the last.
Lawrence Finney makes some really nice woven wire bodied nymphs using Uni wire in contrasting colours. http://www.finneysflies.com/videos_69.html

Cannot think of anyone adding krystal flash to the mix, but there is bound to be someone. Good idea to help add some subtle flash.

Here is the link:

http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... bbingblock

Here is another one: http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... bbingblock

Greeting

Ruard

DD, I like your idea of the two tone wire, lightly dubbed as a rib. It's one I haven't tried. CreationBear used to do a lot of this type of body work, though in a quick search I didn't find an example, but it might job some memories. And of course Ruard has used the combined wire technique for quite a while. Following his lead I came up with this but I haven't used it much since.



Speaking to the dubbed, mixed wire body, Ray and I tied up some Raccoon (?) flies a few years ago for steelhead and they were awesome. He's probably got a file of grip and grin pics with those flies in their jaws.

w

I remember these discussions clearly. Possibilities are endless. Need; not so much. It was the wire Hans was using that inspired this experiment. It gives some depth to the pattern without overloading it. I've just done two more. One with added purple silk, the other with added silver wire. They are both very cool. Two or three twisted 0,1mm wires used as abdomen, a small fur thorax and a hackle wouldn't be too heavy. If heavy is what you want, well...

And, as Jeff says, you can use it as rib even on small flies.

The dubbing block discussion in the other link; some people can make easy things complicated. Have a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZLc8t5i8E
Nice tool, but is it that practical? The added spring is, but...I would never hang my bobbin holder like that. I would feel restricted by it.

dd

Thanks for the link, Stefan. Looks like the kinda complexity I enjoy (engineers...eye role).

While I was over on YouTube, I came across this video about fishing small stream for trout. Enjoyable little video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF_cFgLzfZw

Sorry for the distraction. I am enjoying the discussion of the twisted wire bodies.