CDC Blue Wing Olive 03/11/2014 Photo Album

I can remember numerous frustrating outings on the South Platte River during fairly dense blue wing olive hatches when I was unable to catch a single fish. At the time I was probably using a parachute adams or a small comparadun. The comparadun served me well in larger sizes, but it was next to impossible to produce a size 20 or smaller imitation with a slender body due to the density of the deer hair wing.

This frustration caused me to evaluate other wing materials, and when I read about CDC and its water repellent qualities, I decided to try using it as a replacement for deer hair. CDC is very light and compresses well at the tie in point to enable a slender body, yet it looks fluffy and bulkier when dry for a visible wing. In addition its water repellent qualities allow it to help float the body of the fly, and the sihouette of the fly remains in line with the comparadun style.

Enlarged Side View

I tied some one winter, and the first memorable success with these flies occurred on the Williams Fork tailwater above its junction with the Colorado River. A friend and I chanced upon a very dense blue wing olive hatch during August late in the afternoon, and I pulled a CDC olive from my fly box and tied it to my 5X tippet. This fly produced some sensational results over a two hour period in a large pool on the Williams Fork, and ever since then it has become a mainstay in my flybox. My partner during this outing was using a parachute style BWO, and his results did not come close to the success that I enjoyed. I’ve enjoyed numerous additional successful experiences using the CDC olive during intense BWO hatches on the Frying Pan River, Colorado River, South Platte River, Arkansas River and Big Thompson River.

The only downside to the CDC blue wing olive is the difficulty encountered in refreshing the wing after catching a fish. Once the CDC wing gets wet it has a limp narrow profile so I typically dip the fly in dry shake several times, blow on it, and continually fluff it with my finger until it gets back to a reasonable wing appearance. If it is raining as is often the case during a strong BWO hatch, the task of drying the wing becomes even more problematic. I put up with this extra effort and the extended fluff time because the fly is so effective.

From Underneath

I’ve recently considered substituting snowshow rabbit foot hair for the CDC in a comparadun style BWO imitation. Now that I’ve worked with snowshoe rabbit hair in the muggly caddis, I recognize that it might be a nice compromise between deer hair and CDC in terms of being lighter and able to compress to minimize body bulk, while at the same time presenting a stiffer wing that can be dried faster after being submerged.

For now I tied 10-15 additional CDC blue wing olives in two different shades of light olive for the upcoming season. One olive carries a more yellowish hue, while the other is more green on the color scale. Hopefully I’ll experience some strong BWO hatches soon on the Arkansas River so I can verify the effectiveness of my recent tying efforts, and maybe I can find some time at the vice to make a few snowshoe olive prototypes to test.

Green Drake 2014 03/04/2014 Photo Album

When I last reported on green drake imitations in 2013, I felt I solved my poor flotation problem of comparadun green drakes by tying some attractive parachute flies in size 14 and 12. I constructed these flies with more moose mane fibers for the tail and a parachute hackle to assist in flotation. Unfortunately the puzzle is never completely solved in fly fishing.

Early in the season I experienced some fine results using my new parachute green drakes on the Big Thompson River and also during my first trip to the Frying Pan River. Unfortunately as the season progressed, and I made two subsequent trips to the Frying Pan River, I discovered that the paradrake was not the total answer. I encountered several significant hatches where the old comparaduns outperformed the parachute style fly, and in one instance achieved some success with a parachute fly purchased from Taylor Creek Fly Shop.

Another Side View

I’ve now come to believe that the green drakes that appear late in the season are drunella flavilinea, and these are smaller and best imitated with a size 14 fly with a more slender body than that of the larger size 12 early season green drakes. I’m guessing this explains why my parachute green drakes worked well during my first visit in mid-August, but the same flies proved too large during my September days on the Frying Pan River.

A New Green Drake Comparadun

With this hypothesis in mind, I returned to my vise and produced some new green drake comparaduns. In order to address the flotation issue, I tied them with six microfibbets split in a wide V for the tail thus providing large outriggers to support the fly. Because I had some success with a purchased parachute green drake with a light olive body exhibiting more of a yellow tinge, I made five with a similar dubbing. I also covered my bases by tying five with my previously favored light olive and maroon thread rib. Finally I refurbished five carry over comparadun style flies by carefully adding more microfibbet tails for better support. These were flies that did not float well when presented two summers ago thus leading to the parachute green drake experiment.

Underside

I now believe I have numerous options that will serve my needs depending on the size of the green drakes and coloration of the body. The challenge will be to observe and identify what is transpiring on the water and to select the correct option for the situation.

Muggly Caddis 02/27/2014 Photo Album

Last winter after completing my production tying of tried and true patterns that have earned a permanent place in my fly box, I decided to experiment with some new patterns. I paged through magazine articles and several of my fly tying books for patterns that caught my eye. As I flipped thorugh Charlie’s Fly Box, I spotted the muggly caddis. This fly appealed to me because it had a very shaggy buggy look and used snowshoe rabbit foot hair as an underwing. I’d read articles about snowshoe rabbit foot hair, and my friend Jeff in Pennsylvania had mentioned that he experimented with it.  The hair possesses natural oils that repel water, so I was intrigued to use this material in a dry fly.

The other interesting thing about this fly is it is tied to look used. Charlie Craven provides an explanation for this with a story in his book before describing the tying steps; but in short another fisherman was outfishing him, and Charlie asked to see his fly, and it was mangled and chewed up to the point that it barely looked like an insect.

I bought a pair of snowshoe rabbit feet and tied 10 or 15 muggly caddis with tan and olive bodies in sizes 14 and 16. They looked great, or perhaps it is better to say they looked shaggy and used, and I tested them on several occasions during 2013 with some positive results. In addition the snowshoe rabbit feet brought me an inordinate amount of good luck in 2013. Actually I did have a reasonably good year in 2013, but I’m hesitant to attribute it to the good luck charm of a rabbit’s foot.

