The following photos walk you through tying a Light Cahill Flymph. In today's parlance a Flymph is an emerger but people didn't fish or talk about emergers in 1941 when Pete Hidy coined the term Flymph.
Hidy used a pre-spun dubbing rope to make the body when tying this style of fly. In this sequence a dubbing loop is used instead of a pre-spun dubbing rope. Many people don't want to bother making dubbing ropes ahead and so use this dubbing loop method.
So scroll on down and see how Hughes ties a Flymph. The basic pattern Hughes uses in the book is the March Brown. The recipe is:
Hook: 2X Stout, size 12-16
Thread: Pearsall's Gossamer silk, crimson.
Hackle: Brown or furnace hackle
Tail: Brown or furnace hackle
Rib: Narrow gold tinsel
Body: Hare's Mask fur or Hare's Ear Plus #7, tan.
Hughes encourages you to tie variations and lists one he calls
the Ginger Wingless it is the fly shown below. Click on any of these
pictures to enlarge them. The pattern list for a Ginger Wingless has ginger
hackle for the Tail and Hackle and uses ginger dubbing in the dubbing loop.
Tie
your hen hackle in with the concave side facing you. Tie it in sticking out over
the eye and bring the thread back to the midpoint of the shank. That
hackle is ginger - honest - sorry the flash washed it out. It does show ginger
in some of the lower photos - guess I need a photo lab with good lights.
To
tie in the tails rotate
the vise so that you are looking down on the top of the shank and tie in 5-7
soft hackle barbules. Take them from the same Light Ginger hen neck as you
did the front hackle feather. Bind the butt of the barbules to the midpoint of the shank and wrap
the thread back
to the bend of the hook holding and binding the fibers on top of the hook as you wrap.
When you reach the bend take a wrap under the tail fibers but on top of the hook
- this will force the tips of the tail fibers to splay. Then bring the thread back to
the midpoint of the shank.
Capture
the ribbing at the midpoint of the shank and bind it by wrapping back to the
bend of the hook. Stopping where the tail fibers stick out from under the
previous wraps as shown in the picture to the left. Don't knock the tail
fibers out of alignment. Don't leave the thread there bring it again to
the midpoint of the hook where you will form a dubbing loop.
Once you have a dubbing loop formed tease your dubbing into a strand and insert the dubbing into the loop. Note that the loop in the picture is hanging from the midpoint of the hook and that there is bare thread above the dubbing.
The bare thread above the dubbing is used up while wrapping the loop thread towards the bend bringing the formed dubbing rope back to the bend where the dubbing will start to form the body.
Here you can see that the dubbing has twisted up fairly tightly yet
remains spiky. Again note the bare thread that will be used up wrapping
back to the bend where the body will start.
This
shows the dubbing loop wound forward to just behind the eye and tied off.
The ribbing material has also been wound forward and is ready to be tied off.
After tying off the rib bring the thread about 1/3 of the hook shank back
- only use one wrap to get back to this point and then one wrap to lock the
thread in at this point.
Now start wrapping the hackle back toward the thread. There are
three stages to this:
1st) make two wraps right together just behind the eye
2nd) make one wrap which takes you back to the thread hanging at midpoint.
3rd) make one wrap where the thread hangs.
Tie
off the hackle at the midpoint and if you're feeling luck you can snap the
hackle pliers towards the eye and the tip will break off in your hackle pliers
and the wrapped hackle will remain secure. However, if you aren't feeling
luck a pair of scissors will trim the tip off nicely. If you look close
you can see I was feeling lucky and snapped the tip off - the tip is right there
in my hackle pliers.
Note the thread is still hanging at the midpoint. It must be wound forward
to the eye by winding over the hackle - do this with 4 or 5 wraps -
the reason for the extra wraps moving towards the eye is that the wraps
reinforce the hackle and make the fly stronger.
In
this photo I've wound the thread forward to the eye, tied a whip finish knot and
trimmed my thread. When you bring the thread forward to the eye be careful
not the bind hackle fibers down as you wrap through the hackle.
Here are three Lt. Cahill Flymphs - sizes 12, 14 and 16.
Here is what Hughes has to say
about the Ginger Wingless:
"Ginger Wingless: The Ginger Wingless matches many light-colored caddis species
that dance over the water and often dive down to lay their eggs on the bottom.
It is an excellent match for them, both because the spiky body traps air
bubbles, and the Antron fibers in the Hare-Tron material deflect light and look
like trapped air. Since the natural caddis adult, swimming towards the
bottom to lay its eggs, takes air down with it, this fly is a natural whenever
you see light or tan caddis in the air and a few fish feeding, but you can't
catch trout with a dry fly that looks anything like the caddis. Try this
wet on a short swing, popped under the water so that it's scant inches deep,
fished to individual rising trout or to a pod of them."
And, I would add it makes a good Light Cahill imitation also. Tie this one up and fish it with confidence.
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