The Mary "O" is a fly designed and tied by Gordon Chesney in honor of his mother. The original fly pictured at left and as seen on Gordeaux's Friends Page is in Heaven with her. This new fly has been photographed in stages but my close friend has neglected to supply any text with the pictures. Maybe the weekend at Pine Meadow House killed too many gray brain cells.



Click on the thumbnails below to see a larger image.



Gordeaux was kind enough to supply us with another beautiful fly of his own design called Purple Infusion. This time he actually included text explaining what he has done and how he has done it. As always click on the thumbnails to see a larger image:



Stages of Purple Infusion

Stage 1: As John had mention on the friend?s page I am always trying to do something new and as John says that there are no rules to tying salmon flies. This time with the fly that I named Purple Infusion I tried something completely different from anything I had ever done to build up the body on this fly.

After I had built my wing platform from the silk gut, I started with 6/0 Danville and wound down to my tie in point for the fine oval tinsel.

Stage 2: Here I wound back toward the front of the hook and tied in the fine silver tinsel, the yellow silk, the tail of Golden Pheasant crest and Kingfisher dyed purple
And finally the butt of natural black ostrich.

Stage3: At this point I tied in silver twist and medium flat silver tinsel. After the tinsels were tied in I continued to spin the Danville to flatten out and wrap side by side until I reached the gut platform.



Stage4: At this point I began side-by-side wraps of GSP to build up my tapered body. Just as with the Danville, the GSP was spun to flatten out for the side-by-side wraps and continued back and forth; shortening each progression by roughly 1/8 inch to build the body taper I was looking for.

Stage 5: I now tied in the Lilac silk and wrapped back to the butt and then back up to the gut. I now put in the five tinsel ribs of medium flat silver tinsel and silver twist.

Stage 6: Here I adjusted the silver twist and the medium flat tinsel to make sure that they were properly up next to one another and I tied in a body feather from a Silver Pheasant and put two wraps on and tied of the feather.



Stage 7: The under wing of Lilac Turkey was tied in.

Stage 8: At this point another body feather of Sliver Pheasant was tied in and two more wraps of the feather were put on and tied of and trimmed. At the last wrap of thread for the throat, I know mounted and set a wing that consisted of White Turkey dyed purple, Speckled Palm Turkey and White Turkey dyed Lilac.

Stage 9: Purple Infusion is finished of with a purple feather from a Grand Eclectus, a cheek of Kingfisher dyed purple, Golden Pheasant for a topping, horns of a Hyacinth Macaw and a head of black Ostrich herl.

As you can see it produced a nice smooth tapered body that took no more than an hour to accomplish. I might also add that I started out with the 6/0 Danville to tie in the tinsels because the GSP in absolutely no good to tie in any kind of flat tinsel, it is far to slippery to tie in and pulls out very easily. If it wasn?t for the flat silver tinsel I would have eliminated the Danville thread completely.