Do you remember the quiz from Bill Chinn, in a previous issue of the Flyer? It was from his article titled "Who's Head is This Anyway?" (The Salmon Flyer, Vol 4, No. 2, April, 1992). We were challenged to match names of fly tiers with black and white photo close ups of salmon fly heads. Well, I must have scored a zero, and I guess I could not do - better today. Anyway the point was also to show the different styles of finishing a fly as well as to say: "hey, who said the head had to be as small as possible, as long as it is well done?".

I even heard of a no-headed fly that Steve Fernandez (who else could be so twisted to imagine and realize such a concept... Sorry Steve!!!) came up with after a challenge from Wayne Luallen, who was inspired by a story from Ed Haas, who's customer asked to do a really small head on a Fly (Ed Haas is known for his almost headless steelhead flies). We do talk a lot about the heads of our flies, but there is also two other issues I'd like to discuss at this time, the number of ribs and the length of the tag.

We all tend to take great pains to follow the "RULES" but sometimes rules are simply made to be broken. Actually, I have not yet read a book that elaborates clearly on any of these issues. The only author who mentionned the accepted number of five turns of ribbing is Pryce-Tannatt in his book How o tie Salmon Flies, and his suggestion is that the USUAL number is five, which means that this is not an absolute rule. Ham's Salmon Fishine quotes: "take the tinsel in the tweezers, and winding from left to right in spirals about 3/16 of an inch apart, carry it up to the end of the floss".

The number of ribs is often shown in illustrations but it is not clear who started the rule of five turns that we almost always follow. There are too many parameters involved to confine ourselves to that specific number of ribs.

Have you tried to tie a 9/0 fly and put only five turns of tinsel as ribs? Pretty hard to do and not very aesthetically pleasing! And what about jointed body flies - how many ribs should we put in each joint, three, four, five? If you tied a Nicholson or a Popham on a size 1/0 or 9/0, you will not have the same amount of space on each joint to play with, so lets say that you put three ribs per joint on the 1/0 and five on the 9/0, the resulting fly will still, in the end, be a Popham or a Nicholson. As a matter of fact you could even delete the ribs and still have the pattern. So what does this teach us? Your guess is as good as mine. I usually put as many ribs on the body to obtain a nice fly, taking into account their relationship with the body hackle.

What is also never really mentioned in books is where to start the tinsel, above or below the hook shank? Generally, we start it below, but some tiers start it above, especially when it comes to certain Spey flies where we actually wrap the tinsel over and across the body hackle. Here is another issue that we have to deal with, where to start the hackle, i.e., at the butt, the second rib or farther. Should it start above or below the hook shank?. In his book, How to Tie Salmon Flies, Hale tell us: "the hackle on a fur body should be tied in a short distance from the butt; where the second turn of ribbing will pass is the best place or, if you begin the body with a turn or two of floss silk as described above, The junction of the floss and fur is the best place". Kelson will specify for the majority of the patterns of his book The Salmon By but will also take for granted that we know this rule.

The other issue is the actual length of the tag. We pretty much agree on where to start the tag, although Kelson states in his book that the tag should start at mid point over the barb. The end of the barb's point is were our story begins but from there it becomes either a short story or a novel, depending on who's style we follow.

One of the first things to take into consideration is the type of hook you are using - Partridge's CSb, CS 10 or some hand-made hooks - Phillips, Sunday's limericks, etc. This is important because the amount of bend as well as the length of the hook shank varies a lot depending on the style of the hook, and therefore dictates to us a specific style of tying.

As for myself, I vote for a short tag, incorporating the tail and the butt into the tag's allocated space: from the point of the barb to the point of the hook. This will allow me to lower the tail as it will be tied up on the end of the bend instead of the shank. The end result might be a slender fly with little or no arch in the wing/topping. This however will not work on the Traherne style of flies where the size of the whole feathers used dictates a long and high tail in order to be able to match the toppings. But since these patterns have been written mainly by Kelson (see Paul Schmookler's Flies of Major John Pop kin Traherne) then we can shorten the tags by starting it not at the point but in the middle of the barb. And that barb can be pretty long on some hand made hooks!

So let's say that unless you are tying a specific fly, using a specific tier's style, who gives you specific directions and examples for that particular pattern, you don't have to follow the "RULES", but your own imagination!!

What it really comes down to in the end is that you are only tying for fun and that your style will tell you how big or small your head will be, how long or short your tag is and how many ribs you'll turn around the body, but in any case this should not be leading to some controversial criticism about the "authenticity" of your work.