Peacock quill – How to use it

When talking about peacock quill everyone thinks about the stripped barbs of the feathers from the peacock’s tail. Everyone expects it to be wide, nicely colored, gradually from white to dark grey, with a glossy look as if it were waxed. The peacock quill is used because it imitates very good the abdominal part of the dry flies and emergers.
The problem is that a quill of high quality can’t be found anywhere in the feather but only in the area of the eye of the feather. Even so, good feathers are from peacocks older than 5 years. The young ones have thinner feathers and the quill is not so brightly colored.
You can see in the picture below how to get this quill easily:

If you need to tie a large quantity of flies and you’re not in the mood to clear off the fine puff from the barbs with the rubber, there are stripped feathers for sale. To obtain the stripped quills a chemical solution is needed, more exactly sodium hypochlorite. This solution burns the puff but it will also slightly affects the quill. For this reason it becomes more sensible and breaks more easyly if the tier is not too careful.

An important advice: always fix the bottom of the quill and not the tip. The tip is more delicate and doesn’t have the needed colors, the hues are not so strong and won’t create the desirable contrast.

The barbs have a natural bent.Each of them are slightly bent towards the eye. It is important to know that the external side of the barb is nicely colored, glossy  and the inner side is more white, softer and more fragile.

In the photos below the barb is fixed at its bottom so that the external, glossy side of it appears on the exterior.

Here appears the texture of the body dependent on which side of the quill I used.

If the other side of the quill is used on the exterior, it will be more fragile and breakable. Thin cracks can immediately be seen.

To increase the durability of the fly, before making the body put a drop of head cement on the shank of the hook.

Here are the catchy outcomes.

happy tying :)

Amadou – the best material for drying your flies

Amadou is a word that for some fishermen doesn’t mean a thing, but for others, it means saving a day of fishing…This Amadou is nothing else but a piece of material with a big water absorption power and which is soft and velvety at the same time. This mysterious material has a biological origin and it is nothing else but a tinder, an ordinary tree fungus that was modified in order to get the above mentioned properties. Initially, in the past, hundreds of years ago, before cotton was discovered, this miraculous material was used for surgeries as an absorber. People used it for cleaning and dressing the wounds; unlike other textures that had a highly microbial risk, this one, by its modifying procedures used to get to the final form, became clean. Of course, in the old days people didn’t know what a microbe was, but they started making analogies between the wound dressing material and their risk of infection. This was the role of this Amadou in the past of our medicine. It was also used by beekeepers, as a smoke source; by its slow, long lasting burning, this tinder made a strong, thick smoke that was used for removing or calming the swarms of flies when a person ingathered the honey. In time it was rediscovered as a strong absorbing material and fly-tiers began using it more and more often for removing the water from their flies.

Having the finesse and the softness that I told you about, the Amadou doesn’t destroy the shape of the fly, it doesn’t break the fine feather barbs of the hackle, which is very important. You will probably say: “That’s fine, we can do without it, we have silicone” and I agree with you up to one point. Silicone is good for big flies, from #16 down, maybe not even for the ones tied on #16 hooks. It stuffs the body and quite often, by the additives that it contains, it modifies the colors of the fly in time.

The same thing happens to the hackle, I’ve often noticed the changing colors of the feather barbs or even their increasing fragility. I’m not against this silicone, on the contrary, I myself use it and find it useful, but not for any kind of fly, not for the pretentious ones, mostly for the big ones. The Amadou gives me back the characteristics of the fly before throwing it on the water. Most of all, if it’s tied with CDC, than I can forget all about silicone, since it stuffs it and it destroys its structure and finesse for good. Obtaining this miraculous material is quite difficult and long lasting and it also has many secrets that are hard to find from the few people that still make it.

The fungus, the beech or the oak tree tinder (not all of them are good) is picked in winter, when there’s no more water in it and when its vegetation stopped. Why? I can’t really tell you why, the fact is that how it’s done; it wouldn’t be so delicate, so soft, if picked when it’s still green. Then they leave it to macerate in barrels containing water and ashes for weeks, even 3 months. Then they pull it out of these barrels, they clean it and they boil it for many, many hours, following alternative stages of cooling and slicing it into different pieces, and afterwards they hammer them using wooden hammers.

