Paul was the lucky winner of the Currentseams 200th Follower Contest. He had his choice of striper, trout, or steelhead flies, and Paul went with the striped bass fly selection. He also mentioned that he was a big fan of the spring cinder worm hatch, so I tied up a bunch of Orange Ruthlesses, my favorite clam worm fly. I also included some sand eel patterns, some soft-hackle/flatwing baitfish, and a classic sparse bucktail.
Starting clockwise from bottom center: the Orange Ruthless, a single-feather flatwing; a Big Eelie in the Bruiser color template; the Golden Knight, a matchstick sand eel bucktail; a juvenile herring bucktail, unnamed, tied so sparse you can read a newspaper through it; a soft hackle/flatwing hybrid in Ray’s Fly colors (a good fly on a bright day); and a soft-hackle/flatwing hybrid in Easterly colors (tailor-made for a gray-green rainy blow).
Thanks to Paul for allowing me to take my time with these.
We’ll have another fly giveaway when we reach 300 followers. Thanks to everyone for your support, readership, and kind words.
Steve,
I’m absolutely thrilled with your choice of flies for my Striper Fly Selection. Can’t wait to get them and to give them a try come May. It’s snowing hard here in VT now, so I can only dream…..
Thanks very much for your generous gift.
Paul
We aim to please. Speaking of please, please email me your shipping address. 🙂
Nice Tie’s, When is your next wet fly 101 presentation?
Mike
Mike, the next WF101 will be March 4 at the Farmington Valley TU Meeting. Details on their site. I hope. 🙂
Fortunate fellow! Superb assortment! Makes me wish I had not followed until that magical 200th but with my luck I would have been #199 1/2! LOL!
Congrats Paul!
Everyone who entered had their name tossed into a hat and a winner was chosen at random. It didn’t matter what your follower number was.
We’ll do another one for the 300th follower. 🙂
no weighted flies? or do you let the line do all the work?
Correct, no weighted flies in this bunch. Generally speaking, I don’t like to add weight to something that’s supposed to look alive. Another consideration is how I’ll be fishing the flies, and with many of these, that’s going to be near the surface.
I use a floating line the vast majority of the time, so I rely on mending to help sink the flies. If I need to get down deep, it’s usually a combination of mending and some T-11 sink tips.
Hoping to answer this question in greater detail on currentseams soon. 🙂