Before you start on the second lesson you should have tied several of the Grey Hackle, yellow body flies to get the feel of tying. The more flies you tie the easier it will become. It is always a good idea to tie enough of each one of the patterns in each lesson to acquaint yourself with the materials. Make sure you will not have to go back over the instructions each time you want to tie a particular pattern. After you have completed these lessons you should have a good idea how to tie most of the patterns and be able to remember the materials used in tying them.

Place a No. 6 or a No. 8 hook in the vise as you did in the first lesson. Be sure the hook is parallel with the top of the table and the point is covered by the jaws of the vise. Tighten the jaws of the vise so that the hook is held very firmly, to prevent any slippage of the hook or break in the barb.

Measure off about 16 or 18 inches of your 2/0 black tying silk and cut it from the spool. After thoroughly waxing the tying silk, attach the silk to hook and wrap it to the bend of the hook as you did in the first lesson. Then take a half-hitch. Again, be sure you have wrapped silk all the way to bend of hook, to avoid having a body which is short and bunched.

The first step in tying this fly is to wrap on the tip, a part which we did not have on the fly tied in the first lesson. Measure off about 6 inches of gold tinsel from the spool of narrow gold tinsel. Cut it off and tie this piece of tinsel on at the bend of the hook. The free end of the tinsel will extend over the bend of the hook, to your left. Wrap the gold tinsel, each turn very close to the next, down about 3/l6ths of an inch on the bend of hook, wrapping clockwise. Then wrap back over tinsel to the point where the tying silk is attached to the hook. Cross over the tinsel with the tying silk; take 2 or 3 turns with the silk and then a half-hitch. This will hold the tinsel tight. Cut off the excess tinsel.

The fly you are now tying has no tail, so you are ready to place the body material on the hook. From a peacock tail feather take 4 or 5 of the fibres. These fibres are called `'herl." You can either pull the herl fibres off the quill or you can cut them off with your scissors. I prefer to cut them because it saves a step in tying. Place the butt ends of the herl fibres at the bend of the hook and hold them on top of the hook, between the thumb and forefinger of your left hand. Then, with the up and down sweep of the tying silk between your fingers and the hook, take 2 or 3 turns with the tying silk, finishing with a half-hitch. Remember, don't throw a half-hitch on the shank of the hook; do it as explained in the first lesson. When you have done this make 4, 5 or 6 spirals with the tying silk up to a point 3/l6ths of an inch from the eye of the hook, then a half-hitch at this point. This places the tying silk completely out of the way until you next need it at this point.

Taking hold of the strands of peacock herl at or near their tips, spiral them very closely on the shank of the hook, one turn next to the other. Wrap the herl, clockwise, around the shank toward the eye of the hook, to the point where the tying silk is tied. This will give you a very even and full body for your fly. When you have wound the peacock herl on the hook, spiralling it up to this point, bring the ends forward a little, cross over with the tying silk, take 3 or 4 turns and finish the wrap with a half-hitch. Cut off the unused portion of the peacock herl.

Now you are ready to put the hackle on this fly. Much of your success in fishing depends on the hackle used on the fly. You may have a fly which you believe will produce one or two fish out of a hidden spot under a log or from under the washed-out roots of a tree. Perhaps you know there is one hidden in front of a large rock or lurking below it. You have an idea that a floating fly will do the trick. Or, on the other hand, you may be sure that a fly that will sink below the surface is called for. It is the materials which you use in tying the fly that will determine the fly you will use to get the proper action and the depth to meet the occasion. Hackle, I believe, is one of the main factors in keeping the fly on the surface or dropping it under the water to the depth required.

Select a brown hackle feather from either the cape or the neck that you have or from your packet of brown saddle hackle. Hold it in your hand; look at it very closely. You will find that the two sides of the hackle are different. One side is bright and shiny; the other is dull. The dull side is considered dry. The shiny side is wet. Looking at the feather again you will find the feather is curved or has an arch running from the base of the feather to the tip. Some feathers have more curve or arch than others. The underside—the concave side—is the dull side, classed as dry. The top side of the feather— the convex side—is shiny and is considered the wet side. Now, to make it very simple, here is a formula that I have worked out, in but very few words: When checking hackle you need only know two words. The words are DULL-DRY. The dull side is the dry side. Knowing this, it's automatic that the other side—the shiny side—is the wet side of the hackle.

If the shiny side of the hackle faces the front of the hook—that is, if the shiny side is next to the eye of the hook—the fly will be wet. If the dull side of the hackle faces the front of the hook, the fly will be dry. The reason for this is the greater resistance of the fibres when the hackle is tied dry. If tied wet, the hackle fibres have very little resistance. The pressure of the water bends, or flattens them and the fly will go under the surface of the water. With the dull, or dry, side of the hackle wrapped on facing the front of the fly, the fibres of hackle have the greatest amount of resistance. The fibres appear much more stiff, they stand straight and stay in the same position in which they were tied. The tendency of a dry-tied fly, consequently, is to stay on top of the water. You will have to tie, and try out, a few of the flies, some tied dry and some tied wet, to see for yourself the difference. Another point to remember is that the hackle used must be free of web to make a satisfactory dry fly. If the hackle used in tying the fly has web on it, whether it be tied wet or dry, the webbed hackle will absorb moisture and that fly will soon sink below the surface of the water. When it sinks it automatically becomes a wet fly.

