Cattle Yard Byproducts

But I've been watching fishing and fly-tying online, as well as mooching through books and tying flies that I really don't need.  I've been struck, not for the first time, by how much utter nonsense is being pushed on people. And not just by young influencers as many people like to pretend. For example, I learned several times this week that I can't use normal floatant on CDC, that’s news to me a guy who's been successfully using gink and mucilin on everything for 30 years. This was from old established people in the fishing media, as well as kids who're probably just parroting what the Orvis endorsed guys are saying in the hope of getting a discount or free stuff. Like CDC specific floatant that I suspect is the reason normal floatant no longer works on CDC.  Why not just explain how to apply it properly rather than gunking up the fly? 

I also read a thing by Stan Headley, in which he pronounced with great certainty that wild trout don't eat boobies. This was something he seemed quite pleased about for some reason. I can't really understand that, some imagined superiority because a fish will eat, say a fluorescent orange and gold wet but not a booby. It's nonsense obviously, on 2 fronts. 1, it's no more artful to pull an orange palmer on a di5 than to pull a booby, or god forbid a blob, on a di5. Then 2 wild trout eat boobies all the time! And blobs. Now, I don't really care what Stan thinks about things, but there are a lot who do. To the point where they'd watch someone catching wild fish after wild fish on boobies and still say that they don't eat them because Stan Headley says they don't. It's not generational though, I remember long ago in the Loch Leven bar talking to a few guys after an international qualifier and the general conclusion being that putting foam eyes on a pulling fly was just about the best thing you can do.  Might not suit the traditionalists, but that's not relevant to the reality of what's happening. There was a similar carry on with buzzers on wild lochs, which was more intense in Ireland, maybe 25 years ago, before the weight of evidence became overwhelming. 

Then there's the nanosilk nonsense. I'm sure I've written about this before.  I'm not opposed to GSP thread, and have been using it for a lot longer than semperfli and their relentless marketing has existed, remember Roman Moser? But I only use it for jobs that make sense, like stacking deer hair or large predator flies where the strength or durability really makes a difference. For almost everything else there's no advantage to GSP in my opinion, and I think it probably stops people becoming better tiers.  Think about the main reasons for using small diameter GSP. You'll bend or break the hook before the thread breaks, OK but then you never really need to care about or, for a beginner, learn thread tension, except maybe to stop it cutting something like foam.  Then there's the ability to put loads of wraps on the fly without creating bulk /crowding the eye. Why? Why do people want to put loads of wraps on? Normal polyester or nylon threads are much grippier and there's no need for 15 wraps when 3 or 4 will hold pretty much anything.  The fly I tied for the POD is a size 16 tied with Pearsall’s silk, which is considerably thicker than 6/0 uni.  There’s no need to use 15/0 nanosilk and spend half the day filling the hook.

There are more, but I realise I’m sounding a bit like a grumpy old man, which is probably a product of being stuck indoors, so I’ll not go into detail about any more of the things that irked me.  Lefty was right though; stockyards have nothing on fly fishing.