Mörke John
- wrapping hackle and finishing a fly -
By Niklas Dahlin

  Evening dear followers, today I played with a pattern called "Mörke John" ("John the dark"). The fly is a variant of the more famous "Europea 12", same fly but with different colour. The fly "Mörke John" comes from the vice of Harry Strandberg who comes from the northern part of Sweden. Harry is unfortunately no longer with us, he passed away a couple of years ago. My friend Leif Milling has written a nice piece about his friend Harry in his book "Länge leve flugfisket" (Fly fishing, may it last forever), Harry was actually one of the first professional fly tyers of Sweden.

  I like the appearance of the pattern, and after fishing in caddis hatches in the parts of where Harry was active I do understand why he choose the darker colour.

  While tying this fly I decided to take some pictures to tell my friends how I do the hackle and how I finish of a hackled fly leaving a decent head. As we all know this information is more for the eye than for the fish... I don't either think the fish cares if there's a bump at the head or if we have some hackle fibres sticking out here and there. But I do believe in the satisfaction a really nice fly in my fly box gives me.

  To get an nice and straight hackle on your dry flies can sometimes be an pain. Well off course there is a question of the quality of the hackle, but not just that. Some really nice hackle can have stems that are not entirely round and sometime the stems are kind of thick which also can make it harder. Well anyway, here I want to share some thoughts of mine that has helped me to get a slightly better hackle collar on my flies.

  I use the best hackle I can get, I use Whiting, Charlie Collins and I also have a Keough that was awful until my friend Roy Christie dyed it for me, after that the stems got softer and by that the hackle got easier to work with. When I started to tie I had some Indian capes, I have heard that you can find decent quality, but the nice ones that I have found don't have the length of the feathers in the sizes I tie. So I have given that up and I stick to the genetic stuff.

  Well then, let me try to explain, start with making sure that you have a nice and even foundation, bumps can make your hackle slip. Tie in the hackle in and set it into an 90 degree angle towards the shank of the hook. Make sure that the hackle has a bare stem the first wrap, that will help us to not get any fibres pointing backwards.

  Wrap the hackle in tight turns toward the eye of the hook. Secure the hackle with three hard turns of your tying thread, wrap the thread towards the eye of the hook.

  Grab the hackle point and fold it backwards, wrap another three tight turns of thread but now backwards away from the eye of the hook. By doing this we have locked the hackle point.

  Take your hackle plier and attach it to the hackle point, hold the thread tight as you start winding the hackle plier. After a couple of turns the stem of the hackle point will brake off at the point of where we are have the pressure on the tying thread.

  Here we can see the result after that the hackle point has gone. Now give the head two wraps of thread and finish it of with two whipfinish knots.

  Cut the thread and give the head some varnish. Done, with a nice and clean head. Satisfaction on a hook...

  Hope you enjoyed it this little session, I did..

  Over and out../Niklas

By Niklas Dahlin 2014 ©

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