Monday, February 18, 2013

Shrimp Cocktail?

At the vise on this fine presidents day evening I went to work on production style tying. Not nearly as many as some commercial guys do but I knocked out a dozen to be shipped out this week. In the past I would tie each fly one by one, so this time I tried a different method that I know some commercial tyers do. Do one to a couple major steps at a time on each fly and then move onto the next step. I actually liked it a lot. Kept my area cleaner and I felt I tied better flies since I concentrated on one step. 

The fly I was tying was my Franken Shrimp. Originally, I produced the fly for an excellent website called Franken Fly. The site can be found here http://www.frankenfly.com/. Its a site that deserves a bookmark and an everyday visit. The franken shrimp was a featured article on Franken Fly where an SBS was offered. You can find that here: http://www.frankenfly.com/frankenshrimp-step-by-step-ben-treppa/

Another cool thing I did with the Franken Shrimp fly was contact Custom Fly Art for a commissioned painting. When time allows I will post a full review on this, but in short Matthew was AWESOME to work with. He makes a digital painting of your fly pattern using a multitude of techniques. This makes for a super sweet picture for the tying bench. Visit his site here: http://www.customflyart.com/. Here is how it turned out!



Now onto the original reason for the post.. Here are some pics from my night of "production" tying a variant of the SBS I linked to above.

Beadchain eyes tied on and glued down


Arctic Fox "tail" and Krystal Flash


Shrimp eyes tied in and super-glued


Body wrapped, Hackle Palmered, and Rubber Legs added

The "Master" at Work!


Deer hair wing and Finishing


Heads coated with Deer Creek Thin UV Epoxy (found here http://www.deercreek.co.uk/DIAMOND-UV-RESINS.html)


Inspiration for the Night (if you like hops this is a must have)

That's all for now..

2 comments:

  1. Great work! Whenever I tie flies that include bead heads or lead eyes I generally affix them first all at once, but have never tried breaking an entire fly down step by step to do in bulk. I really like the concept and it looks as if it works great!

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    1. Thanks Patrick! It worked out very well and I recommend giving it a shot.

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