Why do you tie flies?

On 3/10/06 1:31 PM, in article ,
"Dave LaCourse" wrote:

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 09:49:23 -0500, William Claspy
wrote:

Reason I tie flies? Easy answer:

January.

What happened to November, December, February, and March?
d;o)

Well, if I were That Kind of Person, I'd have another one word answer:

Steelhead.

But I'm not.

:-)

Bill

I'm evidently in the radical minority here, but I tie flies to save
money. I don't particularly enjoy it -- it's more like a chore -- but it
does pass the time while listening to the radio or to CDs. Also, it's a
pain in the ass to shop around for the flies I want. I'm possibly the
world's most reluctant shopper.

I haven't spent a fortune on tools and materials, although I have a lot
of materials I'll never use. Collections of specialized tools don't
interest me. My dubbing loop tool is a paper clip.

I couldn't care less whether I catch a fish on my own fly or on a
store-bought fly. If someone were to give me a free supply of whatever
flies I wanted, I'd probably never tie another fly.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

You can buy flies from Kenya for $3.50 - $4.50 a dozen.
But you do, usually, have to buy 50 dozen or more
at a crack.

"rw" wrote in message
nk.net...
I'm evidently in the radical minority here, but I tie flies to save money.
I don't particularly enjoy it -- it's more like a chore -- but it does
pass the time while listening to the radio or to CDs. Also, it's a pain in
the ass to shop around for the flies I want. I'm possibly the world's most
reluctant shopper.

I haven't spent a fortune on tools and materials, although I have a lot of
materials I'll never use. Collections of specialized tools don't interest
me. My dubbing loop tool is a paper clip.

I couldn't care less whether I catch a fish on my own fly or on a
store-bought fly. If someone were to give me a free supply of whatever
flies I wanted, I'd probably never tie another fly.

daS, ylrut das!

Op

wrote:
You can buy flies from Kenya for $3.50 - $4.50 a dozen.
But you do, usually, have to buy 50 dozen or more
at a crack.

Is that 50 dozen all of the same pattern? :-)

I've heard that these Kenyan flies are of poor quality. I don't think
the elegance of the tie counts for much, but I don't want cheap hooks.

I was probably going overboard to say my only motivation was to save
money. There are at least two other factors:

(1) convenience. If I'm getting low on my bread-and-butter patterns, I
don't want to have to wait for a shipment of flies of questionable
quality from Kenya, and I don't want to drive 60 miles to the nearest
decent fly shop. (In fact, I'm not really keen on sending my credit card
information to Kenya.)

(2) specialty flies. If I'm going to Belize or Alaska I probably won't
be able to find the flies I want in a flyshop for anything resembling a
reasonable price. It's cheaper to tie them myself. I'll buy a few in the
fly shop, though.

I can easily afford to buy all the flies I'll ever conceivably need, but
I'm cheap.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Each guy cuts a different deal.
But no, not all of the same pattern. You just have
to talk to them (email) and haggle. Some offer flies tied on
good Japanese hooks for a slightly higher price,
but most Kenyan tiers use no-name Chinese hooks.

wrote:
Each guy cuts a different deal.
But no, not all of the same pattern. You just have
to talk to them (email) and haggle. Some offer flies tied on
good Japanese hooks for a slightly higher price,
but most Kenyan tiers use no-name Chinese hooks.

I'm sure you can get great deals on Kenyan flies, but I'm not
interested. I'll continue tying the ones I need and buying the ones I
either don't have the material for or don't have the competence or time
to tie.

It's been interesting reading the responses to your question. I hope no
one takes my position as censorious or critical of their reasons for
tying flies. I have only admiration for creative and skillful fly tiers,
but I'll probably never be one.

When I take a random fly out of one of my many fly boxes, I'm often
uncertain whether I tied it, or a friend tied it, or I bought it.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

RE I hope no one takes my position as censorious or critical of their
reasons for
tying flies.

You're off the hook mf.
But wise up and be careful. This is serious stuff.

What a neat thread! Thanks to everyone who contributed.

For me as I get older I realize how much of life occurs in my head. I've
caught more fish in flights of fantasy at the tying table than on the
water. The days all always warm, the wind calm and the fish biting.

wrote in message
oups.com...
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.

=====
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.


Why do I tie flies ? .... I started tying flies about a day and a half
after taking up fly fishing.

My casting skills were non-existent in those early days, flies were about
$1.25 each (steep for
the wages a rural Montana boy could make in those days), and my fishing
spots surrounded by fly shredding sagebrush and other brush.



Additionally, I tied flies to fill my boxes with the sort of fish catching
patterns that were more suited for the rough and tumble water I fished,
instead of the lightly weighted, generic patterns available for sale in my
area.



Having little knowledge of what made a good fish catching fly, I read a lot
of fly fishing "literature" after about the hundredth time reading something
along the lines of: "Never weight your hook, a nymph with lead on the hook
acts like a feathered sinker", a little light went off !!! A feathered
sinker !!! that's exactly what I need.



Along about the same time, some guide, turned boat builder started
publishing articles in Fly Tyer magazine the reinforced by revelation, these
were flies of the utmost in simplicity, and a liberal use of lead.



And while I was never brave enough to copy these patterns exactly, (one
material list comprised only four items; a jig hook, a split shot, a hank of
grizzly hen, and a Zap a Gap glue gun !), it did influence my tying so that
I created patterns for the fish and the water, and not to slavishly follow
some tradition that may or may not apply to how and where I fished.



So why do I still tie flies, I learned how to cast (some would disagreee), I
don't have lots of free time any more, and, as it has been pointed out, from
an efficiency standpoint, it's much cheaper to just buy them, I tie because
no one can tie a fly, for how and where I fish, like I can.



And sometimes when I am removing a soaked and chewed up fly from a fishes
mouth, a little voice in my head says; "I made that."