A Gray Muggly Caddis

For 2014 I decided to augment my supply of muggly caddis by tying five more to bring my total inventory to 20; however, I got carried away and made five with a light gray body and then five more with an olive brown hares ear body. These are the two body colors I use the most when prospecting with caddis to match the local insects.

Olive Brown Muggly Caddis

Once I’d completed the 10 muggly caddis, I thought of the idea to create some muggly sallies to imitate yellow sally stoneflies. I always seem to be short of these flies, and a quick scan of my box indicated that I only had 5-10 in my backlog, so I churned out five yellow muggly sallies. The yellow versions were tied in size 16, and they look very similar to the deer hair yellow sallies I normally tie minus the hackle. Hopefully the fish like them as well, and the snowshoe rabbit hair makes them float well. The fish will be the ultimate judge of the muggly sally.

Muggly Yellow Sally

Comparaduns 02/21/2014 Photo Album

Every time I type the word comparadun, my spell checker goes crazy. What in the world is a comparadun?

When I began fly fishing in the 1980’s in Pennsylvania all the classic dry flies were created in the Catskill tying style. Nearly all mayflies were imitated with a fly consisting of a dry fly hook (Mustad 94840), fibers from a rooster neck hackle for a tail, a dubbed body, a wing made from wood duck flank feathers, and a hackle from a rooster neck wound around the hook shank behind and in front of the wings. The size of the fly and color of the dubbing and hackle were varied to match all the various mayflies that served as significant food to the trout.

Another Side View

Sometime during this learning time period I purchased the book Hatches and read about the many types of mayflies and their unique characteristics and how to imitate them. The authors introduced a system of flies that they claimed could match most mayfly hatch matching situations, and they placed the prefix “compara” in front of their flies. For adult mayflies they offered a chart that consisted of four to six color combinations that could match a large percentage of the mayflies one might encounter. They also designed a style of fly that rode low in the surface film, and they claimed that this style presented a more precise silhouette of a mayfly dun particularly in smooth water. These flies were named comparaduns.

I quickly read all the chapters on the various mayflies that frequented the Northeast, but I continued to tie the Catskill style flies that required the purchase of expensive rooster necks with quality hackle feathers. I recall experimenting with a few comparaduns, but I didn’t like the appearance of my efforts using fairly undeveloped tying skills.

When I moved to Colorado I continued tying Catskill style dry flies; however, the variety of mayflies was much narrower in scope, so I didn’t need to tie nearly as many mayfly imitations as I did in Pennsylvania. In fact after hiring several guides I was introduced to nymphing with a strike indicator and began to experience a significant amount of success with this method. This also pushed me away from tying mayflies and fishing the surface.

Cinnamon Comparadun

Fairly soon after our move to Colorado I began attending the outdoor exposition that is held in Denver every winter, and on one of these visits I watched Marty Bartholomew demonstrate how to tie a comparadun. This lesson motivated me to tie a few so I could reinforce the tips and lessons learned. The two keys to making a good looking comparadun are splitting the tail fibers so that they serve as outriggers to support the hackle-less fly, and being able to splay the deer hair so that it forms a semi-circle around the hook shank. The bottom fibers of the deer hair also help to support the fly. My early efforts ignored these two basics, and I ended up with ugly flies that would not stand up, and the wing typically leaned forward unlike natural mayfly duns.

Marty showed me how to split the tails so they V’ed outward from the end of the abdomen, but his major contribution was advice on forming the wing. He suggested purchasing coastal deer hair as it is much finer and easier to work with particularly on small flies; but the significant tip was to stop the dubbing short of the wing, and this left a small gap. This allowed the wing to slant slightly backward once the tyer wrapped the dubbing tightly in front of the wing; and then after the wing was positioned, he took a wrap or two behind the wing to fill in the space beneath the wing. What a difference this made! My flies looked like real mayflies with the wing cocked slightly toward the rear, and they floated nearly as well as Catskill style flies. Best of all, I no longer needed expensive neck hackles to form a collar on my flies.

I now produced a nice batch of size 16 comparaduns, but I suspect they took up space in my fly box and were not utilized for a few years, until I encountered a strong pale morning dun hatch on the Colorado River. I tried some Catskill style PMD’s to no avail and in desperation reached in my box and extracted one of the size 16 light gray comparaduns. Much to my amazement this fly began to dupe brown trout like no other dry fly I had ever used. It didn’t take long before I became a disciple of the comparadun, and I began to tie them for pale morning duns, green drakes, and various eastern mayflies prior to infrequent return visits to Pennsylvania.

The final step in my comparadun evolution was the discovery of microfibbets. Microfibbets are synthetic fibers that take the place of hackle fibers. One buys them as bunches and they are dyed various colors, and they look like very fine monofilament or bristles from a synthetic paint brush. Microfibbets are much stiffer than hackle fibers and make even better outrigger tails for supporting comparaduns.

Good View of Split Microfibbet Tails

My supply of light gray comparaduns dwindled a bit over the last two summers, so I visited my fly tying desk and cranked out 28 new imitations over the last week or two. I tied them in sizes 14, 16 and 18 and made an equal number of light gray and cinnamon versions. During a visit to the Frying Pan River in September 2013 I discovered that the educated trout in that fabled river were selective to pale morning dun imitations with a cinnamon body, and the size of the late season PMD’s seemed to be on the small side, thus the size 18 flies.

There you have it. My evolution to a comparadun fan, and where I’m focusing my dry fly tying efforts in 2014.