Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone (of Zelon fame) has some dubbing
samplers that I really like. They have a very nice beaver blend, and a wide
variety of Zelon blends that are great for nymphs. I'm not sure what all the
Orvis blends are in the Spectrablend series, but those two from BRF serve me
well. Actually, I only bought the beaver blend as a set, the Zelon dubbing
I've ended up buying one color at a time. As for quantity, I learned from
one of the BRF tyers that I was putting entirely too much dubbing on the
thread. Now the flies look much trimmer and better proportioned, and my
dubbing supply is lasting much longer.

HTH

Jim Ray
wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi all,

I'm a new fly tier, looking to build up my dubbing collection. I'm
looking at getting Orvis' Spectrablend dubbing assortments -- one for
dry flies, one for nymphs, and one for caddis - which it seems would
cover the entire spectrum of what I might need, and in handy little
containers no less.

Any opinions? Is this what I want, as a good base collection of
dubbing materials?

[And to be clear: I'm not too worried about having a few colors that I
don't use. I've already had the frustrating experience of sitting down
to tie a fly and not having the proper dubbing color, and it's worth
$45 (3 assortment collections @ $15 per) to me to avoid this in the
future.]

Thanks for your thoughts...

- Tim