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AKA: Trout fly proportions.

One of the biggest problems with tying a "good looking" and "good fishing" fly is getting the proportions correct.  All to often flies are designed or tied for fisher folk not fish. When you look at a fly think about what the fish sees and what the various components of the fly are designed to do.

The second problem with getting the proportions correct when tying a fly is following only part of a proven recipe without thinking through the effect of the changes you make. For example  if you follow a red tag recipe but tie it on the wrong hook, a long shank hook for example,  whilst the fly may still look good  the physics that keep it the red tag floating may not work.  That is the  extra length may  be too much weight to be supported by the hackle and the tag. At the other extreme if you tie for example a booby on too short a hook, or under dress its tail, whilst it may be visually appealing to you there is a chance that when it is pulled through the water that it will rotate and twist your line.

At the risk of boring you I'll give just one other example too make one final point. A lot of people tie estuary flies or mud prawns and find that they don't ride hook point up. When I have a look at what they have tied whilst the flies look great and are well tied all too often I see that they have substituted a stainless steel hook for the light weight zinc plated hook that the recipes call for. The wire used in these substituted stainless steel hooks is often just too heavy for these types of flies and the weight of the bend of the hook and the barb more than offsets the  dumbbell or real eyes causing the fly to ride hook point down. Sure you can offset that by using bigger dumbbell or real eyes but the fly gets harder to cast the more weight you add and there is a tendency for the fly to sink like a rock rather than just settling through the weather column in a natural prawn like way.

The points I am making here is that when you think about fly proportions think not only about dimensions but also about the weight of the components being used, the characteristics of the hook and the materials used in the dressing of the fly and what each component of the fly is meant to do.

Dry fly Proportions

• Quick link

Wet fly proportions

• Quick link

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