Hold the hackle feather that you have selected up to the light. You will notice that along the quill, running usually about half way up the feather, there is a fuzziness or web that holds the fibres together. There is no separation of the fibres from one another at the base, one is held to the other by a film of minute particles. The amount of the web on hackle feathers varies, being greater on some than on others depending on the age and the type of the bird. Some of the finest hackle you can obtain is almost free of any web. These will cost a little more but you will probably be able to use practically all of each feather.

Now, hold the hackle you are checking and bend the tip of the feather to its base and note how much of the feather is free of web. As the fly you are now tying is to be a dry fly, you want only hackle which is free of web; and you can judge just how much of the selected feather you can use. Also, you will be able to gauge the length of the hackle which is suitable for your use on this fly at the same time. When you have found a hackle feather that is of the proper quality, with the right length of hackles, hold the feather near the tip between the thumb and forefinger of your right hand and, with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand, strip off all hackle fibres that are fuzzy and webbed. Remember, when you gauge the hackle for size bend the tip of the hackle feather to its butt, place the middle of the bent portion of hackle on top of hook with the quill of the feather at the point where tying silk is now tied. If hackle fibres are not longer than the body, that is if the tip of the fibres come just to bend of hook, you then have the right size hackle for this fly and are ready to tie it on the hook.

After stripping off the fuzz and webby portion, cut off the base of the quill to within 1/8th or an inch of the point where the fibres start. The next step is to attach the hackle feather to the hook at the point where you have the tying silk attached with a half-hitch. Lay the hackle feather alongside the hook, with the feather parallel to the hook and the concave or cupped side—the dull side —of the hackle facing you. Remember that the dull side of the hackle must be facing you at this stage to give your fly a dry hackle. Now, tie the hackle feather, at the base of the quill, to the hook, attaching it firmly with several wraps ending with a half-hitch. Next, take your hackle pliers and grasp the tip of the hackle feather with them. Wrap the hackle on the hook, clockwise. Wrap each turn over the other, thus forcing the hackle fibres to spread. Also, be certain that, as you wrap the hackle on, the dull side of the hackle is facing the front of the fly. This will make the hackle fibres stand straight out from the fly, giving the hackle more resistance to the water and making the fly want to stay on top of the water.

After making 5 turns of the hackle around the hook bring the hackle pliers and the remainder of the hackle feather, held in the pliers, a little in front of the eye of the hook; cross the tying silk over the quill and make 3 or 4 turns over it, finishing with a half-hitch. This will hold the hackle tight enough so that you can now snip off the rest of the hackle held in the hackle pliers.

Taper the head of the fly and complete with a whip finish as instructed in lesson one. If you still have trouble with the whip finish, go over the instructions and study the illustrations in that lesson. Perhaps you will have better results if you will give it a thorough try a second time. As stated before, with the whip finish at the head of the fly and half-hitches at each of the several stages of building the fly, it will be most unlikely that this fly can come apart in use. There is nothing so disgusting as to have a good fly, with which you have picked up several fish, fall apart and then discover that it was the only one of this pattern and size in your fly box. The rest of the day is a complete failure! No other fly will seem to work as well, and there will always be the question, "I wonder how many fish I would have brought home if that fly had only held together?"

Remember that, once you have mastered the whip finish, you will be able to make a very neat tapered head on your fly, tapering it from a fine point at the eye to a much larger size in front of the hackle. Keep on trying until you have mastered this hitch. There are actually only two knots, or hitches, that are essential in fly tying: the half-hitch and the whip finish. The half-hitch is not so difficult, and you no doubt have mastered it. The diagrams of the whip finish in lesson one are very complete; and if you will go back to that lesson and reread the instructions and study the illustrations, I am sure that you can learn to make it by hand. If you still cannot work out the whip finish I suggest that you obtain a whip-finisher tool from a reputable house handling the best materials. As the tool does not wear out you will probably buy only one of them for all the tying you will ever do. But, however you do it, always whip finish your flies. It makes a much neater job and it keeps the tying silk from unraveling.
 
After the whip finish is completed apply a drop or two of very thin fly head lacquer at the head of the fly. This also helps to keep the fly intact under the most rigorous fishing.

If you wish you may also tie this pattern as a wet fly. After selecting the hackle feather and preparing it for use, attach it to the hook with the shiny side of the hackle facing you when you tie it on the hook. Then grasp the tip of the feather with your hackle pliers and wrap 5 turns around the hook, making the turns over each other just as was done on the fly tied with the hackle dry. The shiny side of the hackle is toward the front of the hook on this fly. When you have finished the fly you will see that the hackle bends a little more toward the tail of the fly and there is less tendency for the fibres to stand straight out from the shank of the hook. Upon tying these flies, one with dry hackle and one with wet hackle, you have two more flies that are fishable.

BROWN HACKLE (Dry)

Hook:               No. 6 - No. 18
Tip:                  Gold tinsel, narrow
Body:               Peacock herl, full
Hackle:             Brown hackle, tied dry
 
BROWN HACKLE (Wet)

Hook:               No. 6 - No. 18
Tip:                  Gold tinsel
Body:               Peacock herl, full
Hackle:             Brown hackle, tied wet

These patterns are identical with the exception of the hackle.

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