My apologies for abandoning all of you for the last 10 days or so. Jason and I have been working rather intensely to get book # 2 press ready. Reading Waters will be going to the printer this week. As soon as we have a release date we will, of course, post that on our blogs.

In the meantime, I’ve finished Long Flies, book three in the series, and am working on number four, The Angler as Predator. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say I’ve totally finished Long Flies because I am still tying the flies to be featured in the book. Which leads me to this post.

Long flies are built from about every tying material that has ever managed to fall into the eager hands of a fly tyer. Based on the use of materials and design styles, we can divide the long flies into ten categories:

1.    Bucktails (also called Hair Wing Flies) are tied with a wing made from any of a wide variety of long hairs.

2.    Streamers (also called Feather Wing Flies) are tied with a wing made from feathers or part of feathers.

3.    Strip Flies have a wing made from a strip of tanned hide with the fur left on, or similar materials.

4.    Buggers have no wing per se, but rather have an elongate tail made from a variety of materials.

5.    Muddlers and Divers have a packed deer-body hair head that causes them float and to send out strong displacement waves when pulled underwater.

6.    Collared Flies are those in which a wing is applied as a collar of various materials.

7.    Tube Flies are tied on plastic or metal tubes with a variety of materials and tying styles.

8.     Film Flies have been designed to ride on, in, and just under the surface film. (Mice, Poppers, Hair Bugs, Gurglers, Sliders, and others.)

9.    Techno-Flies have lips, wobble wings, spinner blades, rattle chambers, and other devices to give them action and sound not achievable with normal tying methodologies.

10.  Others include those tied without a wing or long tail to represent a variety of elongate invertebrate organisms.

Obviously all of these didn’t arise at the same time. Bucktails and Streamers had their origins first, and nearly simultaneously, in the work of Harvey A. Donaldson, who created and fished both bucktails and streamers as early as 1875. His first streamer was a real Down and Dirty fly, no doubt. In fact it was nothing but 4 white chicken feathers lashed to the hook, cupped sides facing out.

The design of this fly is genius. Donaldson wanted an imitation that really gave a strong pulsing motion in the water, and turning the feathers cup-face outward certainly did just that. Many tyers/anglers won’t tie or use flies with such wings because they are not as streamlined and artistic looking as ones with the cup-faces together and toward the inside. But Donaldson was looking for fish catching action, not just an arty fly, and he certainly found it. Only a bare hook with four feathers lashed in place. It still works as a great Down and Dirty Streamer.

The Donaldson Streamer is nothing but four feathers lashed on the hook--the silver hook is my idea just to give the fly a little flash.