Beautiful flies vs. Not So Beautiful

Tom Nakashima wrote:
I've paid 55 cents per fly, which I
thought was a pretty good price, and they do match the patterns I wanted.
-tom

Tom,
I suggest you take up fly tying. It will cost you a LOT more for
flies, so don't think otherwise G and there's a good chance your
flies will be pretty shoddy at first :-), but tying is what changed
"another way to fish" into a true passion for me, personally..

I know you practice casting at lunch and spend WAY too much time in fly
shops G ... you just strike me as a guy that should roll his own.
FWIW, it's not the flies one ties that make the difference, it's all
the study that tying leads to and encourages that adds so very much to
the hobby of fly fishing.

"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...

"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message
. net...

I'm not quite sure how a fly could be both aesthetically
lacking and well tied at the same time. But having said
that I've tied some awful looking things that caught fish.....

Leading one to wonder how it is that some folks expect others to
understand what they say when they are themselves absolutely clueless.


It's funny to think back that you two were once lovers.

On Wed, 03 May 2006 03:16:25 GMT, "jeffc" wrote:


"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...

"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message
. net...

I'm not quite sure how a fly could be both aesthetically
lacking and well tied at the same time. But having said
that I've tied some awful looking things that caught fish.....

Leading one to wonder how it is that some folks expect others to
understand what they say when they are themselves absolutely clueless.


It's funny to think back that you two were once lovers.

Funny? Mindbogglingly, scare-little-kids, make-Hugh-Hefner-celibate,
blind-weaker-souls, and I-just-had-some-pizza-with-anchovies-you
-sick-twisted-mother****er nauseating, yes...funny, no...jeezus
motherofmercy God in heaven lord all mighty, I'd rather have wayno
describe how hot he got watching Louie doing the lambada to "YMCA"...
while I was watching a video of Scott getting dressed for, um,
fishing...

"jeffc" wrote in message
...

"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...

"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message
. net...

I'm not quite sure how a fly could be both aesthetically
lacking and well tied at the same time. But having said
that I've tied some awful looking things that caught fish.....

Leading one to wonder how it is that some folks expect others to
understand what they say when they are themselves absolutely clueless.

It's funny to think back that you two were once lovers.

Even funnier to reflect that you were once a witless frat boy with a grossly
inflated sense of his own humanity......and nothing has changed.

Wolfgang

Long ago and far away my brother use to catch trout in the McCloud
with a fly called the "lucky strike"
It was made from the foil and the red cellophane "zipper" on a luck
stike cigarette package. Ugly as hell and you were lucky if it lasted
two fish. You could tie another one with the hook still on you line.

"Tom Nakashima" wrote in message
...

"Peter A. Collin" wrote in message
...
Tom Nakashima wrote:
I just received my order of flies for the McCloud River that are well
tied, but not the greatest in aesthetics. I've paid 55 cents per fly,
which I thought was a pretty good price, and they do match the patterns
I wanted. I recently saw some very nice tied patterns at $2.80 per fly,
but they were near perfect and very aesthetically pleasing. I've never
fished with beautiful flies before, but was wondering if they do make a
difference in appearance to trout?
-tom
Less important than its looks are how it performs in the water. What I
mean is, do the dry flies float? Are their wings upright in the correct
position? Do the streamers sink properly, right side up, and retain that
attitude when stripped in, rather than spinning? Do the nymphs sink
right side up? Do they sink at the proper rate? Are the hooks strong
and sharp? Can the fly take many strikes before falling apart? You can
have a ratty looking fly that catches them fine.

Peter Collin

Peter, you seem to be very knowledge about fly-ties. You made me think
about things I haven't heard before or read in a book. Never knew about
nymphs sinking right side up, thought it didn't matter. If you can think
of other valuable information about flies, I'm always willing to listen
and learn.
thanks,
-tom


I sell cheap flies online.
Although my fishing experience is limited. I know it took me a L-O-T of work
to find a cheap overseas supplier who wasn't supplying me in crap.
I would say 95% of the time the cheap flies are crap. I got in samples from
a number of different tying houses and was about to give up when I bought my
website.
I was just going to start ordering from Rumpf and selling their flies...
even if the competition in the high price range was tough.

In a last ditch effort to find a decent tier and a number of angry Africans
steaming at the idea that they sent me samples and i refused to order. I
blindly sent a bunch of money into Kenya to a tying house that made some big
promises. I hit the jackpot!

The other flies that I got would unravel after snapping them off the ground
a couple of times. and like mentioned before bodies were a bit loose and
many would twist up my line on the casts. The wulffs i got weren't thickly
packed and the deer spinning on many muddlers weren't tightly packed.

My story with finding cheap flies and getting quality is a rarity. Before
doing this I would either tie myself (which weren't always the most
professional while I was learning a new pattern) or buy them from a guy who
owned a fly shop nearby and I'd pay like $2.00 to $5.00 per fly.

From reading around, I am pretty sure both of you guys (Peter and Tom) are
more experienced fly fishermen than i am, but I think it can be hit or miss
with cheap flies.
On the opposite hand though, I bought some size 14 blue Duns (2 flies for
$3.50) from Dick's that were REALLY lousy. So even the expensive ones don't
always work out.

I am currently working on a way to pop out a bunch of free samples to folks
on my customers list. If you guys want, just email me and I'll add you in to
try to get you a couple of freebees to see why I like this tier I have now.

The only draw back to my site is that I only order once per month instead of
sitting on 20,000 dozen flies to send out orders immediately. Not everyone
can wait a month or so to get their flies.

I still hop down to the flyshop down the street to see what the local tiers
are doing and grab a few flies I don't want to wait for or tie myself.
Once you find a good quality supplier anywhere... it's like gold no matter
what the price.


