Deer hair streamer help, zuddler & Sculpins

[dblock16]

There are a bunch of streamers I wanna tie that all have a spun deer hair head or body, the zuddler, and loren williams sculpin pattern.

I have tried a few, the problems I run into are,
1. Getting the nice looking hair collar from the first bunch of deer hair.
2. Getting the deer hair to stay put when done, some of my flies I can spin the head with my fingers.
Do I use zap at any part of the process?

So anyone got any tips or tricks to help me out here?
Thanks
Doug

[none]

1) Getting a nice collar

* Get good quality deer hair. Elk is useable but it’s much tougher to spin. Good quality deer hair for spinning is spongy when pinched, straight(ish).

* For getting a nice even collar you need hair that ends rather short & pointy rather than one with tips that are wavy and long. The shorter tipped hair makes the darker band on the collar more even.

* Use a hair stacker to make the tips even.

* Use enough hair.

* Tie/spin the bundle of hair UNeven: the tip zone and the remaining hair uneven makes sorting out which hair is where easier. This comes in handy when you start cutting he hair with the scissors.

2) Getting hair to stay put

* Use good strong thread. I use Danville Flymaster Plus for my bassbugs. Hair that isn’t tied tight will come loose. If your thread breaks because you pull it tight, is bound to cause problems.

* Explore how hard you can pull with the thread. You will need this to know how hard you can pull the thread when your hair is tied on the hook.

* After the initial spinning, add a TIGHT wrap or 2 before going to the front of the bundle to tie in the next bundle of hair.

* Before spinning in the next bundle, wrap 2 wraps in front of the previous bundle. Then using your finger nails shove the hair back hard. This will compress the bundle.

* Drop a drop of head cement just in front of the hook shank of  the previous bundle.

* Keep the hair compact by pushing the last bundle tight next to the previous bundle.

Good luck!

Just for reference, you can make hair REALLY compact like this head on the dalhberg diver I made a long time ago:

[brett mccrae]

Doug,

Check out this site: http://flyandfloatfishing.com/fly_tying_videos.htm

Scroll towards the bottom–the 3rd from the last video is all about spinning deer hair and would definitely help you out some.

[Rick Marcum]

Try pinching the collar so that it doesn’t spin completely around the hook.

[patrick mccormick]

First off if you are imitating sculpins don’t use deer hair use chenille figure 8 wrapped around lead eyes, sculpins are ON the bottom I mean on it.

Now for deer hair work…

i use smallish clumps of hair then I half hitch twice in front of the clump and pack those half hitches down onto the hair to keep things tight.

[none]

By the way Jay nice fly.  What is that?

Rick,

It’s a Dahlberg Diver. A floating bass bug for large mouth bass. Larry Dahlberg developed this style of bass bugs which floats (deer hair) but due to the shape of the head and the collar it dives when you give it a pull / retrieve. A bit like a plug when lure fishing.

Here’s some back ground info on my blog:
http://bassbug.blogspot.com/2006/02/dahlberg-divers.html

Jay

[alex langley]

Another site to have a look at

http://www.flyangler.com.au/swf/Deer_spin/deer.html

Alex

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