FFNCurrentsEddies

FFN Currents & Eddies

ARE PREPARED DUBBINGS A CONVENIENCE OR JUST A BIG FUR BALL?

Jack Mickievicz, Fluebinder

Thirty years ago, when you wanted a dubbing, you simply selected a piece of fur that suited your needs and had at it. All the pattern books listed dubbings as RED FOX, BEAVER, OPOSSUM, ETC. The only prepared dubbing that comes to mind, was Baby Seal. Only the most advanced tying books referenced blends of any kind, and it was generally assumed that you would make it yourself. Formulas were usually given that simply said "Red Fox and yellow wool".

On the surface it would seem that things are simpler now. If you need Red Fox and Yellow Wool all you have to do is order it. At the same time, do you need Red Fox and Yellow or Br.Yellow Wool? And; is this for a nymph, wet fly, or dry fly ? Add to this only one blend - MASTERBLEND ; - is currently labeled this way. The others are labeled Dirty Yellow, or Yellowish Grey, or Lt.olive, or something like that. You have no idea what the texture is like; and in some cases; you don't know whether it's a natural, synthetic, or combination blend. You don't know if its good for the intended job.

In most industries; computers for instance; when one model is dramatically improved it replaces the former . The old model is abandoned, No one advertises the obsolete version as the best quality, the latest thing since sliced toast. Manufactures and suppliers know that everyone knows thay're junk, and nobody wants to buy junk .

For some reason that doesn't always happen in fly tying. There are just asmany old obsolete type blends as there are new ones. It has gotten so confusing that the beginner has no solid base on which to make the decision, which one to use. To make some sense of all this we need to get back to basics and look at what a dubbings requirements are for a given job.

It use to be something of a standard to use water animals for dry flies and land animals for wets. It was thought that water animals had water proof fur, (surely they would get sick and die in the winter if this were not so). They were conspicuously oilier, than their land dwelling cousins. Truth;: They are protected from the cold and wet more by that heavy fatty layer under the skin than their fur which is not water proof.

All of which is of no concern today with the dry fly water proofents we have. The effectiveness of these is so good that you can float a paper towel, and we all know how absorbent they are.

The rules today should be based on texture, translucency, color, and if you have a preference for natural or synthetics. This is mostly a personal choice. As we go into the future we may well see this decided for us by a decrease in the availability of natural furs.

Translucency is a term that is thrown around a lot. It means, letting light pass or semi transparent. The vast majority; but not all; of the insects that we imitate are very translucent. The majority of natural furs used are also quite translucent, especially when wetted. For our purposes; wet means wet; with water, with water proofents, it doesn't matter. Not so with synthetics, some are extremely translucent even when dry, others are opaque even when wet.

The KODEL, CRESLIN, and ANTRON fibers are very translucent. So much so that you can use them to improve the translucence of poorer dubbings. A word of caution here, if you have one of the dull opaque materials sold as ANTRON, maybe you should change suppliers. ANTRON, CRESLIN, and KODEL are characteristically very bright, very translucent fibers.

The color of your dubbing should match the color of the insects you are matching. The practice of generic colors of dubbings is ok if you are blending your own colors as you need them. What I mean by generic color is red, orange, yellow, olive, Lt.brown, brown, Dk.brown, etc. You don't know what these look like. One mans brown is anothers lt. brown and yet anothers Dk.brown.

A color standard that everyone uses is desperately needed. Before all the suppliers climb down my throat, I would like to take the opportunity to point out that Gary Borger has made it easy for you. The Borger color system is a nice little book of color chips, all indexed with a color number, and It is quite inexpensive ! Anyone can afford it. All we need now is for manufactures to reference their dubbings so we have some idea what color it is. I am really surprised how few manufactures have called Gary to get permission to do this. An absolute must in my book.

Texture can have the most far reaching effects, it can make a dubbing more translucent, wet faster, or float better. It can produce the illusion of two part bodies, or air bubbles. You can control color better if you pay a little attention to the texture. One misconception is that fineness and texture are the same, they are not. Fineness is only one component of texture .

It is quite obvious that fineness is a requirement for tying very small flies; So is softness. A dubbing that is very fine but also stiff is not going to dub down tight on a size 24 any better than a dubbing that is very soft but a little coarse. The finish of the individual fiber also has some effect on how well a dubbing ties.

Poly dubbings are a good example of this. The standard poly dubbings are medium-fine compared to natural furs like Beaver, Muskrat, and Mole; yet they are quite stiff by comparison. They are still easy to use on most sizes of flies. The very small midges are their limitation. Bodies come out somewhat puffy. This is partly because of the stiffness and partly because of the slipperiness of the surface. Silicone is used in the manufacturing process to prevent the machinery from clogging up. This gets on your hands and makes them slippery as well as the poly. The silicone can be removed by washing the poly in WOOLITE. It doesn't cure the problem but it helps in tying the smaller flies.

The new super-polys are finer and softer than standard polys. Most important; they have a scaly finish that locks the fiber down tightly when you dub it on small flies.

The type of ANTRON that Gary Lafontaine uses in the Caddis blends has a benefit I haven't heard talked about much. The nature of its finish, along with its softness and fineness; when added to a courser material; acts as a binder making the mix very easy to dub, even for the beginner. It has the same effect when added to natural fur.- The mix is easier to dub than the natural fur alone.

Blends of natural fur and poly don't work for dry flies very well. The inherent stiffness of the poly causes the ends to stick out when cut short enough to blend with fur. However; this is a valid point for nymph tying. By blending a rusty brown poly with a medium olive fur, the result is brown olive body with rusty brown gill like projections.

A more scruffy effect is achieved by mixing a fine dubbing of one color with English Hare. There are several Hare blends available. Not all are "English Hare", some are rabbit; - technically a Hare. Your choice would depend on how rough you want the dubbed body to be. Genuine English Hare is the most rough, rabbit is more a fine dubbing with some guard hairs that stick out.

In natural fur blends, Rabbit blends are the cheapest and easiest to produce. They dub easily but have those annoying guard hares that hang out. Dry flies tied with rabbit often need to be given a hair cut. Rabbit can have the guard hairs removed but it runs the price up out of the economy blend bracket. In the premium fur blends; i,e, Red Fox, Beaver, Otter, Muskrat; you should think in the terms of what do you want to tie with them. If you are tying drys pick ones that are fine; Muskrat, Beaver, etc. For nymphs pick the more exotic blends of spiky furs; English hare, Squirrel, African Goat, or combinations thereof.

Baby Seal substitutes are strictly for wets and nymphs. They are the epitome of spiky, or scruffy blends. Real Baby Seals fur is illegal. The substitutes are quite good; i,e, the African Goats, Sealex, Unseal, etc. The synthetics are much easier to dub but don't have quite the spike the Goats do.

Squirrel blends and Genuine English Hare blends are used primarily for nymphs. They are also good floaters for dry flies that permit the rougher bodies like caddis patterns.

In my list of useless blends is the proliferation of chopped up yarns blown apart in a kitchen blender. They are hard to dub with, won't tie small flies, don't have the spike desired for most nymphs; in the long and short of it, they're obsolete. They are easily identified in the package. Look at the way the material aligns. If the dubbing is bunched up in balls about the size of peas its a pretty good sign that its blender yarn.