Re: [VFB] Sidewinders

[Troy Allgood]

Here's the story of the no-hackle, or sidewinder dun, as I know it.  The fly was first tied by Swisher and Richards and published in their book, this said with the assumption that the first person to publish a pattern is the first one to tie it......Rene Harrop was tying flies for Will Godfrey and as a boy had learned to tie wings on by taking patterns apart.  In taking a blue dun fly apart as a boy, he had assumed wrongly how the wing was tied on.  He thought that the wings were held on the hook as they would later appear on the fly, so he started tying wings on by holding them under the hook and looping the thread around the wings and the hook.  By the time he was tying for Godfrey's, he had perfected the technique and Doug Swisher saw some of his flies in the shop.  The wings were a lot fuller than the flies Doug had been able to tie.  Rene showed the pattern and the way to tie it to Mike Lawson.....Both of those guys tie them better than anyone I've ever seen.  The fly itself, for me at least, is a bugger to tie.  The wing is mounted by looping the thread around the wings and the hook, but thread tension is the key....and it's something that you just have to get  the feel for.  Rene says it's the only fly he can tie with his eyes closed...(I think he could tie a lot that way myself).  Most fishermen I know who use the fly buy them and throw them away when the wings separate.  But that's just when they start to produce.  I've found that a fly with full wings on 7x tippet will twist the tippet really badly.  After one fish and the wings are a little tattered, the fly doesn't spin and I get more fish with them....   Troy [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.geocities.com/tcallgood/index.html   "Not many of us shoot ourselves during the evening hatch".....Jim Harrison