Blast from the past (kinda)

Well seeing I'm home form work this week I thought I would post a bit of past tying. I was at a tackle shop buying some materials one afternoon and was thumbing through some tying books and stumbled into Paul Ptalis' "Century End" a book on classic and contemporary salmon flies, the big fancy fully dressed kind. I was blown away by this. I had left the shop and the pages of that book haunted me for weeks until I went back and picked up that book.

I was hooked so to speak, I started accumulating books and materials like I was going to die soon!I had been tying for a long time by that point but tying these gems is an all new discipline in fly tying to say the least.It took me a while to churn out a decent fly probably a year or two. At this point I was on a layoff so I was working on these flies for five or six hours a day! I think I tied nearly nothing but these patterns for a good five years, it's a slippery slope indeed, the hooks are hand made, not by me, though I have a made my own, they are pricey as well as the materials needed to dress these beauties.Here's a few examples of my acceptable dressings. I have sold,donated and giving almost all the patterns I've dressed away, these are all I have to show for my efforts!