The more I read, the more I learn. Did not know that some of these products did not act as a desiccant and a floatant. Thanks again.
It sounds like a PIA, but what I have been doing forever is using two separate products, one to dry off a soaked fly and a second to dress that soaked fly.
I do this because a soaked fly will respond better to being dried BEFORE redressing than a fly that is dressed damp/wet or when using a product that is supposed to do both steps in one. In other words, my dried & redressed fly floats longer and closer to the 1st float than it does when taking a shortcut.
I also get more fish on a single re-drying & re-dressing meaning most of the time all I need to do after catching a fish is false cast a few times to dry off the fly before presenting it to another riser. I assume this happens because the fly wasn't waterlogged when I redressed.
I found another problem specifically with Frog Fanny or when using 2-in-1 products containing a mixture of Silica Gel crystals (a desiccant for drying) mixed with fumed silica powder. When you put a soaked fly in that mixture OR just retreat a damp/wet fly with Frog Fanny, some of the super fine powder gets embedded in the dubbing and eventually the fly just won't float very long.
For almost as long as I have been fly fishing I've used a product that appears and disappears from the market made by Cortland called
Dry-Ur-Fly. Dry-Ur-Fly is super fine silica gel crystals that are small enough to make contact with all the surfaces of a soaked fly and dry it completely.
Larger silica gel crystals like the type found in electronics in those little packets is not fine enough so it just won't work as well as Dry-Ur-Fly. I THINK the silica gel crystals folks use to dry flowers is fine enough but I have a lifetime supply of Dry-Ur-Fly so I never investigated the floral stuff.
I keep mine in an ancient Orvis container with a much more securely closing lid than the container it comes in now. An old plastic 35 mm film can works good too. When my fly is soaked, I pop it in the crystals STILL attached to my tipper, shake the container a few times, take out the fly and flick off any crystals that stick to the fly with my finger and retreat it with Frog Fanny. If the fly is particularly soaked or slimed I may do it a second time.
Another great thing about silica gel crystals, they last forever. If they get waterlogged from many successive days of drying off soaked flies, you can spread them out on a baking sheet, pop them in a 200 degree oven and in about 10 minutes they are good as new.
An alternative to using silica gel crystals is an Amadou patch, a piece of chamois or a rag. I also use an Amadou patch but I still use the silica gel crystals afterwards because the patch by itself it isn't as effective as the crystals and if the patch gets soaked from repeated use, it is even less effective. However the combination of the two gives me a fly as dry as if I just took it out of my fly box.
Again, all of these steps may seem like a lot but the alternative if you take shortcuts is a fly that will start to sink after a few casts/fish, which means time wasted trying to get it to float again or cutting it off and tying on something new.
