The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts.
** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below.
Season 18 is a unique look at dry fly styles, through the concept of platforms. By taking a fly shape, a form or a set of materials, we can adapt the elements like color, wing style, tailing material or hackle length to meet the moment. Within the fly platform, we vary its properties to the river conditions or to a specific hatch.
In this seven part Skills Series for season 18, we cover these six dry fly platforms:
1: Upright Hackles
2: Parachutes
3. Comparaduns
4. Down Wings
5. Hoppers and Stoneflies
6. Emergers
This first episode looks at the platform of Upright Hackles. A classic Catskill style, like the Adams, is a perfect example of this platform. Both slimmer and beefier versions are common, each of which are adapted to prioritize the selectivity of the trout or the buoyancy of the fly against heavier currents.
Upright Hackles are perhaps the most common dry fly style, and many popular patterns fit into this platform.
In this episode, we look at the specifics for hook, tail, body, wing and hackle for our first platform in this Skills Series — the Upright Hackle.
This is a great breakdown and a fun conversation with my friend Austin Dando.
Resources
PODCAST: Troutbitten | Fly Tying – Essential Tools and More (S17 Ep9)
READ: Troutbitten | Pattern vs Presentation
PODCAST: Troutbitten | Fishing Dry Flies – Dry Fly Skills Series (S12)
Listen with the player above, or . . .
Find the Troutbitten podcast on any of these services:
— Apple Podcasts
— Spotify
— Google Podcasts
— Amazon Music
. . . and everywhere else where you listen to podcasts.
You can find the dedicated Troutbitten Podcast page at . . .
Season Eighteen continues next week with Parachutes. So look for it in your Troutbitten podcast feed.
Fish hard, friends.
** Donate ** If you enjoy this podcast, please consider a donation. Your support is what keeps this Troutbitten project funded. Scroll below to find the Donate Button. And thank you.
Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Hey now!!! Glad the podcast is back. I’ve been checking every Sunday…Lol. Saving this for my zero dark thirty drive to go fishing tomorrow. As a Colorado based angler, I would love some input from the honorable Mr. Grobe when you get to the stonefly and hopper episode. Happy New Year!!
Confusing list with too many holes. I’d suggest tweaking it so that you cover all of the major types of surface flies used for trout in rivers. Try these:
1. Catskill/upright hackles
2. Parachutes
3. Comparaduns, No-Hackles
4. Klinkhammers; Curved emerger hooks
5. Downwing
6. Spent-wing
7. Extended body
8. Foam body
9. Spun deer hair
These 9 surface pattern types (platforms?) will cover mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, and midges, in all crtical stages of development: emergers, pupa, cripples, adults, and spinners. Also covers beetles, ants, hoppers, moths, mice, frogs, etc., and attractors.
Technically, the vast majority of dry fly patterns do not have positive buoyancy, that is they are slightly more dense than water. It is the surface tension of the meniscus combined with hydrophobic floatants that prevents them from sinking – until they become water logged. Surface flies that exhibit true positive buoyancy, are tied with foam material that is much less dense than water. Air trapping material like hollow deer or elk hair can produce positive buoyancy until it gets waterlogged.
Thanks for your input. We like the our list, and we’ll stick with it. But of course, you should classify things the way they make sense to you. We’ll show you our way, and that’s the point. You might learn a different way of grouping things. Basically, our categories are wider, and here’s why . . .
Not sure if you listened to the podcast, but we explained the point that we aren’t trying to cover everything. Spun deer hair platform is not a useful category to build upon, for me — same with extended body or even spent wing. These platforms should have multiple elements to change significantly, or else they’re, well . . . just patterns again and not really platforms.
Also, the way I see it, buoyancy is all about trapped air. Many flies besides foam creations have trapped air: Deer hair and similar have air within the hollow fibers. But air is also trapped inside a parachute post, or in between those crinkly fibers. It’s also trapped in between the hackle, though much more loosely. So when we eject water from the pattern with a crisp back cast, we renew the air in between that hackle.
Cheers.
Dom