I’m not sure if I’ve already posted this little tip in the past but even if I have I reckon it’s worth posting again. Last night I spent some time emptying the fly patch on my waistcoat to get ready for Gairloch and many of the flies were in a sorry state. Hackles, wings, tails were all bent out of shape or flattened down to the hook. What I did last night, as I always do, is to rack them all up on a 10 inch piece of closed cell foam and hold them over a boiling kettle. It’s miraculous, all the fibres spring back into place as if you’d just tied them. I still managed to bin nearly 50 other flies though in a brutal purge of my boxes. Some were tied nearly 20 years ago and had never been used! They were all poorly tied or had fallen to pieces but had remained in my boxes through pure nostalgia and reluctance to see my hard work wasted. Painful….
Have to admit, this sounded highly suspect to me so I tried it out first on a daddy who’d already lost a wing to a crafty Cumbrian trout last month and was destined for the ‘big ugly’ section of the flybox. Half expecting the whole fly to fall apart, so was honestly amazed when the hackles and surviving wing sprang back to life! (So quickly rushed the entire A&E section through the sauna) Just curious, how did you come across this trick – is it one of those bits of ancient fly fishing knowledge that gets passed on, or was it a happy kitchen accident accident?
Hi Alex. I think I may have read that little titbit on one of the fly fishing forums. Amazing isn’t it, just watching everything spring back into place!
Yeah, it could revitalise a lot of flyboxes globally – for those that dare!