| Monthly Newsletter of the Central Texas Flyfishers | December, 2001 Vol. 7 No. 12 |
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Calendar
| Officers | Rio Raft Parking Permits
| Club Business | Canoe Raffle |
Newsletter Changes
Fly Tying Feature | Back Issues
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President: Terry
Blackwell
Vice President: Joel Chavez
Conservation: Billy Wofford
Outings: Kevin Duren & Johnny Quiroz II
Secretary: Kim Heaston
Treasurer: Bob Blagg
For the third year running we have made a deal with Rio Raft to obtain a year's parking for fishing the Guadalupe River. For a fee of ten dollars you can get a parking permit that will allow you to park at Rio Raft. This is a pretty good deal since a day permit is five dollars (I think). Two trips and it will have paid for itself. We have been asked, though, not to abuse the privilege by taking carloads of friends every weekend or things of that nature.
Get your permit at the next meeting.
It is dues time again. Annual club dues are usually collected at the club banquet in January. As a reminder they are $15.00 for regular members, $7.50 for students, and $20.00 for family membership.
This brings up the Annual Banquet. As we have not yet discussed it in the meetings at length I am assuming that the banquet will be held at the South Side Community Center in January and that we will donate canned food to the center. This has been an excellent tradition in the past and I hope that we keep it this year. Even if we cannot get the center this year it is a gesture of good will to donate that food anyway.
Club Acquires Canoe for Raffle
The club has acquired a seventeen-foot aluminum canoe that will be raffled as a fund-raiser during the next year. Tickets will be sold throughout next year and the proceeds will go to the following year's raffle item. The tickets are for members only so make sure you come to the meetings to get in on this deal.
Speaking of floating devices; the club boat (a small jon boat sans motor) needs a name. Bring your ideas for a name for the boat to the next meeting and we'll have some fun. Ship-of-Fools comes to mind or Das Boot (let's hope that it does not submerge on a regular basis). Let's be creative and come up with a name that will be a good example of our club's attitude.
Newsletter
Changes:
Kim Heaston's Last Newsletter
The time has come, my friends, to hand over the newsletter to a new editor, Marcus Rodriguez. I have had fun and frustration with it but I wouldn't trade the time I've spent.
Over the three years since I started editing this thing I have had the opportunity to learn new things about fly fishing and the outdoors that I might not have learned if I hadn't been thinking of articles for this rag.
Because I was concerned about safety I learned about poison ivy and how to recognize it. I spent a great deal of time in my youth out doors and had never learned to know that dastardly plant. Good thing I learned because Central Texas is loaded with it.
I took simple pleasures and learned how complex they were when I wrote about a grandson's fly tying lesson. I found out just who was teaching who that time.
I made friends who were ubiquitous and had provided me with many anecdotes and articles when I needed them.
The opportunities to enrich one's knowledge, friendships, and wisdom are what living is about. It's not what you achieve in life that counts. It's the getting there that makes it worthwhile.
Thank you, fellow members, for allowing me to see another byway on the trip.
[Webmaster's note: Kim, I speak for everyone in thanking you for your hard work and dedication to the club!]
Kim Heaston
Fly
of the Month:
The Hendrickson
Comments by Jim Abbs
www.fedflyfisher.org
Last month, I promised that Flies of the Month for the winter season would be those 20-80 flies. These are the flies that make up only 20% of your fly box, but catch 80% of the fish.
This month we will focus on a long time favorite, the Hendrickson. Basically, the Hendrickson is a hatch of several different mayflies, not a fly pattern as such. The Hendrickson is of the Ephemerella subvaria sub-species (depending upon classification) and important for several reasons. First, it is found in almost all states east of the Mississippi where cold water harbors trout, including, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan,
Wisconsin and Minnesota —-places where fly fishing in America started. Second, for a great number of fly fishers, it is one of the earliest mayfly hatches and indeed, it takes place as early as the first week of April in southern Penn-sylvania and Maryland.
The Hendrickson is described by Al Caucci and Bob Nastasi in their book Hatches II, as "truly the exhaulted king of the early season". Others have called it the most exciting early mayfly hatch. If fact, if you would have the time and inclination to travel, it should be possible to fish the peak of the Hendrickson hatch every week for two months, slowly moving from Southern Pennsylvania through New York and finally into Michigan, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and then into Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Finally, the Hendrickson is not only a hatch or species of mayflies; it is also a distinct fly pattern (the best known and most traditional of many) to represent the Hendrickson mayflies, of course. As a fly, Eric Leiser calls the Hendrickson our most important early fly — a good reason to make sure your fly box is well supplied. The Hendrickson was first devel-oped in 1916 by Roy Steenrod of Liberty, New York and named after A. E. Hendrickson.
Interestingly, this classic Catskill pattern includes one of the most unusual materials: urine-stained belly fur of a red fox. I don't know how you can tell if the fur is properly stained and I have even heard of some fly tyers trying to accomplish this critical step on their own. Who knows where they obtained the fox urine. The staining requirement was not part of the original Hendrickson, but came to be the standard based upon the colorful imagination of famed fly tyer and author Art Flick.
The materials and tying steps for the Light and Dark Hendrickson are very similar. As described, the differences are in the darkness of the blue dun used for hackle and tail, as well as the material used to dub the body (urine-stained fox fur versus muskrat). These differences are noted in the materials described below.
MATERIALS
TYING INSTRUCTIONS
Lay down a base of thread.
Select a bunch
of barred wood duck flank fibers. For a size 14 hook, about in inch of fibers-measured
at tips is about right. Choose fibers with even tips.
Fold the selected wood duck fibers into a neat bunch and tie them about ¹ the way back from the hook eye, facing past the hook eye. Observe proportions in choosing the length of fibers; the height of the wing should be 2 times the hook gap.
Position the wing material upright and divide into to sections using a figure eight around the base of the two clumps of fibers.
Wrap the thread back to the bend of the hook and tie in 8-10 hackle fibers for the tail.
Spin the dubbing material onto the thread and wind it on the hook shank to create the body up to just behind the wing position.
Tie in the hackle and wind forward in front and behind the upright wings.
Whip finish
and put a drop of tying cement on the head.
Wrap wire forward through the hackle and tie off at the head.
© 2001 Central Texas Flyfishers
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