It is well known that when a frog is dropped into hot water, it will immediately attempt to escape, but if it is put into a pot of cold water that is heated gradually, the hapless amphibian will luxuriate in the warming bath until it gets boiled to death. In 1869, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz first demonstrated this phenomenon, and his findings were supported by subsequent experiments by other German scientists in 1872 and 1875. Apparently the Germans couldn’t get enough of this trick. In 2015, it was learned that the Germans had applied the findings of their frog studies to the automobile manufacturing industry, and after decades of cultivating a brand of trust and loyalty, they had slowly, but surely infused implausible emission claims into their Volkswagens. In this slowly warming environment, we were all caught flat-footed by the hard, cold facts. Long ago, VW had implored us to “think small,” and now they were reaping the benefit of our shortsighted and unquestioning nature. This past summer, I came to the abrupt realization that the dynamic of our fly-fishing world likewise has been undergoing an imperceptible, yet inexorable change, unseen and unfelt over the years. Standing on a boat, watching yet another dry fly drown, an epiphany struck me like a bolt from the blue. I felt like a frog whose cool bath had reached 140 degrees. I realized that flies don’t float like they used to.
Back in the day, we used to carry a tin of Mucilin buried in some pocket, and only every now and again would we have to dab our fly dry with a patch of amadou mushroom, then reapply some Mucilin to keep it floating. Today, I carry bottles of desiccant, hydrophobic powder, and a tube of silicone grease in the most readily accessible pocket in the pack. Nothing else goes into this pocket except my hand, which fishes out some sort of floating aid every few casts.
When we returned home from the boat trip, I dredged up an old Parks and an even older Wheatley fly box. Each contained several dozen flies I had either tied or purchased in the 1970s or early 1980s. I spilled these bugs on the kitchen counter alongside more modern flies: a mix of patterns I had tied, others that friends had given me, and not a few that had been purchased at various fly shops around the country. The only outward difference was that the modern flies were far more perfect than the available patterns in 1980. Today’s chemically sharpened hooks are exquisite, the genetically modified hackles are as stiff and dense as baby porcupine quills, and the dubbed bodies are as tight, tapered, and uniform as a squad of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
With a wide scoop of a hand, I sent a bunch of the old flies into one saucer of water and a bunch of the new flies into another. Within seconds, the new flies starting listing, head-ducking, tail-walking, and sitting deeper in the water than the old flies, and after a few minutes, most of the new flies were mostly submerged, while most of the old flies were floating as high and dry as little ducklings. These patterns were as diverse as the Elk Hair Caddis, Parachute Adams, and generic spinners, but age, not the pattern itself, defined its ability to float. What gives?
What gives is the body material. Back in the day, we used the fur of dead mammals to concoct our flies. Today, we use an elixir compounded from ancient diatoms and dinosaurs. Modern synthetic dry-fly dubbing is amazing. It is perfect. It
spins on the thread like cotton candy and doubles over the hook like a drunken sailor on a Saturday night. Built from petrochemicals, every single strand is of equal diameter, length, and fractional shade of color. Over the years, I had drifted to the dark side and adopted synthetics as my standby dubbings. To an old-school fly tyer, the plastic stuff was too good to be true. And as it turns out, it is.
Most synthetic dubbing is boldly advertised as “waterproof,” which intuitively suggests it might float. Lead is waterproof, too. The materials themselves might not absorb water, but the flawless interstices created by the parallel strands of tiny, perfectly formed filaments create chambers that rapidly draw water into the core of the fly by capillary action. Anyone who has brought a glass of water to eye level has noticed how the water at the edge of the glass crawls up the side of the vessel. This is caused by the surface tension of the water. If the vessel is small enough, the force of surface tension will exceed that of gravity and the water will crawl up the vessel itself. The interstices between the fine synthetic dubbing happen to be the perfect size for this to occur. The reason the dubbed body floats is not because the dubbing floats (its specific gravity is higher than water — meaning that it wants to sink), but because of the air trapped between the filaments floats it. Replace that air with water, and you have the conundrum of the beautiful modern dry fly that sinks like a brick.
