THE IAN COLIN JAMES FLY PATTERN BOOK
The publication date for my fly pattern book has been pushed back to the spring of 2009. As most of you know, I am a one man operation and as time is finite, some projects have to be put on the back burner. Starting in January of 2009, I have been asked to teach the first credited fly fishing course in Canada at Fanshawe College here in London, so preparing the notes and lectures, plus filling orders for fishing flies, and guiding has been a lot of work.

I started taking the photographs of the flies for the book in the spring of 2008 and by the late summer most of them were done. Then, when he upgraded his camera, my brother who is one of the top multi-media and graphic designers in the U. K., passed down his Canon EOS 30D to me, and that changed everything. In essence I now have to redo all the fly photos.

As this is a new camera for me, it will take me a good deal of time to figure out how to make it do what I want it to do. For the most part, the photo of the fly on the right looks okay, however it's simply not good enough. There are issues with the lighting and a whole bunch of other things which I need to get sorted out so that the fly photographs in the book are top notch. Macro photography is sort of tricky, and I want to make sure I get it right.

Now, before any of you start screaming that the fly on the right has too much hackle on it for a traditional wet fly, you can sod-off. There are no hard and fast rules when tying a fly and we all know that fly tying is more about "art" than science. I have been successfully fishing traditional wet flies for over 40 years and I am happy tying the pattern this way. It catches a lot of fish for me, and funnily enough my clients who use this fly also catch a lot of fish with it. Nuff said.

If you are going to tie this pattern you may also want to try an amber biot or a black biot for the body.

Comments:
Right you lot.
Since I posted this on October 16th I have been picking up a lot of emails from you with suggestions. Thank you. I do read all of them, and I will reply to all of them. Please do not send me an attachment. If you send me an attachment, your e-mail will get nuked and that will be that. Please don't ask me any technical questions about how I took the shot as I simply don't know what the answers are, or how I set up the shot. The camera was hand held and I used my fly tying light to illuminate the fly. Illuminate is a very big word for me. It's far too technical. This is a very good fly and, "no," I am not going to take one or two photographs of the variations in the body colour and then post them here. Just use your imagination, tie the variations for yourself and see what they look like, or go to Imagination Land. Now, just before you start clicking the send button, I have not tried any other materials, like dubbing, for the thorax and I have never tried fishing it with a different coloured feather for the hackle. This works. No point in changing it.
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