Iowa City Tying Show

[Illinoisgiller]

Will shortly be off to Iowa City to attend the Iowa Fly Fishing Assn. tying show and meeting. I'm told that there will be 4 vendors of tying materials.:D It is tough to find a large selection of materials in this area.
It is held at the Comfort Inn in Iowa City.
With information of SAFE ice , I'll proceed NW for some ice fishing on Sunday with a bunch from Iowaoutdoors. Mike

[Schoe]

Mike,
That sounds like an interesting trip with the Fly Tyers. Are you familiar with the club from the Quad City area? Schoe

[gofish]

go get em illinoisgiller! i put my ice fishing stuff up for the year and got the boat out every day just about now.

[Annie]

how'd the show go? what did you buy?

[Illinoisgiller]

Wow!, what a weekend!! I first found that the show was at the Quality Inn rather than the Comfort. The name of the Inn was right in line with the level of the show. Quality for sure in my opinion. I had a visit with a vendor I've connected with before. Garylee Thurm is a good person to do business with ,and had a lot of things I needed. I told him I needed to find better hackle to work with. He promptly directed me to the rear corner of the room to meet David Roberts, of Grey Drake Hackle Co. Wow! he had 3 tables of the finest Whiteing hackle I've ever seen. That stop quickly relieved me of an $80 bill. ha ha .I also took the opportunity to sit and watch a tier that was doing up hoppers .I doubt that I will be fishing these much, but they look to be a fun pattern to tie.
I decided that I had better escape whil I still had some funds. ha ha .BUT, when I was driving down the the escape road. Visions of an older St. Croix Avid 4wt rod that Garylee had at a very good price was flashing before my eyes. In the interest of safety, I made a U turn and relieved him of it .
From there, I went to Briggs Woods Lake up by Ft. Dodge. Was still some daylight left so I got a local room and hit the ice. There was a solid foot of ice. Took a while to find the gills, but no hits. I could get them up to the jigs on the vexilar, but they were definately not on the bite. I fished with some locals for a while and had a nice visit.They said it has been a tough year there .They sometimes get a few in the morning and evening, but dead through the day. We finally gave up at dark.
The next morning I woke up sick. This is unusual for me. I knew better than to pass it around, so I reluctantly made the trek home. The others didn't catch anything either, but I sure wanted to spend some time visiting.
I feel much better today!! Ready to tie up a bunch of jigs and flies. Mike

[Schoe]

It sounds like you had an interesting weekend. Sorry about the lockjaw on the fish and getting sick.
I'm looking for a good source to purchase some top water poppers for Bluegill. Most places offer sets of a doz. or more of which one or two are worth messing with.

Would there be any feathers on a wild turkey that would work for fly tying?

I sent you a PM over the weekend. Schoe

[Illinoisgiller]

Schoe, I wasn't really that supprised with the lockjaw, considering the time of year. :) Being new to tying, I haven't done up any poppers yet. I realize this will be among the first I will need during the spawn though. I'll just buy some myself till I find a pattern that works well for me. Last year I done better In some cases with jigs out a ways from the shallower ones.
I and the wife got on some real nice ones from bank at Geode in shallow water. I was using grizz jigs ,but would have been a blast with poppers there.
Wild turkey feathers- The guy I watched doing up the hoppers was using them. The top wing case was 1/4" piece of one side of a turkey tail that he had treated lightly with a laquer spray to keep the feather barbs together .On some, he used untreated tail feathers for legs.
I hope I have some left. I had a bunch, but the grandsons like to make up willow arrows to play with, and have hit the supply hard for crude fletching. :D Mike