Where to start?

[fishtail]

As another tying novice I would like to know how you experienced tyers blend wing colours to get that nice translucent mix of three colours.

I have been collecting materials to make some simple Salmon and Sea Trout flies and had a go at a Willie Gunn using a good quality bought fly as a pattern. I could not get the bucktail colours to mix unless I picked out a few fibres of each colour with tweezers to make a pile of mixed. All very time consuming and frustrating.

What is a hair stacker? Is this what I need to do the job and keep all the fibres on the table?

Steve

[jock]

For a mixed wing on a tube fly I just take small quantities of each colour and roll them between my fingers. Not all flies have mixed wings like this. Often you will want to have bands of colour in a wing, especially so on singles and doubles and the modern templedog styles. In these cases I have always put the "lighter" colour at the bottom and work up to to the darkest.

Bucktail is not translucent. If you want real translucence you need to go to something like Polar bear. Nowadays there are so many different winging materials it makes you wonder how we managed to catch salmon before we used Polar bear, arctic fox etc. If you are just starting then stick to bucktail. Need a lot of movement in the wing then buy some arctic fox. Need translucence then Polar bear and on and on it goes

Just remember when you are tying a fly, to ask yourself, what am I trying to achieve with this particular fly? Then you will discover the real pleasure and satisfaction of fly tying and will never go near a shop bought fly again. Enjoy.

[salar76]

Fishtail - personally I never use a hair stacker. I prefer to have a 'messier' and more tapered look to my files. If I want to even up the ends a bit, its very easy to just hold the bunch between thumb & forefinger, and pull out the 'long' hairs and put them back in the bunch at a more appropriate length.

[exerod]

jock said:

For a mixed wing on a tube fly I just take small quantities of each colour and roll them between my fingers.

I usually use this method as well.

Another way is to tie in each colour separately. Spread a sparse bunch of hair of one colour all the way around the tube and then follow with the second colour and so on. As long as you don’t use too much hair the colours will mix together fine. Using this method you can easily adjust the length of each colour if you want to, a mixed wing sometimes looks good with some of the lighter colours trailing out behind, well it looks good to me anyway

Andy