How to make a No Hackle Dry Fly - Fly Fishing Video

By: Guest 10 months ago

Does anyone know what tool he used to hold the thread spool. ALSO WHAT THE TOOL AT THE END WAS THAT TIED THE THREAD ON? please email me if you know, thanks kingof1700s@yahoo.co m

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By: Guest More than a year ago

I give the guy some props for tying the No Hackle. His version will catch trout regardless of the variance of his tying method. As others have stated, tremendous difference between the skills of Mike Lawson and Rene Harrop's version and method of tying. This young gents representation comes closer to the original tying sequences of Doug Swisher. I wish the guy continued success and improvements over the course of time in tying No Hackles.

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By: Guest More than a year ago

very interesting pattern, look forward to tying afew of these and trying them out

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By: Guest More than a year ago

This fly will catch a lots of fish, but it's not the way to tie a durable no hackle. I saw the Mike Lawson's video, it's more efficient, and faster to tie than this one.

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By: Guest More than a year ago

This is no doubt the worst example of how to tie a No-Hackle. People- if you truly wish to learn on how to tie a No-Hackle, please see Mike Lawson, Rene' Harrop or Derek Lofquist. These are really the only people on this planet that know how to tie good No-Hackles. No-Hackles are perhaps the most difficult fly to tie and take more than a couple of years to tie effectively.

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How to make a No Hackle Dry Fly - Fly Fishing

