The variety of threads that are currently manufactured for the assembly of flies is very wide.


Fly fishermen have a choice. Threads, feathers and hairs have been from the birth of artificial flies the materials that allowed their confection, which transformed a naked hook into an attractive lure.




Although at present there are flies that dispense with them, replacing them with plastic resins or preformed parts, the more still need a fine fly fishing thread and at the same time resistant to ensure the different components of the fly in place, that is what we call thread of mounting. In addition, in many cases we will use other threads or yarns of greater thickness or with some special characteristic to suggest the body of the fly or to provide a greater attractiveness.


Fly fishing threads (tying threads, or simply threads) The tying thread is usually the first material that is fixed on the hook when the fly is tied, and the last one that is cut when the fly is fully finished. Choosing the right quality is basic to avoid problems, problems that can be of a variety of types: inadequate color, excessive thickness, little resistance ... We go in parts.

 

Material Until fifty years ago the good assembly thread was made with natural silk. The Gossamer (fine) and Naples (thick) silks, from the Pearsall house, were the favorite of many assemblers at the turn of the century, and in an unusual display of longevity they are still marketed today and are still used by many assemblers, especially for classic assemblies. But although silk undoubtedly has magnificent qualities, being practical and for general use synthetic fibers are preferable.

 

Of these, the first ones that were used to tie flies (and for almost everything) were polyamides (nylon), and I still keep a pair of coils of a fine thread for stockings of the sixties, mark La Paleta, that I remember. It helped me to assemble some of my first flies and that has nothing to envy to the most modern and popular Madeira threads. The great professional trainer and creator of salmon flies Belarmino Martinez, recently deceased, was a faithful user of the nylon thread used in the manufacture of stockings, only he obtained it by patiently undoing a stocking and winding the thread in a coil; He said it was the best thing to get flies with a well-shaped head. Then, the nylon was joined by polyester, polypropylene, polyacrylonitriles, polyaramides

 

The vast majority of the tying threads that we use today are manufactured with some of these fibers, which allows us to enjoy a wide variety and a diameter / resistance ratio that in some cases is amazing. Colour. Sometimes the assembly thread is responsible for building the body of the fly, and it is obvious that then the correct choice of color will be of great importance for the lure to fish or stop fly fishing.

 

However, in most cases, the color of the tying thread will apparently be secondary to the final appearance of the flies, because except in the head it will be hidden by other fly tying materials; but even in such cases it often happens that, especially with the wet fly, the outer layer of the body allows the light to glimpse what is underneath, and the final result varies according to the choice of the mounting thread of one or the other color.

 

There are fly fishermen who always make their flies with black thread, and it is not a very bad option because black will never alter the colors very much, it will only darken their tone. Undoubtedly, that is much better than, for example, riding a small fly with the yellow dubin body with blue thread, unless we want to offer the fish a green fly. It is not necessary to collect dozens of yarn spools of different colors, but it is advisable to have some basic colors that give us at least the possibility of choosing according to the circumstances.

 

After assembling four layers of yarn we see the result on a hook # 20, from top to bottom and from left to right: Uni-thread 6/0; Gossamer; Danville 6/0; Uni-thread 8/0; G. Griffith "Superfine Cobwed"; Gudebrod 3/0; thick thread, with two twisted ends, of kévlar. In this case, by thickness, the ideals are the two threads located to the right of the upper row. The Gossamer could also serve, and even the Uni-thread 6/0, but when we had to fix different materials the thickness on the head of the fly would surely be excessive.


The bottom threads are all too thick for such a small hook, that is logical in the Gudebrod and kevlar thread, designed for large flies (especially the Kevlar thread); but it does not seem so logical in the thread of the left, qualified as "superfine".


The difficulties in measuring the diameter of the assembly wires arise from the fact that many times the modern threads, especially the thinnest ones, are formed by hardly twisted filaments, forming an unstable assembly whose diameter varies greatly according to the circumstances in which we measure it. The fly fisherman can take advantage of this feature by twisting or untwisting the yarn according to his needs: if while we are tying a fly we rotate the bobbin holder counterclockwise the yarn is untied and flattened on the hook, bulging from that very little way; if we rotate it in the same clockwise direction the thread twists (attention, if we twist it too much, it tends to become entangled on itself and can break) and its section becomes more circular.