The secret is that the cutting is done in a certain way, under a certain angle (so that it doesn’t destroy the fiber); the same thing happens with the hammering and in the end they laminate it. The hammered, boiled, re-hammered and re-boiled piece is pulled through some wooden platens that stand for a mill, platens that determine its final thickness and that also take the water out of it. The pieces have to be scalded before pulling them through the platens, so that the pores can strongly dilate when the water is being pulled out of them and that they stay fluffy in the end. All of these things are done in an order and a regularity whose secret is harshly kept; I stood and admired the work of such a man and as much as I insisted, I still wasn’t able to follow the whole process.

All I can tell you is that it takes a lot of time and that it is extremely interesting and fascinating the fact that from a hard piece of tinder you can get such a soft, delicate, strange-colored material, with a bark perfume and having multiple functions for obtaining fire, smoke, bandage, decorative caps and even fly-drier. I can’t really explain how the human mind was able to invent such a thing, but I simply enjoy the advantages of the Amadou.

Micro Glitter Nymph- for French Nymphing Style -“nymphe a vue”

Micro Glitter Nymph is a fly made for french fishing  style – so called “nymphe a vue”

The profile of the body is very slim and nice, and  the nymph has hot spots  that induces  the attack of the fish.

Materials that I used for this fly:

Fly Hooks: Maruto Dohitomi D04#16

Threads:UTC yellow and Textreme Glitter

Tails: Coq de Leon feathers

Hot Spots: Textreme Glitter

Bodies: Peacock Quill hand stripped

Beads: tungsten beads

Coating: Diamond Hard UV Resin

And here is the stp by step:

The same fly tied with black bead.

 

Catgut Pupae

Catgut is a great fly tying material for making nice flies with realistic aspect.If you are interested in catgut, you can find  more info here.

Caddis pupae is one of the most effective flies for trout and grayling in Spring and Summer fishing time.

Here is the step by step:

Materials:

Hook: Maruto Dohitomi C46WBL #12

Thread: Textreme Standard 6/0 thread-black color

Body Thread: Devaux yellow body thread

Body: Catgut – natural

Gills: White rabbit dubbing

Legs: Partridge hackle

Torax: Mad Rabbit Dubbing – natural and rust mixed

Bead: Tungsten bead – gold color

happy tying :)

Lucian

3 Candies for trout and grayling

These flies are among  my favorite flies for nymph fishing. I use them almost all the time, in deep waters, fast waters and in muddy  waters. These all around patterns are  versatile and can be used  for the entire fly fishing season.

Beside  the colors of the bodies, texture of the materials and hot spots,  the hook used for these flies assures  their efficiency: short shank and wide gap offers a great contact with the fish during the drill.

 

 

Materials:

Hooks: Maruto Dohitomi D9626 BL #14-16

Thread:Textreme  Micro Floss – yellow

Hot Spot Thread: Standard Thread 3/0 – fluo hot orange

Body: turkey biot in tan, brown and light olive colors

Tail: coq de leon: corzuno claro, flor de escoba and rubion

Torax: mad rabbit dubbing

Beads: Tungsten  gold beads

MayFly tyed with CDC

The fly is identical with this one tied with standard hackle:

The difference between these two flies  is that I use the fly tied with CDC on very clear and shallow waters.

The step by step is the same for both flies. The  difference is in the hackle: for one I use chocolate dun hackle and for the other I use tan CDC feather:

 

Materials that I used:

Hook: Maruto Dohitomi D04 #12 -#14

Body Thread: Micro Floss – yellow

Body: Ultra Selected CDC -tan ( beige gold )

Ribbing: Pure Silk – brown

Tail: 4-5 pheasant tail barbs – natural brown

Wings: Lemon Wood Duck genuine

Hackle: Ultra Selected CDC -tan ( beige gold )

Somewhere in Romania

These pictures were taken from on one of the rivers that I love very much.

The place is very quiet and almost all the time  there aren’t any fishermen on it.

The silence and majesty of the mountains makes you feel deeply connected with the river and all the elements of nature. When I’m there I forget about everything: job, car, town, people, pollution, problems…  I’m completely  disconnected from the social live.  I’m only a man with his rod  searching for the perfect cast.