I am going to tie now something called a No Hackle Dry Fly, it just simply means that it is a dry fly meant to float on the surface but there is not hackle to aid in flotation, sounds like kind of a strange thing because it seems like how it is going to work but there is specific way that this fly is designed. So it will actually sit in the surface film and right along without any need of extra little barbells to kind of keep it up on the surface. The way it works basically is similar to a parachute fly, in the sense that you have a flat platform that sits in the water, that works in conjunction with a nice blade tail. What happens if you tie these wings in there, they are actually tied in with duck grill section which comes from the situation, have some smaller duck wing feathers. They are like primary feathers and you take these little section off and tie them in his wings. The wings will sit on the water almost like outriggers and they tend to keep that fly on the surface, it's lightweight because we are using a light wire hook and we are using a synthetic dubbing. So it is all very buoyant. I am going to start out this like I have done other flies in the past, that are traditional dry flies and have a ball tied in beginning to give me a little piece materials to display my tail over. We are using a grey thread for this fly can be tied in any color you want to but I am going to tie this in with a grey body so I am using a grey thread. Starting here in the center of the hook, wrap back, this time I am going to be tying into the bends because I am putting a ball of dubbing back there to display my hackle tail out. Okay. Selecting from this thing, patch of dubbing here, this kind of gray material, it is not really solid gray, it is kind of grayish-brown. Some wax on here, cannot much for this ball, just a touch. Smaller size is size 14 could be done without any dubbing at all, just a little ball of thread. But it's a relatively good sized hook, so I want to make sure it is a nice enough ball to get those fibers to spread. It's a little bit more I need, and doing that more frequently than I like to because I will have to pull off that dubbing, it's kind of tough. Well, I have got wax on there. Okay. Now I have selected a medium, actually kind of a dark, medium to dark, blue dun, it's the natural blue dun spade hackle for my tails, it is quite dark. But this is a very nice spade hackle, really good example of what you are looking for the very straight fibers, they are kind of shiny, they are long and they are stiff. Okay, so I am going to grab in here, I will get a relatively long tail because I have to have something any thing I can use to aid that floatation is a good thing. I have to have some really long tail fibers out there so it really will sit on those tails. Now, a lot of people tie very sparse tail, I tend to like a little bit heavier tail in terms of numbers of barbels. And I will probably actually pull some of those out, so we get couple off of there. Because I want to make sure I do have enough material to catch that surface well. Okay, hackle fibers tend to sweep one way or the other up or down, I like them to have sweeping up, see there is a slight turn up, lay them in, it's going to be a long tail. Certainly longer than the hook shank, longer than the entire hook actually. Pinch it down, pull in with a soft loop in, get in and snug it up, move back. I am weaving at this point, the tail fiber is back and forth against that ball. Gets them to move to either side of that ball, okay, turn this so you can see display, pretty good. But I can get them even more play by using my thumbnail underneath, pushing on that ball, okay, that is a good display. And I can even push little more in the top of the hook, thumbnail on that makes it even straight. Okay, to maintain that, not 100% necessary but a nice practice, just to put some head cement on that wrap so they stay in there. Okay, I don't want those things to be slipping around and pulling out during the fishing situation. Once again, the worst thing that can happen is you got the right fly, you don't have a very many of them and you are catching fish on and all of a sudden the tails pull out and the fly won't sink. So I make sure they are in there nice and tight. And once you get fish slam on those tails, they tend to want to stick together, this will make them stay splayed even when they get wet. Okay, in this situation I am going to be tying in the body before I tie the wings in because you need to have a little bit of a foundation of dubbing to build those wings up against. What I have done for my wings, before I selected some sections and I have already got them cut, you want to take matched duck grills which means that you have the two wings, two feathers, put them together that they are going to have just kind of a splaying effect here between each other as you see the main grill sections go off away from each other. Okay. If you took of the same, you wouldn't be able to have matched segments, they should be matched segments. I have cut them earlier and to make them more secure, make them more durable I put some head cement on the back side, the convex side of the feather, okay. Little bit on both sides of those feathers, and that gives them more strength. Now the worst thing about these flies in general is that they do tend to have a very short life if you catch fish on them after a few times, the fish teeth are very sharp, they get in to those fibers of those quelled wings and they tear them up. You can still fish with them that way but it is something that I tend to find a little bit annoying sometimes because of the fact that they fall apart. So I tie a lot of them, so I have more than I need. Because they are beautiful flies. However, they will be falling apart after you get some fish on. So keep that in mind. The dubbing is again that grayish color, now there is a solution to that, I don't find it to as nice with silhouette but you can also use duck shoulder feathers, they come off of the leading edge of a duck's wing and you can tie them in very similar manner, they are more durable. But I don't find them to be quite as effective in terms of what they look like; these look very much like May fly wings. And you will see why; this is also a very classic way of tying in wings that are -- the old Wet fly used to have wings like this, quelled sections, sort of the old dry flies. So I am going to wrap this up relatively thin, weaving the back at the thorax I get up towards the end of edge, get up to the thorax and I get a little thicker. Gap longer that gap, I don't like those gaps in there. Again, it is not the end of the world, I used to have a friend back in Madison I first started tying flies in fishing, he just tied the messiest flies you ever want to see it, but he can catch fish like nobody's business. And I think it was because his flies were kind of messy, and we always talked about that to the friends and his flies were always kind of little bit chunky looking. But he always got fish taking -- so it doesn't make that much difference. However, if you would like to be true to what you want to do in terms and true to the insect, the May fly has a cylinder body so I like to kind of maintain them, I am into the idea of closely matching what I am fishing with, trying to imitate. Okay, now I have got you can see here a little bit of a taper thicker thread then it goes down to a smaller point almost like a bullet or like a missile almost coming down the front there, it goes down to the point as it hits the hook, that's the area where those wings are going to sit against, okay. It is a little tricky and often takes a couple of tries to get them to set right. And the reason why I say these are little bit less desirable flies sometimes because they take a little bit of our time to get on the work just right and then they will fall apart but I am not going to say that as a real negative point because it outweighs, their effect will outweigh, I will just say, all that of the stuff. I am going to lay these in now, okay, somewhat on top of the hook. Now the wing should be in this situation about the length of the shank. I am going to lay them in so I can see that they are actually straddling the hook, okay so they are not sitting right on top and they are also not sitting so I have like this okay, like across the hook, sitting somewhat just on like the middle of the hook sits on the middle of the feather, okay. I do the pinch method here like this. Okay, so I am pinching. I am going to wrap -- now this is kind of hard beginning point for you to see but I am going to wrap around that back wing with a very loose wrap, okay, I am going to go in around this hard, I am just going to explain what I am doing. I am in between the feathers, I am going to wrap around that back wing and under the shaft of the hook that around the shaft inside that's going on the side of there, then up around this front wing. I am going to have that happen as hard to make sure you are doing just right because you can't see it, but you just got to believe you are getting it right in there. Catching the front of that, okay, now I got it. And then down, then around the whole top, and I want to make sure I have enough loose thread that I can do this the whole top. Now I can cinch those down tight. Now before I get too committed though, I am going to check and see if I like what happened. Oops! That often happens to the weight of bottom flip, now if I am okay here with my -- the way I have tied them in I am going to pull back around, I should be okay. Alright, now I can make them tighter. Hope it doesn't happen again. Okay, now I am going to take these and I am going to pull them apart a little bit, make sure I have got where I want them. Just lift them up a little bit, lift them and tie in front as a lift. Okay, there we go, now they are lifted up little bit where I want them to be. And I can open them up now and work them into the position I want them to be in, just like you look down towards bottom of the fly, I don't want them to actually sit right on the top of the fly. I want them to sit up to the side of the fly like that, this will get a little bit crumble here but this is okay, nothing is wrong with that. Head cement in the back of it, okay. Now as you can see that I have got -- are these wings that sits out to the side of the fly, that is what it's going to sit on, okay. It's going to sit on that in the water that is why we can leave the hackle out. Before I lift those up -- so I do not get them to flip on, maybe I am going to cut these off. It is really tricky get in line, needs some time to get these to work right. I am half satisfied with the work, they are plenty effective in terms of how I got them tied but they are not beautiful right now. Once I get the dubbing in then it's going to look a little different, so you see it looks quite nice when it is all filled in. There we go. Oops! I can still -- still able to move so I am going to watch that. One of the reasons this is happening is because I haven't yet come back in contact with the bare metal, okay. So as soon as I do that, I will try to keep minimal tension. Once I make contact with the metal again it wont do that, let see what happens there. Back to that metal, it should be okay. Alright, now to make sure again, I don't have too much so that flipping around effect, I can put some head cement on that wrap. I am going to do that right now. It will soak down and it will push that cement right down to the hook shank, keep it from doing that flipping. Okay, there we go. Wrap in some dubbing, just in front of those wings, it helps to keep them seated down tight against the hook. It also though serves as thorax, ball of a thorax. On a May fly you can see, around it relatively prominent thorax, okay, so I wrapped really kind of loose in the very beginning around those wings. So tilt it up and then I come down, I am going to tape her down towards my head. So I want to get that right down to the end, there we go. Almost looks like a bird or something that sit on the top of the head, and then we go squeeze back into those wings. Okay, that is the effect you are looking for. Now, we have finished that. I will show you what I have got here in terms of the silhouette so you can why it is, this will float without any hackle. Finish this, take some more thread out here. Be careful not to inch that up because that cement hasn't fully set up yet, it can still flip. Well, it does that. Head cement, pass little bit underneath the thread as well as on top. I am going to now check the eye to make sure there is no cement in that eye. There won't be an advantage of tying your own flies you can always do that, and when as you stand there in mid stream with a size 8 hook in your hand, trying to thread up through the -- I have a size 20. Get that out of there unless you have got a little vise which I am going to carry because there are times when I need one. Okay, now I can turn that, show you what happens here with a little bit of silhouette. On your side you can see of those feather sit, his wings sit off the side, while the fly will sit on both the splayed tails and also on the leading and bottom edges, the leading bottom edge of those curl sections. So it nestles right in the surface film. There is the hackle dry fly actually can be tied in bright in colors, doesn't have to be tied on this gray, can be tied to match the blue or olive. I have seen this tied in pretty much any kind of May fly variety you can think of. If you can match color of the wings you can go ahead and tie them any colors you want.

