Most Important FlyTying Tool

For Flytying to be a useful & fun hobby there is one tool which is a MUST HAVE for any fly tyer.  That tool is a razor blade !

As a person ties more and more flies there is a tendency to keep those flies and just add more (and more and more…)

Often the first few flies in a bunch will turn out a little wonky, uneven or mis-proportioned. That’s just the way it goes.

Sometimes you think, “ that’s good enough. It’ll catch fish” and maybe it does …rarely .

So you put ‘em in your box. Then you get out on the stream and pass right over it/them for your “favorites” aka confidence flies.

After a few years of this you have so many flies, your box is full and you buy another box (and another and another …) After a while you don’t even look in those other boxes; you haul them around year after year until you get tired of lugging them around.

So you cull them down, put them aside, buy more hooks, tie new flies (that don’t work out and you don’t use ) and the cycle continues. Still you are stuck with a bunch of extra flies, sometimes dozens. What to do with them ?

To make matters worse, people will give you flies which aggravates the situation

I suppose you can give them to your brother-in-law who may think he knows how to fly fish but doesn’t.

Yet to me it seems ethically wrong to give flies you wouldn’t fish, to your good fishing buddies. Sure, there are cases where there are just a couple, and you clearly state they are experimental flies. But that’s different.

So what do you do ? Well, here’s how I handled it:

First off, it’s a good idea to tie your best, most used flies at least a dozen at a time. Avoid tying only the 2-3 fly grouping. After tying a bunch in a row the flies get much better and you build muscle memory on how to tie them.  Pick out the best ones.

Cull out and put any flies you won’t use in an open tray on your tying table. The more you look at them, the more you’ll convince yourself you won’t fish them.

Every so often, get out your trusty razor blade, cut off the materials and save the beads and hooks.

The hooks and beads are the major cost and our materials last practically forever. [I still have crystal flash that I use, which was bought over 30 years ago. ]

Put those hooks and beads aside for either new/experimental flies OR tie a proven winner/confidence fly on them.

It’s a little cool to deconstruct a fly, and you get a great “purging” feeling doing so.

Out of the deal you get a freebie hook/bead, clean out those boxes, get rid of loser flies AND the chance those “orphan” flies just might end up getting a new home as a proven winner.

Make sure to keep that razor blade nearby your tying station.

And don’t hesitate to USE IT !

DanStag   14 Dec 2024