Catskill dry flies (I) - warming up

I haven't had the time nor the patience to sit down and tie a decent fly the past months. As I wrote earlier I have had this idea of tying some of the classic patterns called Catskill dry flies (like the Hendrickson) and get them framed. This evening I finally picked up the vice and tied an American March Brown. It turned out okay as a 'warming up fly', but still much improvements are to be made.

I ordered some 50 of the finest lemon woodduck flank feathers I could get my hands on. I just love the delicate structure of these feathers as well as the fine barring on them. Wooduck flank feathers are one of the essentials for many Catskill dries (e.g. Light Cahill, Hendrickson, American March Brown).

Another item that is hard to come by these days are LONG, STRAIGHT and STIFF spade hackles for tailing. The improvements made for hackling has been exceptional, but improvements of spade hackles for tailing are almost non exsistent. The ones you find in the upper parts (larger feathers) of a cape are too short and/or too curvey. By the way, the best spade hackles are said to be found in more cheaper chinese capes. If anyone still has some excellent spade hackles for tailing, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! These days the only thing that comes close are Coq the Leon hackles.

There are some things I need to consider when tying the flies:

* Tie on a straight eye hook (like the TMC 101) or a regular down eye hook? I kinda like the straight eye hooks for my dries: the fly looks much 'cleaner'.
* Tie off the head RIGHT BEHIND the hook eye or keep a little bare hook from to the eye to make room for a Turle knot?
* Use ALL the original materials or use substitutes (like dubbing, color, Darbee hackles etc.)?
* Absolute spot-on proportions, although personal preferences are allowed.
* Sparseness vs robustness. This is an interesting question. I'm going to experiment to see what looks best.

The pictures are taken with my Fujifilm E550 digital camera. I'm no way near as well equiped (especially good lighting!) as Hans so the quality isn't really great. Until I get to take the final flies to Hans we'll have to do it with this quality. I need to pick out which materials I have at this moment, try out different colors and types of materials to see which combination comes the most close to the original Catskill patterns. Well, we'll see what happens the next couple of weeks....


Update 3 november 2006
Here is the list of flies I will be tying:
* Adams
* Light Cahill
* Hendrickson
* American March Brown
* Red Quill
* . . . . . . (any suggestions?)