The Italian fly-tying trapeze

Mark Bowler uncovers a secret fly-tying method from Italy which involves no vice, an eye made of thread, a dangling hook as a keel, and the fly that is dressed on two tensioned monofilament lines.

Lambourghini, Lambretta, linguini, mozzarella, Marco Polo ... and, now, also from Italy: Mosche dei Facocchi. Eh? No, I hadn’t heard of it either, but if you attended the British Fly Fair you were probably blown away by a demonstration of a tying technique by an Italian with no English that boldly went where no fly tying technique had gone before ...

I was in Arezzo, attending the show at the World Tuscany Open fly-tying championships, when I first saw Danilo Lazzarini tying flies without a vice. Nothing unusual in that, you might think, but Danilo’s technique didn't involve a hook either; at least not initially.

Then I was presented with flies of exquisite and delicate beauty which the 24-year old Danilo had crafted from his ‘vice’ – ostensibly a varnished wooden box with two posts mounted at each end. Fragile, featherlight creations, the bodies of which possessed a translucency so natural and with a delicate curvature of the dun's body that even my mouth was watering. Never mind a trout. The key was the fact that the fly was dressed on a body of clear monofilament, not a solid metal hook-shank. There was a hook in there; it dangled from the fly's thorax like a lethal trap, but everything else a good imitation should possess was present: a few turns of fine hackle, gossamer featherwings, a juicy body and a trembling tail.

The technique had been brought to Danilo’s attention by two brothers from near Rome. Valter and Ennio De Santis, both joiners who built the traditional horse-drawn carriages used in Rome, that are still used today for tourists (called ‘cocchi’). Valter and Ennio were massively experienced fly fishers who used their own style of post-to-post tying to produce marvellously transluscent, animated flies. Their tying style was a secret – a legend of the area – but, caught up with young Danilo's enthusiasm for fly-tying, the brothers shared their secret with him. For the past twelve years, Danilo has been perfecting the art of 'mosche dei facocchi' – a play on words of the occupation of the two brothers who devised the technique.

Danilo’s varnished box could have been a musical instrument. I watched as he mounted a thick rubber band at one end, slipped an opened paper-clip into the loop and then connected to this to a 'shoelace knot' which produced a double loop of knotted monofilament, anchored into the clip at one end and around the post at the other. Now the whole assembly was held under tension; you could have twanged the monofilament and produced a note. Then the knot was tightened to produce a small loop near the clip (the 'eye' of the fly) and the knot behind it would become the fly's head.

Two loose ends from the monofilament loop hung down from the knot which tightened onto the wire of the paper clip. These, I was to learn would become the binding 'thread' of the fly (and also make up the fly's body).

To find our more about Danilo's techniques in tying inthe hackle, the hook, putting in a wing, making the body, and even tying in some tails, see the February 2009 issue of Fly Fishing & Fly Tying magazine.