Natural fur is not perfectly smooth and cylindrical, like its artificial replacement. Particularly on aquatic mammals such as otters, muskrats, and beavers, the hairs are segmented like stems of grass. Not only are they segmented, but they are layered with scales and spines that have their own twisted and fluted hairs. Every individual hair is designed like Velcro to lock onto its neighboring hairs. Nature has created pelts that are flawlessly designed to trap and hold insulating air while at the same time inhibiting the physics of capillary action that might draw water into the hair interstices. No one has to advertise the waterproof qualities of the hair, because it is almost entirely composed of keratin, which is not only waterproof, but holds a static charge that actually repels the water molecule.
Here is a trick you can try at home without a crash helmet, respiratory protection, or Nomex gloves. Grab a pinch of ultrafine synthetic dubbing (any brand) and roll it between your thumb and forefinger until you make a short length of felted string. Dip the end of the string into a glass of water. The end of the string will not only penetrate the water, but seem to pull itself under. The ends of the string will delaminate from one another, and by now, your fingers will be wet, because capillary action has sucked a solid column of water well above the water’s surface. Just for grins, drop the string into the water and watch it quickly separate into individual fibers and sink.
Now try the same thing with the underfur of a beaver, muskrat, or best of all, otter. When you touch the end of the string to the water, it will twist and bend and do everything in its power to avoid becoming submerged. It will not delaminate. Not the smallest drop of water will crawl up the string. Pull out the string, and lo! it will be as dry as the desert sand. Drop the string on the water’s surface, and it will float, and float for a long time. The one component of natural fur that can’t be tied into your fly is the living mammal itself. The fur requires frequent and thorough grooming. The animals spend hours every day combing a very light coat of oil through their fur. The oily film is on the microscopic level. Hold a living otter or beaver, and it doesn’t feel in any way the slightest bit oily or greasy. Anything more than a microscopic film would fill the potential dead air space between the hairs, and they would mat together into a noninsulating clump. This is why oil spills are devastating to sea otters. So when you initially treat the natural fur dubbing on a dry fly, do so by applying the thinnest film possible. Put a dab on your finger, wipe the dab off on your pants, and then you’ll get close to using the right amount. Most grease or paste type floatants don’t float! Put a chunk of one of them in a glass of water and marvel at how quickly it sinks to the bottom. You are not adding appreciable floatation to your fly — you are simply trying to assist the hairs in doing their job of keeping water from crawling up between the fibers.
Once the fly does become waterlogged, do not put any more floatant on the bug. Squeeze the water out of the fly by pinching it in a piece of absorbent cloth and then make a false cast or two to dry it some more. Next, add it to some powdered desiccant to suck more water out of the fly, and finally shake it in a hydrophobic powder like Frog’s Fanny to add a charge to the fly that will repel water.
Winging and tailing material is another weak spot in modern fly construction. Before Steven Tyler singlehandedly destroyed the chicken-feather industry for fly tyers, most wings and tails were made from stiff feathers that were remarkably durable and floated well. Today, wings and tails are largely made from plastic. Antron, Zelon, and the like are fantastic materials for many applications, and they look beautiful as wings, but the stuff sinks. Put a hank of Antron, Zelon, or most any other plastic yarn in a cup of water and watch as it disaggregates into individual stands and piles up on the bottom of your cup, alongside the clumps of fly floatant and wads of ultrafine synthetic dubbing.
Polypropylene is the only plastic common to our arsenal that floats. Unfortunately, the fly industry has magically shortened the name of its threads and fibers to “poly,” which usually means the product is a polyethylene or polyester, neither of which floats. If it doesn’t say “poly,” it is likely nylon, which sinks even faster. But there’s no need to decipher the marketing codes. I have personally tested dozens of the more popular winging materials currently on the market. And here are the winners for floatability. Number one choice is Tiemco’s line of hollow polypropylene yarn. It is twice the price of anything similar and comes only in fluorescent colors (their fluorescent white isn’t too bad, but it would kick butt if they made it in flat white or, even better, clear). Next best is McFlylon. Despite the name, I doubt this product is made of nylon, because it floats very well. The third best is EP’s “Trigger Point” fibers. Be careful, because EP (Enrico Puglisi) sells all kinds of fly-tying fibers, but Trigger Point is the stuff that floats. Finally, there is good old-fashioned polypropylene yarn, which can be purchased by the skein for a few bucks.
A spinner tied with a body from the underfur of an otter and a sparse wing of any of the above yarns will outlast, outfloat, and ultimately outfish any other super spinner that has dropped from any vise, anywhere and at any time in history. At least I would like to believe so, because I’d rather not have to tie another lifetime’s supply of the things.
