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Fit To Be Tied BY JOHN ALLEN PHOTOS BY CHAS J. DEES Big Yellow May. Purple Squirrel. Green Butt Skunk. Silver Doctor. Red Mohawk. Chartreuse Zonker. The names are as colorful as the feathers and threads used to create them.
Whimsically titled Alex's Little Bee, Rat-faced McDougal, Bighole Demon and Skinny Minnie, they are made with gadgets called bobbins, hair stackers, bodkins and whip finishers. These exotic-sounding words aren't from some foreign language. They're all part of the fascinating world of fly-tying, a hobby enjoyed by many participants in the ancient sport of fly fishing. Dating from Macedonia about 2,000 years ago, fly fishing has become popular again in recent years thanks to advances in equipment (see Outdoorlllinois, August 1999). Its resurgence has been accompanied by an increased interest in fly-tying. The Federation of Fly Fishers, the sport's largest advocacy group, claims 35,000 members in 260 clubs, including seven in Illinois. They include the Chicago Fly Fishers in Chicago, Northern Illinois Fly Tyers in Lombard, Trout Unlimited in Oak Brook, Central Illinois Fly Fishers in Rantoul, Rock River Fly Casters in Rockford, Gary Borger Chapter of Trout Unlimited in Spring Grove and DuPage River Fly Tyers in Wheaton. Known as DRIFT, the 110-member Wheaton group is the largest fly-tying club in the state, according to Jim Velguth, club secretary and director of education. Velguth, a DRIFT member for only three years, switched to fly fishing from spin fishing in 1996 when he learned that trout are not the only fish species that will take flies. Velguth's conversion began while watching a man fly fish for bluegill in a local forest preserve lake. Standing in the shallows, he noticed a small bluegill unsuccessfully attempting to catch a cream fly bobbing on the water. "Each time the fly came down, the fish tried to grab it," Velguth said. "Then this small bass swam
Like the insects they represent, most flies are tiny. This one is about an inch long. lazily up from the depths, and you could actually hear it slurp down the fly. The bluegill froze for a second, turned and looked at the bass, looked back to where his dinner had been, then slowly swam away." The encounter caused Velguth to take a class at Fly & Field in Glen Ellyn, an outfitter he has patronized ever since. Since that fateful day, he has spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours pursuing his sport. "I'm one of those people who's gone hog wild with it," Velguth said. "I've taken all the classes I could, gathered all the knowledge I could. It's a passion, not a passing thing." Despite his spending on fly fishing, Velguth maintains that fly-tying can be an inexpensive hobby. There are a few basic tools involved, but fly tyers are an inventive lot and often find ingenious ways to save money. Fly-tying tools include: a vise to hold the fly; scissors; a bobbin to hold the thread spool; a hair stacker to get the tips of hairs even; hackle pliers for wrapping feathers around the shank of a hook; a bodkin to apply glue and spread feathers; and a whip finisher to knot the thread so the finished fly won't unwind. The most expensive tool is the vise. Simple vises that clamp on the edge of a table and hold the fly in one position cost as little as $12, while elaborate models that rotate 360 degrees and have more versatile bases can range into the hundreds of dollars. Though he didn't recommend them, Velguth said there are even cheaper alternatives. "A guy I know took a hemostat when he first started and jammed it between the leaves of his dining room table to use as a vise. You could also use vise grips and put them in a table vise." Velguth does recommend a small, sharp pair of scissors for clipping and trimming materials. "Mine have a little serration on them, so when I'm trimming something with hair on it, the hair doesn't run away from them," he said. "We also use razor blades for trimming." Thread is indispensable in fly construction, and a bobbin is a cheap tool to hold the thread spool. Bobbins resemble miniature cannons, with thread coming out the business end of the barrel. "Thread bobbins are $3 or $4, but you can buy fancier ones with ceramic tips
Having a variety of flies enables the angler to "match the hatch," using insects that are prevalent in the area the day he is fishing. for about $10," Velguth said. "Mine has a ruby tip to make sure we don't tear the thread." A bobbin threader is used to pull thread through the tube. It can be purchased, or made from fine guitar string. Velguth has one, but says he sometimes just sucks the thread through the tube like a straw. Hair stackers are devices that resemble nuclear power plant cooling towers. Costing less than $10 each, they come in a variety of lengths and diameters and are used to align the tips of animal hairs so the fly will be properly balanced. Hackle pliers are actually an oval-shaped clamp with one rubber and one metal grip that are used to hold feathers on the hook while they are tied into place. These are usually priced under $5. A bodkin is a needle with a handle about the