I had to do a quick shoreline walk and test out the white diver, the luxury of living on a lake. These divers are so much fun to fish. This fish missed it twice, but on the third cast...

Some welded flies , trying to fill a box .

[url=https://postimages.org/]
Royal Cahill. Idea from a magazine named Fish and Fly that's, sadly, no longer published.

One thing I’ve noticed about the deer hair divers I tie is sometimes the loosely packed divers way out-fish the tightly packed ones. The loosely packed divers barely float and very slowly rise after the strip. They are much more subtle and stealthy than the tightly packed divers. Those layered and well packed ones float high and make a commotion, but on some days fail to elicit a strike. I will throw the loosely packed divers on the same water and get lots of action.

Just an FYI for spun deer hair diver tiers. Sometimes, less is more. It’s really like they are two separate patterns.

Yes, exactly!

I think I tie the layered, tightly packed ones to please me and not so much the fish. The different colors look nice and the diver floats nice and high, but they seem to scare the fish away, at least some of the time.

I’m going to keep testing all these ideas. Maybe it’s the size and not how the flies are packed. Maybe it’s about the overall buoyancy. I’ve got lots of deer hair to work through. Next, I want to do a Borski slider with the hair to test on the redfish. I’m trying to convince my daughter that hunts deer to tan the deer hide. I even bought her some tanning chemicals. This has the makings of a good obsession.

Squirrels Nest Drake Nymph

Recipe

Hook: 2x Long Nymph
Bead: Gold Tungsten
Thread: Black
Tail: Dk Brown Turkey Biot
Rib: Dk Brown Body Glass
Wing-case: Dk Brown Turkey Biot
Abdomen: Natural Grey Squirrel
Thorax: Peacock Ice-Dub

For full tying video:
https://www.ralphsflybox.com/2018/04/tying-squirrels-nest-drake-nymph.html

my son tanned the hide ;-) of both elk and pronghorn.. the pronghorn hair is a bit frail but it makes a fine pronghorn-hair caddis..

Gettin' Bassy

Carlz,
Here's the recipe (tail to head): rabbit strip, estaz chenille, rubber legs (rootbeer is my favorite), flex hackle (again, rootbeer is my favorite, but I use olive and black an awful lot), EP Crustaceous Brush Sculpin or CCT Body Fur (for the head....pushes water very nicely), eyes of your choice

For hooks, I prefer Gami B10S as they hold their point like no other and hold fish like no other. Unfortunately I ran out, so these are on some larger jig hooks (unsure of manufacturer--seem pretty decent though).

Cheers,
Randy

Those are incredibly buggy looking!

The Von Miller is getting wet tomorrow!!! fingers crossed that it ends up in the corner of an apex predator's mouth...