For me, there is only one little negative to dry fly fishing the hatch. When the hatch is on you want to fool the fish, set the hook, battle him to hand, take your picture and release him so you can do it again….as quickly as possible. The longest segments in that sequence of events before you can cast again to try to catch another one are the battle and the process of drying your fly so it will float perfectly again. Bigger fish, barbless hooks, & lighter tippets all contribute to taking longer to land a fish before release. These are just 3 of the things that contribute to saturating your fly making it unable to float correctly.
The Revolution Amadou Fly Drying Patch
Until I started using the Revolution Amadou Fly-Drying Patch my process was to “grease” the fly with floatant before throwing it. Once saturated, I’d “shake” the fly with a fly drying desiccant. This only works for a handful of battles or an amount of time before the fly will no longer dry out and float no matter how much or what you put on it. Eventually the fly is going to saturate through the thread it’s tied with down the the metal of the hook. There is no “goo” or shake that will dry a fly like that out. So, eventually, I would have to take the time to change the fly out. I am pretty sure most of you reading follow that exact same process.
I cannot tell you how much money I have spent on floatants and desiccants over the years. i litterally have 2 gallon plastic bags in my man-cave. one for floatants; one for desiccants. In Montaña, the guides use a floatant called Flyagra. To me, Flyagra seems like it’s pure gasoline. Gasoline floats and it sure smells like gasoline. It works pretty well. But, it can’t be good for the river or the fish. It doesn’t work as well as the Revolution Amadou Fly-Drying Patch. I love the Loon company. Loon Outdoors makes great environmentally safe stuff. And much of it is great stuff. I soak my Huck Hoppers in Loon Fly Dip for 5 minutes in batches right after tying them and let them dry overnight before shipping them to a customer or fishing them myself. Those big huck hoppers, made of a lot of highly buoyant foam soaked in Loon Fly dip will pretty much stay up all day. A size 18 parachute adams will not.
Well, this article is about the Revolution Amadou Fly-Drying Patch. It replaces the need for floatants and desiccants. Let me be very clear. I know the people that have developed and sell this product. I really like these people. These are the same people from FlyFishingRomania.com who I have had the pleasure to be guided by in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania. These are great people. I’m not getting paid to “pimp” their product. They didn’t ask me to write this article. I love their product so much I bought my son in Bozeman a Revolution Amadou Fly-Drying Patch. He is a guide level fly fisherman. Like all the other product reviews I have done on this site, I just really like this product.
So, what the heck is it and how does it work? As crazy as it sounds this thing is made out of a fungus that grows on dead birch trees deep in the old forests of Romania. Why is works is because it’s one of, if not the most absorbent materials on God’s good earth. You basically squish your fly between two patches and it dries your fly like it had never touched the water. You can read all about how it’s made, it’s history (which goes back to humans using it for wound repair over 5000 years ago), how it has been used in fly fishing internationally for over 50 years, and why it works in detail on the Revolution Amadou Web Site.
So let me elaborate my test. I think you will find the results interesting, if not surprising.
That is a size 18 midge dry imitation, tied to ~ 18” of flouro, that I put into a glass of water. Notice how nicely it is sitting perfectly on top of the water just like it should.
Next, I pinned that fly under a fork and let it “drown” for 30 minutes to make sure it was completely saturated and sunken.
There is the fly at the bottom of the glass: completely saturated and sunken after being pinned at the bottom of the glass for 30 minutes.
Next, I squeezed the fly in the Revolution Amadou Patch for just a few seconds. you can see the water marks left on the Revolution Amadou Patch. I dropped the fly back into the water and to my surprise and delight it floated like new; like it had never touched water before.
Right?! Guess what happens on the river? That exact same thing. I will never use floatants or desiccants again. And guess what? there’s more: The patch virtually lasts forever. These folks invented the technology that dries the patch through the back sides. Like many of today’s creatively tied flies, this product is the perfect combination of space age synthetic materials and a material from mother nature that just cannot be duplicated artificially.
So what is the bad news? Well, none really. I guess you could argue it is expensive. It is expensive in terms of upfront costs. Floatants and Desiccants are consumables; you use them up, run out, and buy more. So even though most are under $10, it adds up. Technically, if you treat the patch well (ie: keep it out of the rain and don’t consistently drop it in a river) the Revolution Amadou patch will last forever. If you are in US you have to purchase it in Europe in pounds. So there are shipping costs. Also, it depends on the exchange rate at the time of purchase, but it is more than $50. My guess is that that will change when these good folks find a distributor in the US. Many of the floatants and desiccants I buy are over $10. Because I fly fish so much I historically spend close to, if not more than $100 / year on stuff like this. So for me this is a total deal. But, if you only fish 1-2 times a year this product may not be right for you.
Now understand that there are other amadou patches out there. All of them are lower grade or artificial. Some of them are even made from synthetic Imation amadou. You can find them on amazon and ebay. Orvis, Umpqua and even Loon itself have an amadou patch. The good folks at Revolution Amadou claim that theirs is the best because of the quality of the amadou and how difficult it is to harvest it. That is so rare, it is a real chore to find in the ancient forests of Romania. And I believe them. i have fished there (yea, I’m going to pass on the obvious vampire joke for now. 🙂 ) No i’m not. I can’t resist. ok, it must also be quite hazardous battling the vampires while harvesting the amadou.
Since the Revolution Amadou works so well I wouldn’t even consider doing a test against other amadou patches.