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I am going to tie now something called a No Hackle Dry Fly, it just simply means that it is a dry fly meant to float on the surface but there is not hackle to aid in flotation, sounds like kind of a strange thing because it seems like how it is going to work but there is specific way that this fly is designed. So it will actually sit in the surface film and right along without any need of extra little barbells to kind of keep it up on the surface.

The way it works basically is similar to a parachute fly, in the sense that you have a flat platform that sits in the water, that works in conjunction with a nice blade tail. What happens if you tie these wings in there, they are actually tied in with duck grill section which comes from the situation, have some smaller duck wing feathers. They are like primary feathers and you take these little section off and tie them in his wings. The wings will sit on the water almost like outriggers and they tend to keep that fly on the surface, it's lightweight because we are using a light wire hook and we are using a synthetic dubbing. So it is all very buoyant.

I am going to start out this like I have done other flies in the past, that are traditional dry flies and have a ball tied in beginning to give me a little piece materials to display my tail over. We are using a grey thread for this fly can be tied in any color you want to but I am going to tie this in with a grey body so I am using a grey thread. Starting here in the center of the hook, wrap back, this time I am going to be tying into the bends because I am putting a ball of dubbing back there to display my hackle tail out. Okay.

Selecting from this thing, patch of dubbing here, this kind of gray material, it is not really solid gray, it is kind of grayish-brown. Some wax on here, cannot much for this ball, just a touch. Smaller size is size 14 could be done without any dubbing at all, just a little ball of thread. But it's a relatively good sized hook, so I want to make sure it is a nice enough ball to get those fibers to spread. It's a little bit more I need, and doing that more frequently than I like to because I will have to pull off that dubbing, it's kind of tough. Well, I have got wax on there. Okay.

