Personal economics of fly tying

I tie the vast majority of the flies I use (maybe 90-95% or so).
In large part, though, that's because I already have a lot of
money invested in tools, hooks and materials. Being frugal by
nature, as well as unemployed at the moment g, I believe it
would be unacceptably wasteful to let all that stuff sit there
while I went out and spent money on flies.

That said, if I came into a fortune tomorrow, I'd probably give
away all my tying stuff and never tie again..... and not feel I
was any worse off as a fly fisherman.

For one thing, having tied, I'm now a far better judge of what
makes a well-made trout fly. Even if I stopped tying, I think
I'd still forever be a more discriminating consumer of flies. In
the end, that's perhaps the greatest profit I've had from
learning to tie in the first place.

- JR