diameter of a pencil. It retails for about $2, but homemade substitutes such as toothpicks or pins pushed into the end of a dowel rod work just as well. The whip finisher, priced at $3-$10, is also non-essential but makes the job easier. Shaped like a whip (hence the name), it ties the final knot on the fly. The 46-year-old Velguth also uses a pair of magnifying lenses to make seeing his work easier, and he has a variety of other tools and homemade devices the beginner probably wouldn't need. In addition to tools, one also needs various materials to tie flies. These include, but are not limited to, fish hooks (naturally), thread, feathers, fur, eyes, trim and glue. Most of the materials are available at tackle stores that feature fly fishing equipment. Prices range from less than a dollar for thread to more than $50 for feathers of certain scarce birds. "You can get materials in all kinds of places," Velguth said. "Dumbbell eyes that look like little dumbbells can be bought at the store, but you can also use the beads from a lamp socket pull chain. Sometimes somebody in the club will get an elk, prepare the hide and give it away. I have a stuffed pheasant decoration that could be used." The materials needed to tie flies depend on the types of flies being tied. Velguth said there are literally hundreds of different flies and hundreds of books showing how to tie them. "Some books give you every step, almost every-wrap-of-the-thread detail," he said. "Others give just recipes and the materials needed to tie the fly." There are also kits available. "Kits are usually much more expensive, and you only get a couple flies out of them," Velguth said. "Kits come with instructions, but you can get books with complete instructions and go out and buy material to make them from scratch. Kits are good for beginners, but anybody who buys more than five is missing something." Because insects are usually not very big, flies are generally tied on smaller size hooks (Nos. 6-16). "You try to match the hook to the size of the fly you're going to tie Flies are made from thread, feathers, fur and a variety of other materials.
Some flies, like this small frog, may take several hours to tie. Note the eyes made from an electric lamp pull chain. on," Velguth said. "In the early days of fly-tying they used large hooks, but only tied on a small fly because their metallurgy wasn't that good and fish would straighten out smaller hooks." There are four major categories of flies—dry flies, nymphs, streamer flies and wet flies—and several smaller categories: bass flies, emergers/buzzers, salmon flies, saltwater flies, steelhead flies and terrestrials. Dry flies sit on top of the water; nymphs lay on the bottom; streamers are supposed to represent minnows; and wet flies are fished just beneath the surface. "There are tons of subgroups within the categories," Velguth said. "There are a couple basic dry fly designs that imitate either a mayfly or caddis fly. There are sub-categories of nymphs, which are stages of insects, but not as many as in dry flies. Wet flies don't float; you kind of twitch them along underwater in an attractive pattern. Then there are emergers, which are between the nymph stage and adult stage where they're emerging out of the water." As Velguth describes various flies and what they're supposed to represent, he sounds very much like an entomologist. "I'm a computer programmer," he said. "But you pick (entomology) up as you go along." Noting that nature hasn't produced any insects named Duck-Tailed Parachute, Velguth said designers are free to choose their own names. "There's one where the guy who made it holds it up to look at it and sees a bird's nest in the background, so that's what he called it." Velguth said he can tie a small popping bug in as little as five minutes. Others, such as frogs, take several hours. "Some people make them as artwork and frame them," he said. "They come up with beautiful, elaborate flies and spend three days making sure everything's just right. They'll tie a piece on and if it's not right, take it off and try again." Velguth said most fly tyers are anglers who deploy their own creations in battles with fish. He mainly fishes for largemouth and smallmouth bass, favoring the Elgin and Batavia dams on the Fox River and Lake Defiance in Moraine Hills State Park. "We try to match the hatch," Velguth said, explaining that fly fishermen observe the types of insects prevalent in the area they're fishing and use flies that resemble those insects. "I'm a much better fisherman with flies than I was with bait casting," he said. "To be honest, I was the one who knew everything about fishing, but never caught anything. That was another reason to get into flies—it offered me a new way to fish." Besides being a wonderful way to relieve stress, Velguth said fly-tying has another rewarding aspect: "When you catch a fish on a fly you created, it feels really good to know the work you put into it has paid off. It's very satisfying." Elaborate flies are viewed by some as works of art, but most are fated to be lost like any other lure.
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