The annual Clouser tying binge.

[BilletHead]

   Happens every winter in anticipation of spring and good things to come. Two dozen of our favorite colors. Do you think I can get them into the Clouser box?😁

[fishinwrench]

Looking good, brother !  👍 

 

You gotta try Olive over Tan with Root beer flash..... Absolute KILLER in clearer water ! 

 

[Foghorn]

Might get dual use out of those as Christmas ornaments! good looking Clousers.

[Ham]

The Dang things work so well too!

[BilletHead]

47 minutes ago, Foghorn said:

Might get dual use out of those as Christmas ornaments! good looking Clousers.

 

20 minutes ago, Ham said:

The Dang things work so well too!

            Thanks friends. 

[kjackson]

I love these posts; I get fired up to tie a bunch of whatever pattern works well.

After reading this yesterday, I headed down to the basement stash to pick up a couple of items--I'm in the middle of tying crappie jigs-- and pulled out some fly boxes to check colors of Clousers with an eye to what was lacking.  I was surprised to find what is, probably, a three-year supply left over from fishing for searun cutthroat and chum salmon.  I'm thinking I may need to add some local colors and sizes, though.

What sizes are you folks using the most?  Colors beyond chartreuse/pink/blue that I should add to the boxes?  Olive over tan sounds good, so that will be in line over the next two days of being housebound.  

Thx.

[BilletHead]

37 minutes ago, kjackson said:

I love these posts; I get fired up to tie a bunch of whatever pattern works well.

After reading this yesterday, I headed down to the basement stash to pick up a couple of items--I'm in the middle of tying crappie jigs-- and pulled out some fly boxes to check colors of Clousers with an eye to what was lacking.  I was surprised to find what is, probably, a three-year supply left over from fishing for searun cutthroat and chum salmon.  I'm thinking I may need to add some local colors and sizes, though.

What sizes are you folks using the most?  Colors beyond chartreuse/pink/blue that I should add to the boxes?  Olive over tan sounds good, so that will be in line over the next two days of being housebound.  

Thx.

     Keith,

   I really like size 4 hooks for most of my general purpose Clousers. Size way up for hybrid.  As for other colors besides the ones you mentioned gray over white, chartreuse over orange or fire orange and one more of my personal favorites gray, yellow and white. I may be at the vice More today. 

[kjackson]

Another question, which I could answer myself if the water wasn't so hard-- I have quite a few of the up-eye, black Atlantic salmon hooks. If I tied on those, the flies would have a down-turned eye. How would that affect the retrieve? Would there be too much downward pull when the fly is stripped?  

It's not that I don't have other hooks to use, but I would like to use the 36890s for something.

[BilletHead]

1 hour ago, kjackson said:

Another question, which I could answer myself if the water wasn't so hard-- I have quite a few of the up-eye, black Atlantic salmon hooks. If I tied on those, the flies would have a down-turned eye. How would that affect the retrieve? Would there be too much downward pull when the fly is stripped?  

It's not that I don't have other hooks to use, but I would like to use the 36890s for something.

  Good question, I'm not smart enough to answer that question. Before I had straight eye hooks I did some like that and still managed to catch fish.  See if we can get a response from @fishinwrench.

[tjm]

Dry flies can use down eye to let the fly ride higher when the tippet is on the film. Wet flies in the film or subsurface flies can benefit from up eye as the tippet is above the fly. For inverted wets/streamers a down eye becomes an up  eye in use and the pull of he leader tends to keep the hook inverted; and if the up eye is inverted  so that it becomes a down eye on the retrieve it can tend to roll the fly over, how much that happens would depend on size of hook compared to size of fly and on how resistant to roll over the design is. I've tied old style winged  wets on down eye hooks that fished upside down but still caught the occasional fish. Winged wets are probably more like a forage fish than any insect anyway and the white wings could pass as belly. I like straight eyes for all my wets and streamers although I have a couple hundred 4XL & 6XL down eye hooks still that I'll someday likely tie something on. It's been a long while since using those type streamers.

With a dumbbell  on the salmon hooks set near the eye as most do, I doubt that the leader would cause roll over but you can trial it in the bath tub or the sink. If the dumbbell is set halfway back like Clouser suggests I think the eye would cause rollover more often than not.