Now I have selected a medium, actually kind of a dark, medium to dark, blue dun, it's the natural blue dun spade hackle for my tails, it is quite dark. But this is a very nice spade hackle, really good example of what you are looking for the very straight fibers, they are kind of shiny, they are long and they are stiff. Okay, so I am going to grab in here, I will get a relatively long tail because I have to have something any thing I can use to aid that floatation is a good thing. I have to have some really long tail fibers out there so it really will sit on those tails. Now, a lot of people tie very sparse tail, I tend to like a little bit heavier tail in terms of numbers of barbels. And I will probably actually pull some of those out, so we get couple off of there. Because I want to make sure I do have enough material to catch that surface well.

Okay, hackle fibers tend to sweep one way or the other up or down, I like them to have sweeping up, see there is a slight turn up, lay them in, it's going to be a long tail. Certainly longer than the hook shank, longer than the entire hook actually. Pinch it down, pull in with a soft loop in, get in and snug it up, move back. I am weaving at this point, the tail fiber is back and forth against that ball. Gets them to move to either side of that ball, okay, turn this so you can see display, pretty good. But I can get them even more play by using my thumbnail underneath, pushing on that ball, okay, that is a good display. And I can even push little more in the top of the hook, thumbnail on that makes it even straight. Okay, to maintain that, not 100% necessary but a nice practice, just to put some head cement on that wrap so they stay in there. Okay, I don't want those things to be slipping around and pulling out during the fishing situation.

Once again, the worst thing that can happen is you got the right fly, you don't have a very many of them and you are catching fish on and all of a sudden the tails pull out and the fly won't sink. So I make sure they are in there nice and tight. And once you get fish slam on those tails, they tend to want to stick together, this will make them stay splayed even when they get wet. Okay, in this situation I am going to be tying in the body before I tie the wings in because you need to have a little bit of a foundation of dubbing to build those wings up against. What I have done for my wings, before I selected some sections and I have already got them cut, you want to take matched duck grills which means that you have the two wings, two feathers, put them together that they are going to have just kind of a splaying effect here between each other as you see the main grill sections go off away from each other. Okay.

If you took of the same, you wouldn't be able to have matched segments, they should be matched segments. I have cut them earlier and to make them more secure, make them more durable I put some head cement on the back side, the convex side of the feather, okay. Little bit on both sides of those feathers, and that gives them more strength. Now the worst thing about these flies in general is that they do tend to have a very short life if you catch fish on them after a few times, the fish teeth are very sharp, they get in to those fibers of those quelled wings and they tear them up. You can still fish with them that way but it is something that I tend to find a little bit annoying sometimes because of the fact that they fall apart. So I tie a lot of them, so I have more than I need. Because they are beautiful flies. However, they will be falling apart after you get some fish on. So keep that in mind.

The dubbing is again that grayish color, now there is a solution to that, I don't find it to as nice with silhouette but you can also use duck shoulder feathers, they come off of the leading edge of a duck's wing and you can tie them in very similar manner, they are more durable. But I don't find them to be quite as effective in terms of what they look like; these look very much like May fly wings. And you will see why; this is also a very classic way of tying in wings that are -- the old Wet fly used to have wings like this, quelled sections, sort of the old dry flies. So I am going to wrap this up relatively thin, weaving the back at the thorax I get up towards the end of edge, get up to the thorax and I get a little thicker. Gap longer that gap, I don't like those gaps in there. Again, it is not the end of the world, I used to have a friend back in Madison I first started tying flies in fishing, he just tied the messiest flies you ever want to see it, but he can catch fish like nobody's business. And I think it was because his flies were kind of messy, and we always talked about that to the friends and his flies were always kind of little bit chunky looking. But he always got fish taking -- so it doesn't make that much difference.

However, if you would like to be true to what you want to do in terms and true to the insect, the May fly has a cylinder body so I like to kind of maintain them, I am into the idea of closely matching what I am fishing with, trying to imitate. Okay, now I have got you can see here a little bit of a taper thicker thread then it goes down to a smaller point almost like a bullet or like a missile almost coming down the front there, it goes down to the point as it hits the hook, that's the area where those wings are going to sit against, okay. It is a little tricky and often takes a couple of tries to get them to set right. And the reason why I say these are little bit less desirable flies sometimes because they take a little bit of our time to get on the work just right and then they will fall apart but I am not going to say that as a real negative point because it outweighs, their effect will outweigh, I will just say, all that of the stuff.

