Fly Fishing

fliesandfins · Location: Internet

Do you buy or tie your flies, or a combination of both? When you buy your flies or materials do you buy online or from your local shop? We (like you probably do too) get inundated with emails from all sorts of overseas fly suppliers touting the "cheapest flies" around. It would seem, that like anything else, you get what you pay for? Got any insight or advise?

dax · Posted: Wed 08/04/10 11:40 am Post subject:

well i am by no meens a good fly tyer or fly fisherman but this is how i see it. you should try to tie your own flys. your first few probably wont come out that great but when you get the hang of it you can whip out as many flies as u want for free. and u can control the cuality of them. it will probably cost a little money for u to by the material but after u have it u can make a ton of flies. again i am a total begginer so u might just need to ignore this. have fun tying if u do.

TOMWIGS · Location: Shawnee Mission, Ks USA

I love to tie flies and have more flies and materials than I'll ever use. My advice to beginners is to tie nymphs and streamers but think twice about dries, with the possible exception of foam patterns, i.e. ants, hoppers, spiders, etc. There are so many materials and hooks involved w/ dries you can wrap up a lot of money in them. With most you get down to some pretty small sizes and that makes it even more difficult. If you scour the pages of E-bay and look for "steals" you can pick up most of your basic dry patterns for a lot less than you can tie them. (ex. $3.50 for doz. Adams or BWO sizes 20-24 including freight) Many of them are from guys like me who just like to tie flies! I've only bought from domestic (U.S) sites and have never been dissapointed in the quality.

All that being said, if you're like me, you need to separate the hobby of fishing from the hobby of tieing. I don't get enough opportunities to fish to fulfill my desire to tie, and the more you tie the better tier you become. I give lots of the flies I tie to friends and my son who is a guide. Both wonderful hobbies, but in my case, if I only tied what I needed to fish, I wouldn't get to enjoy tieing as much, and consequently my quality would suffer.

Marcel_Karssies · Location: Enschede - The Netherlands

Used to buy them mostly but now tie almost all my flies
myself.
In the end it is more rewarding and I like to control the
quality the flies.

I only tie the flies I need which are mostly nymphs and streamers.
The patterns I use are simple to tie so I still have time left to fish
them.