When you sit down at the vise you have a number of options facing you regarding the style you use to tie a salmon fly. You can choose high wing, low wing, long, short, just about anything that matches the style of hook that you have selected. But one thing seems to remain constant among today's tyers. How the wing is made up.

No matter the number and quantity of ingredients called for in the dressing, the tyer simply attempts to marry them together and attach them to the hook in one gigantic pull of the thread. Maybe the "shoulders" of duck feathers warrant inclusion in the wing proper, all materials seem to be married together and knotted to the hook.

The origination of this style of tying seems to be with Pryce-Tannatt. I am sure there are other historians of the salmon fly who could find references with which I am not familiar, but for the most part Pryce-Tannatt seems to have popularized this style of attaching the wing. I do not believe that it is coincidental that Pryce-Tannatt liked to tie in this style and that the patterns listed in his book also call for significant increases in the amount of wing material in a fly. In order to build a wing of sufficient quantity to look good on a hook and take up the allotted space, a generous amount of material is required if you are going to crush all of it onto the iron at the same time.

If you tie in this style all of the time, you have no doubt encountered the problem of anemic looking wings when you attempt to dress some of the older patterns. Why? Because the older flies were not dressed in this manner and often times do not have sufficient wing ingredients to be tied in this method. Kelson in his magazine articles was supposedly the first to popularize the "mixed" wing style of dressing. While today's tyer may not generally put the wing together in individual strands as suggested by Kelson, the principal idea of marrying the different fibers together and attaching them to the hook all at once has continued. Further, if feathers are not of the required length, they are put on as a second wing outside of the first; the modern shoulder.

Let's address a particular fly, The Captain. I have seen perhaps 3 or 4 examples of this fly by other tyers and I have tied it 3 or 4 times. The same thing invariably happens. The wing is anemic. This is caused by two items. First, there is not butt in the fly. This makes the rear end of the fly less "bulky" than most flies that contain butts. Second, the dressing does not call for an underwing. All the wing materials are simply listed. Or are they? (I am treading on some very dangerous ground here!) There is actually a semi-colon within the lising of materials. Does this mean that some materials belong as an underwing and some as the main wing? Remember, underwings are not generally separated from the main wing components in Kelson's listings for patterns.

So, how to fix the Captain. First, don't tie the tail veiling in as a single feather laying on top of the crest. Use two feathers back to back. Any conincidence to the fact that this is how the fly appears in the plates in Kelson's book? Probably not. Way too coincidental. Using the two feathers back to back creates the illusion of bulk at the back of the fly and helps to fill in the wing area. How many flies do you see today that use two feathers back to back as the tail veiling? I see hardly any. Maybe one fly out of seventy-five that calls for a tail veiling. Almost every author of a salmon fly book has addressed tying in two feathers back to back as a tail veiling method, yet it seems to have been lost as a employed by modern tyers. Why? Material hoarding and preservation?

Second, tie a built wing. Oh, I know, we are so concerned with head size that we have elected to ignore old tying methods because the head ends up looking too large. If you can't make the head the size of a period, then your fly belongs in the gutter. There is no reason why the wing components on the Captain cannot be separated into a wing and an underwing. Remember, built wings were the only way salmon flies were tied for years. Select one or two materials that will show nicely in the underwing and tie them in. May I suggest the Amherst pheasant and Golden pheasant? Or perhaps the Peacock wing (which is generally shorter in barb length and may make a nice underwing) and the Amherst pheasant. Having tied in an underwing, now make up a main wing using the remainder of the listed materials.

You can always combine the two suggestions. If you elect to tie two feathers back to back as the tail veiling, you have some space to be taken up before the main wing can be extended past the veiling to the tail. Why not take up this space with some of the shorter materials called for in the dressing? Maybe the Teal, Pintail and Gallina called for in the dressing should occupy this space rather than being placed on in the "traditional" shoulder position. They are short and they will show nicely. They may be a little difficult to work with, but there are solutions to that problem. Tie in an underwing of Amherst pheasant. Place the shorter feathers alongside the underwing as shoulders and utilize the underwing to support them. Then tie in the main wing composed of the remaining materials. Get these to lay just above the duck feathers and you will have a nice wing with plenty of height.

There are a number of other patterns where the same alternatives I have listed here can be employed to your advantage.

One might be the Blue Baron. Here is a pattern that calls for all of four wing materials. Golden pheasant tippets and tail (in strands), blue and claret Swan. Not a lot of choices or options here for making a wing for a size 4/0 fly. Is there a way around it? Sure. The tail calls for a topping and Chatterer. Tie in two feathers back to back to increase material quantity at the back of the fly. Tie in your tippet strands so that they are sufficiently high to match the height of the tail veiling. Now tie in a wing of roughtly a dozen (or more) Golden pheasant fibers from the tail Finally marry the Swan together and tie this in as the final portion of the wing. That's about three wings for this fly, but you should be able to keep the head in appropriate size because Mallard, Jungle Cock and a topping are all that remain to be added.

The Dawson. Here is a fly that appears to have a lot of material in the wing, yet can also end up looking thin. We have light and dark Turkey, blue, yellow and red colored sections, Teal, Grey Mallard and Golden pheasant tail. Throw out the. Mallard and Teal because we will tie them as shoulders (in deference to Pryce-Tannatt) and we have six materials left. Three strands of each and we have a wing that is only 18 strands high. Not nearly enough for a 2/0 or 3/0 hook. What to do? Well we could increase strand count for some of the materials, but that may alter the complexion of the fly and present an ugly appearance. Do we make an underwing? One is not listed and does not appear to be called for in the dressing. Maybe we should alter the body construction. This fly is a jointed body fly that calls for Indian Crow veilings over a tinsel body. Maybe we should place the body veilings back to back. The rear half of the body and the front half of the body both need the veiling placed back to back. With the simple light blue throat hackle, this will help provide size to the entire fly. Then we could either select certain materials and tie and underwing with them, or tie a wing with all of the materials married together. Either way we have provided bulk to the upper part of the fly be altering the method we used to tie in the body veilings.

Don't alway try to force a pattern into a tying convention. Explore all of the different methods available to you. Many times, using methods outside the scope of the "modern" salmon fly results in a fly that is much nicer in appearance. And, finally, don't be afraid of tying built wings.