Viking Lars | Saturday, 2 December 2017
I'm quite the Oliver Edwards fan. I've had the pleasure of meeting on no less than four occasions on flytying courses. Apart from a fantastic flytyer and a generous and funny man, he's an excellent teacher. I've taken many of his ways of teaching and used them, both in my own flytying courses and even in casting courses.
He's written numerous articles and of course, his ground breaking book, Fly Tying Masterclass, on his semi-realistic fly designs. Many of these quickly became permanent inhabitants in my own flyboxes.
His Baetis nymph is a fantastic fly that fishes really well and is also a great example of the way he ties and designs flies. Simple materials, and the rest is skills.
He's had different flytying materials made to his specifications. SLF Masterclass dubbing was/is a great dubbing, but I think the most important one was his "Oliver Edwards Sparkle Yarn". A simple synthetic yarn in different colours with a bit of white antron sparkle blended in. This is the material he uses in flies like his famous Hydrosyche Larva (one of the best nymph patterns I know) and his small BWO Nymph.
With the Sparkle Yarn comes a specific tying technique that produces beautiful tapered and segmented bodies on flies. This technique is the essential part in the Hydrosyche Larva. Unfortunately it's becoming hard to find now, and although I have found, and use, newer substitutes, there's something about the "real deal" that's really hard to find on other products.
Just another example of flytying metarials I should have bought in bulk back when I had the chance.
So - if anyone has any lying around - please get in touch. I'll buy, swap it, take it - whatever :-).
A patterns of my own where it finds use is in my Sulphurea Emerger (in today's PoD). The H. suphurea nymph is very dark just as it emerges to hatch and Oliver Edwards' BWO-coloured Sparkle Yarn has just the right colour when wet. And when spun tight, it tapers, produces a nice segmentation effect (as mentioned) and make sure the abdomen sits below surface. This is one of the colours I'm running out of.
Have a great weekend!
Lars