Being a new member to JFFC and a newbie to fly fishing and fly tying in general, I must say that it has been a delightful experience so far. It has opened up a whole vista of new skills to learn and places to visit, and people to get to know.
So, after having had my first introductory fly tying session, I was all gung-ho, wanting to try out some of what I’d learned. Now I must interrupt myself here to mention that I have a few backyard chickens, since we live on a plot. One of them was rather pretty Bantam rooster. Sadly, he had died a few days before I sat down to tie my first fly. Having been looking at many YouTube videos on fly tying when the poor thing died, I had gleaned that rooster hackle is a frequently used material in fly tying.
I didn’t want to waste the lovely russet, black and white hackle from my poor rooster, so before we buried him, I plucked the neck hackles to use for future projects (waste not, want not, I was always told).
Now, armed with a whole lot of enthusiasm, new knowledge gleaned from our first lesson with Gielie and many YouTube videos, I prepped my vice and started thinking about what type of fly I wanted to try out. I decided to make up a fly as I went along, mostly to practice the techniques I’d seen
so far. I had seen a couple of videos on tying in neck hackle as wings for certain dry flies, and thought I’d try that using my own rooster’s scavenged neck hackle.
The tying went well, and though I was still very unfamiliar with the idea of proportions, resulting in a very unproportioned fly, I ended up with something that vaguely resembled a hornet or wasp. In my uneducated state, I’d used peacock herl for the body (I thought it looked rather nice), but was informed by certain experienced tiers that it sinks like a brick when wet – not quite the desirable effect for a dry fly!
So, my fly looks pretty, but from a fly tying principles point of view, it’s rather comical, and would have the experts smiling amusedly behind their hands. Still, I had much encouragement and some excellent advice for future improvement from the fly tying fraternity, both in the club and the Fly Tying SA Facebook group, on which I had posted pics of my first effort.
The Floppy Wasp
14 SERIOUSFUN@JFFC FEBRUARY 2018
My First Trout on My First Fly
~Kristine Page