Black Glummer Midge Pupa
At the end of last year I bought three spools of flat silk described as being 16 denier, very thin in other words, and I thought that it would be perfect for tying tiny flies. When the spools arrived I immediately saw that the description was far from correct. The spools were marked 16 sugas (a way to describe very thick flat silk in Asia - sugas means filaments) and to get the size I wanted I would have to separate the thick floss like silk into 16 parts. I did so some time ago by cutting about 1 meter lengths of the silk and separating the filaments after which I joined the parts with a knot after knot and finally spooling it by hand onto Gossamer sized spools. See pictures below of the original spools and the Gossamer sized spools.
The bobbin to the right is a Ken Newton Midge Bobbin and the one to the right is a Matarelli Midge Bobbin ( a wonderful bobbin to tie with; my all time favorite when it comes to Gossamer silk sized spools of thread ). This is not a procedure I would recommend unless you want to try your patience to the limit. Although it becomes a very cheap thread since you theoretically can get out 960 meters from one of the original spools. I paid like 5 £ or 8 $ for one spool in a special deal. That means that you can get a flat High Quality Flat Silk for tying midges for approximately half the money you would have to spend to get the same amount of UNI-Thread Trico 17/0. That's just when it comes to money because it takes quite some time to prepare the silk for this kind of purpose. But as I reckon every passionate fly fisher and fly tier counts all the time spent in preparing materials for fly tying as well as time spent fishing with the flies as well spent time it's OK.
Red Glimmer Midge Pupa
Well the only thing left to mention is the material for the thorax of the flies. I've used herl from a tail feather of a magpie for that purpose since it's perfect in size. I think that it's all for now so until next post ...
Kind regards,
Mats Olsson
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it might be worth the effort, 17/0 as far as I know is only in white. to have 16/0 in other colors without using a marker might be neat, but it does seem like lots of work.
SvaraRaderaHi Nate!
SvaraRaderaThanks for commenting! And, yes, you're quite true. It's a lot of work but can be done bit by bit since you don't need much thread for a tiny fly.
Your friend,
Mats Olsson