--
flies from $5.60 per DOZEN!
Rods/Reels and Gear
www.fly-fishing-flies.com

"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 2 May 2006 13:07:17 -0700, "Tom Nakashima"
wrote:

I just received my order of flies for the McCloud River that are well
tied,
but not the greatest in aesthetics. I've paid 55 cents per fly, which I
thought was a pretty good price, and they do match the patterns I wanted.
I
recently saw some very nice tied patterns at $2.80 per fly, but they were
near perfect and very aesthetically pleasing. I've never fished with
beautiful flies before, but was wondering if they do make a difference in
appearance to trout?
-tom


A fly shop two towns over from me went out of business several years
ago. I knew the guy that ran it and jumped at the chance to buy some
of the "realistic" flies that he had for sale. I bought a bunch of
them for about $0.75 apiece, and some Water Wisp flies for about the
same amount. I was so very pleased in my purchase of these flies and
couldn't wait to try them on my favorite stream.

Long story short: The Water Wisp flies were absolutely useless.
Never had a rise to them *all season*. The realistic flies did not
perform any better that the hack jobs that *I* tie. So, I can say
from experience that it ain't what they look like necessarily.

I believe presentation is the key to successful fly fishing,
regardless the discipline (nymphing, wets, dries, streamers).

I once caught a 20 inch land locked salmon that had a fly in its jaw.
I removed it and put it on my patch. About an hour later I tied on
that fly and took fish after fish after fish. The fly was beat up
beyond recognition at the end of that day. It became my "lucky fly",
and I only used it when I was getting skunked. It *never* failed. I
eventually lost it to a fish that beat me, and I regret to this day
that I did not reverse engineer the fly to see how it was tied. I
have tied similar ones, but nothing that had the success of that fly.

Dave





There used to be an olde salmon and trout fisherman who lived next door to
me on Stanley Pond in Hiram, Maine when I was a kid. He would go out and buy
Mickey Fins and some other types of bucktail streamers ( I was only like 12
or 13 at the time), bring them home and start plucking out some of the
bucktail with tweezers, thinning them down and generally roughing them up.
He swore that flies needed to be weathered and a bit thinned to work
properly.

Maybe thats what happened to your lucky fly. After being chewed on a bit by
the fish and catching all those others... it was thinned enough to imitate
something the fish recognized.

--
flies from $5.60 per DOZEN!
Rods/Reels and Gear
www.fly-fishing-flies.com

"Larry L" wrote in message
oups.com...
Tom Nakashima wrote:
I've paid 55 cents per fly, which I
thought was a pretty good price, and they do match the patterns I wanted.
-tom

Tom,
I suggest you take up fly tying. It will cost you a LOT more for
flies, so don't think otherwise G and there's a good chance your
flies will be pretty shoddy at first :-), but tying is what changed
"another way to fish" into a true passion for me, personally..

I know you practice casting at lunch and spend WAY too much time in fly
shops G ... you just strike me as a guy that should roll his own.
FWIW, it's not the flies one ties that make the difference, it's all
the study that tying leads to and encourages that adds so very much to
the hobby of fly fishing.


for sure. Even though my flies that I tie myself don't look so perfect and
get kind of screwy... It's 10 times more exciting and satisfying to pull in
a fish on your own creation than someone elses.

likewise when I crash an R/C plane i built myself from balsa sticks, Its 10
times more painful to watch than one I just bought ready to fly.

Tom Nakashima wrote:

The answer is, and this may sound funny, but It's pretty hard for me to sit
in one place for a long period of time. This is what I do at work, which is
why I practice my casting on my break and at lunch. I think I would go nuts
learning the craft of tying, although I'm very much interested in the
aquatic side of fly-fishing and can recite fly-patterns in my sleep..."guess
I'm hooked". Pretty sad when your wife asked you the next morning what a
parachute adams is? When I do see perfectly hand tied flies, I'm in envy.
Perhaps one of these days I'll start tying, but after I retire.

Tom,
I also thought I would never tie flies - fingers are too clumsy and too
short tempered but the wife bought me a basic kit for my birthday
several years ago and I took to it immediately. I don't say I am good at
it but I enjoy tying flies very much, not as much as fishing them but it
is still a decent excuse for a hobby, especially in the winter. It wont
save you money though, I now have a room full of stuff and routinely
carry more flies than any sane man needs. Still, give it a try, you
might be surprised.

/Vaughan

"Vaghan Hurry" wrote in message
...
Tom Nakashima wrote:

The answer is, and this may sound funny, but It's pretty hard for me to
sit in one place for a long period of time. This is what I do at work,
which is why I practice my casting on my break and at lunch. I think I
would go nuts learning the craft of tying, although I'm very much
interested in the aquatic side of fly-fishing and can recite fly-patterns
in my sleep..."guess I'm hooked". Pretty sad when your wife asked you the
next morning what a parachute adams is? When I do see perfectly hand
tied flies, I'm in envy. Perhaps one of these days I'll start tying, but
after I retire.

Tom,
I also thought I would never tie flies - fingers are too clumsy and too
short tempered but the wife bought me a basic kit for my birthday several
years ago and I took to it immediately. I don't say I am good at it but I
enjoy tying flies very much, not as much as fishing them but it is still a
decent excuse for a hobby, especially in the winter. It wont save you
money though, I now have a room full of stuff and routinely carry more
flies than any sane man needs. Still, give it a try, you might be
surprised.

/Vaughan


Good one Vaughan, I enjoyed reading.
I'm also going to forward this one over to my wife...
I think if a fly-tying kit was there, I would use it, just hard right at
this moment to justify buying one.
-tom