Ten helpful ways to make fly tying easier and more pleasurable.
Editor’s note: Flyfisherman.com will periodically be posting articles written and published before the Internet, from the Fly Fisherman magazine print archives. The wit and wisdom from legendary fly-fishing writers like Ernest Schwiebert, Gary LaFontaine, Lefty Kreh, Robert Traver, Dave Whitlock, Al Caucci & Bob Nastasi, Vince Marinaro, Doug Swisher & Carl Richards, Nick Lyons, and many more deserve a second life. These articles are reprinted here exactly as published in their day and may contain information, philosophies, or language that reveals a different time and age. This should be used for historical purposes only.
Given the enormous number and variety of fly dressings, one thing is certain: If you tie a lot of flies, you’re going to see a lot of different problems. But if you tie a lot more flies, you’ll probably solve those problems, eventually finding your way around innumerable little obstacles, streamlining your technique, developing shortcuts, and building a couple dozen “better mousetraps.” Sometimes the most useful and interesting results from a session at the vise are not the flies but the innovations brought to their construction.
Every tier has his private discoveries and idiosyncratic procedures that make tying simpler, faster, and more efficient, and the flies themselves better. The following tips have been culled from my own tying and teaching and are by nature a miscellaneous lot. Some deal with better techniques, some with the use of materials, and others with improved fly quality. But the common denominator, I hope, is that in some way all of them increase the pleasure we take in our craft.
1. Thread Handling
Because a tying thread is composed of dozens of very thin filaments, it changes cross-sectional shape, depending upon how twisted it becomes. An untwisted length is flat, almost like floss; a tightly twisted length is thicker and rounder, like a cord. Controlling the thread’s shape and twist according to the requirements of a given material or procedure is a basic and important element of tying…