Why do you tie flies?

I wrote this for a blog entry a few days ago. I've never heard anyone
else
make this point, so I thought it was worth posting.

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Why make flies and lures?

Like a lot of fly tyers I started when I was about 12 or so. I had to
tie flies in order to fish. Good flies were hard to find and too
expensive to buy back then. But I'm almost 60 now and good high-quality
flies are cheap to buy and easy to find. Rather than a threat to
creative fly tying, however, I see that as a great benefit. I don't
need to tie any more Elk Hair Caddis, Woolly Buggers or Royal Wulffs,
because I can buy those flies for not too much more than it would cost
to buy the materials.

That means I can spend all my time fiddling with new designs--tying
odd-ball specialty flies I can't buy at any price. It also means I
don't have to worry about tying time efficiency. Because I buy most of
the flies I actually fish with, it suddenly becomes perfectly sensible
to tie flies that take a half an hour or more each to make.

Now that I think about it, worrying about production efficiency can
take the fun out of almost anything. I used to work think and fret
about new and ever faster ways to build driftboats. Now I pride myself
in taking longer than some of the first time boat builders I sell my
boat blueprints to.

Time is money. The more time it takes the more valuable it is. And my
fly boxes are filled with powerful, valuable, good-looking flies nobody
else has.