I have no experience fly fishing.............but now have come to posess some feathers that I can only imagine could make some cool flies.

I have used a few before and caught my one and only Walleye.....(It was cool though.......as I said, it was my one and only) on one.

Would it be possible to tie a simple fly without all the different gadgets and materials I know that one must aquire as they progress into the addiction? Is it possible to just tie one from things I may already have or just purchase a few? I don't want to get everything I need because what if I don't like it?

I have all the feathers from an insanely beautiful pheasant....and a grouse.........

SO.........can I do it, or do I need TOOLS and SKILLS???

I have this cool book from the early 70s, "Art Flick's Master Fly Tying Guide".
A handfull of tyers are highlighted including a woman named Helen Shaw. In the photos she is using a simple vise, but no bobbins or anything like that. She has the thread in her hands, whip finishes with her hands etc. Scissors and a toothpick for applying head cement, and her flys are awesome, cool streamers and a spun deer hair bass bug.

I forgot, You can improvise with lots of materials. Pheasant is a very versitile material. You can canabalize a broken radio or something like that for thin gauge copper wire. Craft and fabric stores have tons of useable stuff, among them synthetic yarns, beads, tinsel.


Sounds like with the hawk you'll have (or do have) tons of squirell and rabbit hides to work with. I love grey squirell tails for lots of flys. Did you and your daughter ever get a possum to skin? I've been tying with the one I found earlier this winter. Interesting to work with.

Nah, no possum. The family sort of freaked when I suggested we pick up the road kill for that.

They are over it now. I mean come on...........it isn't like it was rotten! It was frozen!

I will look into making some. I think it might be interesting and I would learn even more about what fish eat and stuff.

I think the fun of tying flies is collecting stuff you think will be killer for a fly! Just the other one of my employee's started to throw away a cheap bead chain necklace when I stopped them and said "NO!"...that's like 50 sets of bead chain eyes for flies!! And every once and awhile I'll raid the lost & found for fake fur on jackets and other materials...I've found some pretty useful stuff!

And don't even get me started with craft stores....yeah, I'm sometimes ashamed I'm the only male in Michaels, but man, do they have some cheap feathers, beads, foam, dyes, eyes, etc! And during the holidays you can find enough tinsel for a buck or two to tie an arsenal of flies. Like I said, its fun to find odd stuff to use. And yes, you can make some useful flies out of a just a pheasant pelt and a few other misc materials.

As for tools, you can probably get away without a lot, but if you can get a bobbin and vise for fairly cheap, it sure makes things easier. Equate it to the going out to a movie thing...for $20 bucks you can buy enough stuff to keep busy for days, but if you spend it on a movie/candy, your done in 90 minutes! Plus, the satisfaction of a fish on a self-tied fly...priceless!

AvidFly wrote:

QUOTE:

And don't even get me started with craft stores....yeah, I'm sometimes ashamed I'm the only male in Michaels, but man, do they have some cheap feathers, beads, foam, dyes, eyes, etc!

I was at a few craft stores a couple times over ther past month, including a visit last week. My wife and daughter were with, and I was the one asking if we can go to the craft store. How sad is that. They have a good source of beads, foam, etc. They also have 7, 19, and 49 strand jewelry wire, beadalon, that makes for good tieable wire leaders. About a third of the price than what you'd pay for at a tackle shop. I even think it's made by the same company as the labels and printing look the same.

Someone on here (I believe either Eric or Corey) mentioned using a pair of pliers as their first vise for tying flies. I'd look over at the at other fly tying post Paula, as there was a bunch of good tips thrown out there. I guarantee, that once you catch a fish on your first home-made fly that you tied, you'll be back, and addicted like you said!

Well, I am ready to start doing some research....I will let you know what I come up with.

SO.........can I do it, or do I need TOOLS and SKILLS???[/quote]



Paula, you can't get skills till you start doing it! Some flies that will take awhile to tie now, you'll be tying in minutes after some practice, and of course some goof ups. I'm fairly new to tying, but I'm getting better every time I sit down in front of the vise. Oh yeah, my vise cost around $10. Small change in my opinion, and it works great for me. Start with some basic patterns until you get the hang of the basics like whip finishing etc.. Best of Luck.
-Will

I learned to tie flies by hand, with no bobbin, a pair of Fiskar scissors, feathers from my backyard, sewing thread and hooks I pilfered from my dad's tackle box. It wasn't easy, but I loved it. I will say this about tying by hand: you will get finger cramps. But yes, it can be done.

That said, a bobbin, good small scissors, and a simple vise can make life so much easier!

The beauty of tying is that when it is -30 with 50 mph winds (like it was here last weekend) you can sit in your cozy home and tie flies and still be "fishing". It also works good when you have half a foot of fresh snow out your door and you don't feel like snowblowing it just yet (like it is right now). Looks like you got plenty of tips, advice and encouragement from the guys here. Have fun!

I remeber when I was little and would like take stuff from pillow and inside the couchs that where junk. I would steal my grandmothers sewing tread and tying stuff to hooks and hoping it would work hehehe. But anyways I wanna ask what are the top 5 flies someone should learn to tye? Thanks everyone!

wooly bugger
beadhead hare's ear nymph
beadhead prince nymph
elk hair caddis
clouser minnow

I don't think I've tied a 'proper' fly yet. I just like seeing what kind of monstrosity I can come up with that I would still fish with. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.

Just remember that in real life fish are not selecting the fittest bug to eat. They often target the cripples first. Tt is a game of energy expenditure; it takes less energy to take the crippled dry that can't use it's wings, than one that is just stuck in the film and can fly away any time. So fish those sloppy flie, heck fish might even prefer them. Your flies don't need to be the perfect replicas. Fish On!

My most successful "fly" that I've ever made was the ugliest thing on the planet. I'm not sure how ... legal or ethical it was, but this was many years back and at that time, I was a bit less...concerned. It quite literally had the wings off a dead hornet, and the emerald/prismatic wing casing off a beetle. Both of which had been plastered to the front of my cars radiator. It certainly didn't resemble any bug I've ever seen. To this day I'm pretty proud of being able to attach those things to a hook, much less make it look somewhat...buggy. It only lasted a weekend, but boy did the panfish love that thing.

I'm sure your fly was a creation only a mother could love. No doubt it worked awesome on the pannies; to be fair you probably could have thrown a piece of your radiator tied on a hook and they would have taken it ;), LOL.

Definitely a novel idea picking the pieces of bugs out of your grill to make a fly. The idea would have never crossed my mind.