22/09/2026
ALL THINGS CDC
At our September Fly Tying night, the theme was “All Things CDC”. (Cul De Canard)
Participants focussed their skills on:
1. Tackling myths regarding oil / air holding structure of fibres and its French name.
2. Identifying the various CDC feather types (as per w classifications)
3. Selecting which feather type is best suited to which purpose.
4. Selecting appropriate feather prep blocks including foam, wood or printed.
5. Bunching fibres using both clamp and blade tools from Marc Petitjean’s Magic Tools to common bulldog clips and sliding razor blades.
6. Bunching fibres using the 3-pronged Japanese “feather tool” and equivalents.
7. Applying fly tying core skills including, allocating head space, pinch wrapping, loop / direct dubbing, splitting thread, pulling whole feathers under loose gathering wraps and half hitching / whip finishing.
Apologies to our “beginners” who were hit with all the above skills and tools at once. (Normally they start with a Hare & Copper nymph!) While the patterns chosen were used purely as teaching vehicles, we included Marjan Fratnik’s 1980’s F Fly - popular among Club members. Patterns were tied on size 14’s with 100% CDC.
