OK. After much procrastination born of distraction and the "tyranny of the urgent," I'm actually going to sit down and experiment with some of spoon flies using Edge-glo and translucent epoxy as my basic materials. I'll post some pics on my Facebook page and blog.

FYI, I recently put some dry fly and terrestrial pics on my Facebook page. I took them with my new waterproof camera, which has an "auction" shooting mode on it I wanted to try. I wasn't really happy with it, but for a tiny point-n-shoot with no tripod, etc. they didn't come out too badly. I'll post some of those on my blog today.

id love to see pics. are they on the link in your sig? i didn't see them

don't have the spoon flies up yet, jack. i'm working the kinks out because i couldn't find one of the materials i wanted to use. the dries and terrestrials...along with a bunch of my other flies and various and sundry fly fishing ramblings and nonsense...can be found at my blog, UPSTREAM.

I am anxious to see how they worked out for you. So let us know, and then we can click on the link. Thanks Ken.

OK. The first attempt at my spoon flies are on-line now.

And, yes, the tails are long and bushy...you can always trim stuff out, but you can't put more in.

They look good to me!

yes, they do look good!

These are really fascinating. Also liked your dries quite a bit - especially the green drake.

Thanks. That GD is pretty easy to tie for how good it turns out looking. Fishes really well, too - IF you can get on a good drake hatch. I fish mostly Catskill style dries on the rivers and streams I fish in CO because of the gradients. You need a fly that will float and be visible in choppier water. Most of the guides and shops up there are hooked on western style patterns tied very sparsely. But I have found that CO trout bite Catskill flies pretty darned aggressively. For one thing: they don't see many of them.

Spoon flies have my full attention! I know that they would make good hybrid-striper flies if chartreuse was mixed in the tail of the blue spoon. So where can I get the materials to make these things and can you get some tech. advice as to how to form and attack to hooks? PLEASE!

http://www.flyshop.com that's where you can buy the edge-glo material. but you can use mylar, foil tape, etc.

http://www.nwmangum.com/spoonfly/index.html is the best tutorial i have found on-line for teaching how to tie spoon flies. the templates are for a size 2 hook. and that should work for bass/stripers, too. i would shorten the tails considerably for bass/striper fishing, and perhaps add sili-legs to the tail. but no propellers!

Thanks! FWI I'm not a big propeller fan for flies. NOT that there is anything wrong with adding props to flies, because they do work.

Fox Statler is a good friend of mine, and Fox is anything BUT traditional. He's been a big proponent and innovator of spinning and soft plastic lures used with fly fishing tackle, primarily for bass fishing. And I gave someone advice here not long ago about angling the props on their homemade pistol petes. I haven't used the stuff in many years, but that doesn't mean I didn't grow up on them. And I don't have anything against anybody using them. But my opinion is that when you put a diving lip, spinner, etc. on there...or when you don't have to do any tying to hold it all together...then it's not a fly, it's a lure. And that puts spoon flies in a gray area for me. The spoon is similar to a crankbait lip. It's there to impart motion when retrieved that you can't get from a conventional fly pattern. But they are universally called spoon flies. So I roll with it.

If its a spoon, spinner, clouser, whistler, popper, hair bass bug, etc - etc - etc ..... and can be cast with a fly rod and fly line ..... it's a fly ....

That settles it Double G said it is a fly so it must be a fly. Listen to your elders, because they have already done it several times is what my grandfather told me many years ago. Sure wish I had heeded that good advice.