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3. First Flies, Page 2

I guess I spoke too soon. I was reexamining my caddis flies, and found that despite them being a 10, 12, 14, and 16 size, they all have almost the same size wing! Oopsies! Guess I'll have to pay better attention. I've been trying to get a little faster, but quality is better than quantity I suppose.


It takes me about 15mins a fly for each new pattern. This is really bad, I know!

I was wondering how long it takes to tie say an elk hair caddis for some of you guys?

All day, if that's what it takes to do it right.:) Forget about time... Instead stop and really look at each step critically. If you had done so, and compared the fly in the vise to ones you already tied, you would have noticed the wing was out of proportion. At that point, you could have backed off a few thread wraps, shortened up the wing and fixed it in a matter of seconds. Now what you need to do is take that razor blade to the hook and start over.

Nick,

Some guys hone their tying skills not only for the quality in each fly but for the quantity and how many they can get in, and out, of the vise every day. There are guys who are professional bulk tiers who can whip out 144 flies a day, day in and day out. Then there are guys who are slower who may only tie a couple of dozen and then there are guys like me who is really in no hurry to accumulate a lot of flies quickly. I have the liberty to tie as often as I like so even if I only tie four flies every day from Nov 01 to April 15 I'll be able to put 660 new flies in my boxes. Okay say I don't tie on the weekends there is still going to be about 460 new bugs for the season.

My point is that I prefer to tie really proportioned flies with the best materials, to the very best of my skills and you too should not worry about how long it takes to tie a fly. First get the fundememtals down strong - how to handle all the different feathers, furs, and synthetics. Learn the correct length of tails for the various life cycles, learn how to select hackle, how to wrap classic dry fly and parachute hackle. Learn all the nuances of the craft by reading books from the great tiers of the past as well as some of the newer techniques and philosophies. Then as you learn more, and apply those techniques at the bench, you will see your flies are looking better and better and your speed will increase too.

Thanks for setting me straight on this. I've been focusing too much on pounding out as many flies as possible, but I've gotta focus on making flies that will actually catch fish! Also I've gotta figure out which flies to make! (I need to spend a few hours figuring out the imitations for all the nymphs of the species in my hatch chart)