This has several implications, for example: we can give our flies a fine and uniform body if we mount with the thread without twisting; Or we can simulate a ringed body if we mount with the thread well twisted. Keep in mind that the unraveled thread frays and breaks very easily, especially if it has not been previously waxed, so if nothing compels us to do the opposite it is convenient to keep it always somewhat crooked.


The 6/0 thread is the standard for general use (although we have already seen the difficulties in deciding which thread is really a 6/0), and we can use it without problems in a wide range of flies. Personally I only use finer threads (between 8/0 and 12/0) for assemblies on # 20 or smaller hooks, and thicker threads (from 3/0 to A) for large stringers or deer hair flies . Resistance The resistance of the thread is logically related to its thickness and to the material from which the thread is manufactured.The usual threads, nylon or polyester, hold without breaking a tension of about 400 grams in 8/0 and about twice as much in 6/0, more than enough to mount the usual trout flies.


A 3/0 can hold about two kilos, and is perfect for large stringers or deer hair bugs. The finer threads, such as the Danville Spiderweb (a monofilament with a diameter of 5 hundredths of a millimeter), can not support more than 100 grams, so although they are very advisable for tiny flies, in hooks from 28 to 32, they force ride with great tact. If a very resistant thread is needed there are magnificent modern materials, such as the polypropylene gel thread (GSP) which in a 6/0 diameter has a resistance of more than three kilos. Although who takes the palm in this aspect is the classic kévlar.

 

With a black, a medium gray, a brown, a blood red, an orange, a light yellow, an olive and a white, we can make almost all the flies without the color of the assembly thread being a problem. For those who seek greater accuracy, the best known manufacturers tend to dye at least a score of colors in their best-selling series, although unfortunately it is not always easy to find the complete series in the shops of the branch.

 

Thickness The diameter of the assembly thread is especially important when it comes to riding small flies or complex flies, with many materials (such as classic salmon flies). In those cases the diameter as thin as possible is always appreciated. But a fine thread has its disadvantages: it is less resistant, more difficult to handle, and when it is necessary to give some volume to some part of a large fly it is necessary to be a good time circling so that the fly is well proportioned. Manufacturers usually indicate the thickness of their assembly wires with a series of letters and numbers.

 

For the letters the thinnest thickness is A. The B, C, D ..., are progressively larger diameter threads. The finer threads than the A are labeled by numbers: 1/0, 2/0, 3/0 ..., the thread being finer the higher the number (the number indicates the number of times the thread can pass through). of a circle of a certain diameter). Unfortunately, it is not easy to interpret that code, and this may be the case (commented in an article by Chris Helm and Bill Merg in the Fly Tyer magazine of the summer of 1996) that a 6/0 of Danville is thinner than a 14 / 0 by Gordon Griffiths.


The dernier system allows the yarns to be accurately compared, but only with materials that have the same density as silk (luckily this is true for nylon and rayon). clip_image003A When riding with them is when you see the real thickness of the thread: what occupies the hook during the binding work. A fishing rod with a fly like it and a good Orvis Helios 3 fly rod  a special Frequent Flyer Travel Orvis Rod or an like Madeira Rayon thread can make you succeed in the river.  Although it is also true that, making an approximate average of what we can find in the market, the 6/0 of Danville can be perfectly qualified as a terrific 8/0 standard, and the 14/0 of Gordon Griffith (that although it does not place such a figure in his reels qualified as "ultra-fine" if he uses it in his propaganda) would be a very good assembly thread of the standard 7/0 caliber.

 

In addition to G. Griffith, other manufacturers classify their threads as "fine", "superfine", "ultrafine", "medium strong" ..., or something similar. It is also used in some cases the dernier system, a common method among textile manufacturers in which the unit is equivalent to 50 milligrams of mass in 450 meters of yarn (this means that if the mass of 450 meters of a thread in particular is of one gram that thread is 20 dernieres).

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