FLYMPH FORUM

WIlliam,

If tried using the llama fur you sent last night and it kicked my a$$. My first attempt looked like crap. Do you have any words of advice? I'm all ears.

I almost gave up on it after 3-4 tries. You'll have to ask Bill. He managed to tie a sweet, honest to god Flymph with it. The best I have are a bunch tied like the two soft-hackles I posted and a short supply of cased caddis. You can pull out a length, more than you would with regular dubbing and roll it, like an old cuban woman in a cigar factory. Don't pull on it like you're weaving cotton into a thin strand, just roll it like you're rolling a...You'll have to work out the amount to get the end result. Lick your thumbs and middle fingers first. (Just do it.) The middle of that noodle will be the sweet spot and you can discount the ends for about an 1 1/2" on both ends. I tied the noodle in tight at the thorax and bound it down in hard touching turns down the shank to the bend then twisted or untwisted the noodle up the shank. Like I said, this was the only way I felt like I had any control of it. Sometimes it was the other way around. Maybe Bill will chime in regarding the cut length he used to get the dubbing loop right. Or as I suspect, you'll come up with an original method, post it and leave us dumbstruck.

If I were to sit down now and try it, I would try a few sparse strands with a contrasting silk and bring that up together. I still have Jon's floss and wire bodies on my mind.

Curious to see what you come up with.

w

Thanks William! I'm going back to lick me some llama. This ain't over...

Ray, just rope dubb it............works great. If your not sure what that is.........PM me or whatever.

Thanks Mark. Stay tuned...I need more help.

I've not yet had the chance to play with the llama that William was kind enough to send me, but this pattern, made with coyote guard hair, caught my eye:
http://ukflydressing.proboards.com/inde ... hread=6129
It's a little twiddley for the Brotherhood of the Flymph, but I don't see why you couldn't get the same effect by winding on contrasting fibers with not a lot of twist. If I really wanted to go the duct tape route, I'd lay down an underbody of Uni-strech first, and keep my "llama overcoat" sparce enough that a little color showed through.

How you'd tie the sucker off I don't know--maybe by slipping thread-wraps in incrementally the way you might tie off the wing of an EHC...otherwise, big, bushy thoraxes hide a multitude of sins (which is why all of my flies have honkin' big ones. )

VERY cool C.B., nice tye by whomever.......some good sub. suggesstions as well, specially the peccary.

Bill - I got your PM. Much apprechiated instructions.

Thanks guys! You've shortened my learning curve. It's all uphill from here...

Well, I finally tied my first (and probably last) one last night: I'm calling it "Atahualpa's Revenge." I'm scared to death of catching a fish on it, though, because that would compel me to tie more.

Seriously though, the qualities of that underfur really don't come across in photographs--I can see becoming obsessed with it if I could figure out a way to get it to hold up to more than a couple of fish per fly.