Breaking New Ground

Trying to teach myself a new (to me) style: Rangeley (Carrie Stevens) Streamers...

Thanks, Steely. I've been to Ronn's site, he does some great things with feathers. That other link was new to me though, but its bookmarked now!

Normally, I dont use any adhesives whatsoever on my flies, making the rare exception for a bass/pike fly, or a drop of cement on a parachute post. On this fly, however, I decided to go with tradition and use some glue. While I really don't feel it was necessary for the main wing, the gluing really did help with mounting the shoulder and cheek.

This fly was tied on a Mustad 36808. This hook has a looped down eye, and while I love the looped eye for making it simple to tie in wings and keep things straight, it's making it tough for me to gauge my length and other proportions on an 8X long hook.

With more flies tied, though, I'm sure it will come along.

Getting the right feathers is another part of the equation when tying this style of streamer and half the fun is tracking down the goods.

Agreed.

The strange, and often rare, discontinued, etc. materials make many of the classics difficult to tie. But its also really fun tracking stuff down.

Just got an order of nearly 4,000 old hooks that made Saturday afternoon a little bit like Christmas.

Thanks, HC. All the floss work I've been doing on my classic wets has really helped prepare me for a large body like this. My tinsel is a little uneven on this one, but I normally use oval for the rib and flat only on the tags. Flat tinsel ribs, for me, are a bit more difficult than using oval.

What kind of thread and floss are you using? A few tips: Use a flat, unwaxed, unbonded thread and keep the underbody totally even. Every dozen or so wraps, I spin my bobbin to untwist the thread again. I use UTC 70, usually in white, light tan, or a similar lighter color, to improve the floss's shine when wet. For floss, I use uni, danville, and orvis. This fly was tied using uni. Just like the thread, I untwist the floss, but unlike thread, I'll untwist my floss ever 2-4 wraps. keeping everything flat is the key. also, keep a lot of tension on the floss to keep the individual fibers from wandering out away from the main strand. if they do, either unwrap and try again, or, if its not too critical, just ignore it and keep wrapping. You'll either catch up to it or (more likely) snap the fiber. Just let it go and trim it off when you're finished wrapping the floss.

Thanks, man! I think for my next one I'll use oval tinsel for the rib. I'm on the look out for narrower flat tinsel, but haven't found it just yet.