I am going to lay these in now, okay, somewhat on top of the hook. Now the wing should be in this situation about the length of the shank. I am going to lay them in so I can see that they are actually straddling the hook, okay so they are not sitting right on top and they are also not sitting so I have like this okay, like across the hook, sitting somewhat just on like the middle of the hook sits on the middle of the feather, okay. I do the pinch method here like this. Okay, so I am pinching. I am going to wrap -- now this is kind of hard beginning point for you to see but I am going to wrap around that back wing with a very loose wrap, okay, I am going to go in around this hard, I am just going to explain what I am doing. I am in between the feathers, I am going to wrap around that back wing and under the shaft of the hook that around the shaft inside that's going on the side of there, then up around this front wing. I am going to have that happen as hard to make sure you are doing just right because you can't see it, but you just got to believe you are getting it right in there. Catching the front of that, okay, now I got it. And then down, then around the whole top, and I want to make sure I have enough loose thread that I can do this the whole top.

Now I can cinch those down tight. Now before I get too committed though, I am going to check and see if I like what happened. Oops! That often happens to the weight of bottom flip, now if I am okay here with my -- the way I have tied them in I am going to pull back around, I should be okay. Alright, now I can make them tighter. Hope it doesn't happen again. Okay, now I am going to take these and I am going to pull them apart a little bit, make sure I have got where I want them. Just lift them up a little bit, lift them and tie in front as a lift. Okay, there we go, now they are lifted up little bit where I want them to be. And I can open them up now and work them into the position I want them to be in, just like you look down towards bottom of the fly, I don't want them to actually sit right on the top of the fly. I want them to sit up to the side of the fly like that, this will get a little bit crumble here but this is okay, nothing is wrong with that. Head cement in the back of it, okay.

Now as you can see that I have got -- are these wings that sits out to the side of the fly, that is what it's going to sit on, okay. It's going to sit on that in the water that is why we can leave the hackle out. Before I lift those up -- so I do not get them to flip on, maybe I am going to cut these off. It is really tricky get in line, needs some time to get these to work right. I am half satisfied with the work, they are plenty effective in terms of how I got them tied but they are not beautiful right now. Once I get the dubbing in then it's going to look a little different, so you see it looks quite nice when it is all filled in. There we go. Oops! I can still -- still able to move so I am going to watch that.

One of the reasons this is happening is because I haven't yet come back in contact with the bare metal, okay. So as soon as I do that, I will try to keep minimal tension. Once I make contact with the metal again it wont do that, let see what happens there. Back to that metal, it should be okay.

Alright, now to make sure again, I don't have too much so that flipping around effect, I can put some head cement on that wrap. I am going to do that right now. It will soak down and it will push that cement right down to the hook shank, keep it from doing that flipping. Okay, there we go. Wrap in some dubbing, just in front of those wings, it helps to keep them seated down tight against the hook. It also though serves as thorax, ball of a thorax. On a May fly you can see, around it relatively prominent thorax, okay, so I wrapped really kind of loose in the very beginning around those wings. So tilt it up and then I come down, I am going to tape her down towards my head. So I want to get that right down to the end, there we go.

Almost looks like a bird or something that sit on the top of the head, and then we go squeeze back into those wings. Okay, that is the effect you are looking for. Now, we have finished that. I will show you what I have got here in terms of the silhouette so you can why it is, this will float without any hackle. Finish this, take some more thread out here. Be careful not to inch that up because that cement hasn't fully set up yet, it can still flip. Well, it does that. Head cement, pass little bit underneath the thread as well as on top. I am going to now check the eye to make sure there is no cement in that eye. There won't be an advantage of tying your own flies you can always do that, and when as you stand there in mid stream with a size 8 hook in your hand, trying to thread up through the -- I have a size 20. Get that out of there unless you have got a little vise which I am going to carry because there are times when I need one.

Okay, now I can turn that, show you what happens here with a little bit of silhouette. On your side you can see of those feather sit, his wings sit off the side, while the fly will sit on both the splayed tails and also on the leading and bottom edges, the leading bottom edge of those curl sections. So it nestles right in the surface film. There is the hackle dry fly actually can be tied in bright in colors, doesn't have to be tied on this gray, can be tied to match the blue or olive. I have seen this tied in pretty much any kind of May fly variety you can think of. If you can match color of the wings you can go ahead and tie them any colors you want.

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