Wool

[letumgo]

Mike - Do you know if the "Donegal" blend is a reference to the region in Ireland, or the tweed (characterized by colorful flecks in a grey background? Could be both, for that matter.

[Mike Connor]

This is a basic "fawn" ( Americans might say "tan") hare fur blend as a base for various stuff;



for some things you want a much darker base colour. You can also use pinches of stuff directly of course, you don't have to make a lot of finished blends. In order to mix this with mohar or other stuff you can just tease it through your fingers. This takes longer than just grabbing some pre-blended stuff of course.

Some pre-blended bases and other colours;



There is of course no limit to the blends you can use. The only way to get it right is to match as well as you can to actual insects taking special note of the translucence colours not just reflected light. A dab of orange mohair mixed in works well on quite a few flies. Yellow is better on some others, but the possibilities are legion. It is a little more work but it makes much better flies. Personally I would rather spend the time dressing a dozen good flies than making two dozen less effective flies. But a lot depends on how you fish as well.

[Mike Connor]

Mike - Do you know if the "Donegal" blend is a reference to the region in Ireland, or the tweed (characterized by colorful flecks in a grey background? Could be both, for that matter.

Sorry, no I don't. All I know about it is that it is a fairly standard blend colour for some Irish flies. Presumably it did originate in Donegal, but I don't know that for certain.

I am pretty sure it is also the same colour as WOIO which is "West Of Ireland Olive" but am not absolutely certain of that.

You can find some traditional Irish colours here;

http://irish-fly-supplies.webs.com/capes.htm

http://irish-fly-supplies.webs.com/fur.htm

I can't vouch for how accurate the actual colours are, and I would always use blends instead of solid colours.

Seal fur can be a real pain to use on small flies. In my opinion various "grades" of Mohair are much better.

[letumgo]

Thanks Mike. Your photos make me want to go play with some Irish dubbing blends.

[letumgo]

I love those Corrib Olive saddles...

Great links. The colors are very intense.

[Mike Connor]

My pleasure, hope you enjoy yourself. I would however stress once again that it is better to look at some insects really well before you start blending a load of stuff. Many "general" blends will work better than any solid colours anyway, but for specific flies you need to be more accurate if you want the "edge".

People ask me this all the time, and it has come up quite a bit recently, "is it really worth going to all that trouble?". Well it is for me, but it might not be for a lot of people. A very great deal depends on how you fish. Some things will only give you an "edge" if you use them in certain ways. If you fish a more or less "general" method using "general" flies, there is not much point in making very specific imitations because it likely wont make much difference to your results.

If you swing downstream wets, ( and I hasten to add I have nothing against that, everybody should fish however they prefer) then extremely specific flies wont be much use to you in most cases, because such flies have to be used in the right manner if they are to work properly. The behaviour is at least as important as the dressing. I don't know any natural flies that can swim across a stream, and certainly not up against it. If you use some flies like that they wont work any better than any others, possibly even worse.

That's just an example, there are a lot of considerations which affect how various flies work.

[letumgo]

Well written and well reasoned. I tend to fall into the downstream swing category, but respect the passion you put into doing things as you describe.

[Mike Connor]

I love those Corrib Olive saddles...

Great links. The colors are very intense.

Yes, something that might be useful to some; I like to view some things against a neutral background, like this;



( I also use different colours on my screen at night, like this;



this is how the forum usually looks;



many other websites are very considerably worse, some practically blinding!

If you want to use the neutral colours which is much easier on the eyes and allows you to distinguish some colours better as well, good for looking at flies etc. Here's how to do it in a couple of browsers;

Override colours for web pages on Chrome;

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... mlapalklgn

you just click on the icon in the address bar to change any page you happen to be on or you can override all pages.

The preferences are set by right clicking on the icon;



You can set it up so that it is much easier on the eyes;


To do it in Internet Exlplorer;

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... r-webpages



Unfortunately Internet Explorer does not set up properly on some machines and versions, and only a partial override is achieved, to overcome this;

http://bootstrike.com/Articles/IEColour/

this allows you to get a complete dark background.

On Firefox;

Get this add-on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... src=search

set up your preference in Firefox;



now you can toggle beween the profiles you set up. This is very useful indeed when looking at some things.

[Mike Connor]

Well written and well reasoned. I tend to fall into the downstream swing category, but respect the passion you put into doing things as you describe.

Each to his own. Just making sure that people don't get entirely wrong expectations for some of this stuff. Much of it will only work well ( or even at all!) when used in certain ways. It wont work any better than a lot of other stuff when used in other ways, or marginally at best. Although some things do apply to any methods.

[letumgo]

Mike - The tutorial on changing screen color is a VERY useful tip. I wish Donald Nicolson saw this tutorial. It may be very helpful to him, due to his eye troubles. Thank you.