Lower Forty Flyting Lab - March 13, 2000

March 13, 2000

DUBBING AND DUBBING ALTERNATIVES

With all the new dubbing materials available to today’s fly tyer, it can be quite difficult to determine which product best suits your specific needs. I personally have an affection toward natural material for both dry fly and nymph applications, call it "old school" if you will.

A few years ago, Mad River Fishing Tackle of Canastota, New York introduced a line of all natural beaver dubbing that ended my search for a quality, easy to use, alternative to purchasing raw skin patches and tediously blending the fur to obtain the color and consistency I was seeking. This product is ultra fine and generally free of pesky guard hairs, making it unsurpassed for most dry fly work. Being a water dwelling animal by nature, beaver fur is also very conducive to floatability, even though most of the natural oils have been extracted through dying and processing. If used conscientiously, one package is enough to tie numerous flies and is very inexpensive. Mad River Beaver Dubbing is also available in every conceivable mayfly body color or can be blended to achieve custom results.

A product that has found favor with seasoned nymph and wet fly tyers over the years is traditional blended rabbit dubbing. This product is a bit more coarse than beaver and also maintains it’s original guard hairs creating a lifelike "buggy" appearance, highly sought after when constructing thorax and abdomen portions of sinking flies. Only a smidgen of wax is necessary when applying rabbit dubbing to your tying thread, making it user friendly and eliminating much of the struggle common to many synthetic dubbings. Lacking natural oils common to water dwelling animals, rabbit fur also does not maintain the floating properties necessary to consider it superior dry fly dubbing. This product is also available in a myriad of colors, carefully blended to mimic most mayfly, caddis and stonefly sub-aquatic specimens.

Another form of dubbing that has yet to take serious hold, but has limitless potential are dubbing brushes. Siman Ltd., a company in the Czech Republic, of all places, markets a special synthetic/natural material of triangle-shaped fibers with highly refractive light properties, called dubbing brushes. The only way to effectively describe this material is to imagine a very fine, very dense chenille that is actually a blend of various, commonly used dubbing products (i.e. hare’s ear, rabbit fur, blended with antron). Rather than dubbed on the thread, it is applied to the hook shank in the traditional method of wrapping floss, tinsel and other body materials. The consistency, quality and color of this material is truly impressive, and is best suited for sub-surface patterns. While I must admit my personal experience with this product is rather limited, the flies I have inspected that were constructed with dubbing brushes were some of the most realistic creations I have ever witnessed.

Nature’s Spirit markets another form of dubbing material called hand spun yarn. It is sold on 3X4 cards and is another product that eliminates much of the fuss associated with traditional dubbing methods. Simply stated is it very fine spun wool yarn that has been dyed to mayfly specifications and processed with preen oil to enhance floatability. Here again, the material is wrapped on to form the body rather than dubbed in the conventional manner. The taper you wish to achieve in both latter products, is actually dictated by the tying thread, so care should be taken to construct proportionally correct under bodies when employing these materials.

As with all art forms fly tying is in constant flux. I would encourage all tyers to experiment with some of the newer blends such as Wapsi’s dubbing enhancer, light brite and antron to achieve results that will offer flash, sparkle and translucency to your offerings. When dabbling with materials that maintain reflective properties, a conservative approach to blending will lead to more realistic, lifelike flies.