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Oh yes! I love the duality. The large pic shows jungle cock at the rear. The thumbnails show it near the eye. Which is correct? I would like to tie some this winter.

That foam basket would get me drowned in New England surf. Orvis sells a glue in set of knobs for your basic Rubbermaid dishwash basin (which is wider and shallower, thus easier to empty quickly if you get swamped). If you can't afford that just buy the Rubbermaid basin and drill out many holes in the bottom. Tie multiple 40 or 60 lb test line segments with an overhand knot and glue them into the holes with silicone caulk. Whether you buy the add-in knobs or make your own fingers, heat a knife blade and cut two strips in one long side to accommodate your surf belt. Under $20, mostly for the Orvis add-in; under $10 if you are willing to make your own. Open sided stripping baskets are not very effective in salty waves, especially under real surf or wind conditions. They may be okay in a river. Narrow closed sided baskets would have the same effect in heavy surf.

To add to the other comments, it doesn't change color when wet.

Flexament is Goop??? I'm shocked. I always thought Flexament was a variant of rubber cement. It doesn't seem to have the same smell or intensity as Goop. Is this true? Evidence please.

I don't think your problem is due to the bobbin brand. I have used most of them with no difficulties.I too wonder what you are using or how you are threading your bobbins. When I first started tying, I used wire bobbin threaders. They scoured my bobbin nozzles and I had a lot of broken thread even after I learned about proper thread tension. Now I wet the thread, put it in the tube and suck on the end of the bobbin and pull the thread through. If you are willing to do that (where has that thread been anyways?), buy some plastic dental floss threaders and use then to pull the thread through when starting on a new bobbin/thread combo.

This is based on classes with Gary Lafontaine and Jack Gartside, backed up by a discussion with Dave Whitlock at a fly show, plus about 30 years of subsequent experience: Strip one side of a webby hackle (not dry fly neck hackle - use saddle or hen hackle). Tie in near (not at, unless you like breaking hackle) the tip with the concave side at the 45 degree angle you want near the hook bend and away from you. Counterwind the hackle to the way you wound the chenille. As you wrap forward, stroke the hackle fibers backward toward the bend. After tying in the tip at the rear, I like to let the thread bobbin dangle until I'm almost finished with winding the hacke forward, then I counterwind the thread to the hackle (wiggle the bobbin as you wrap the thread forward while you do this to avoid trapping the hackle fibers under the thread) forward to the head. This creates a nearly indestructible wooly.

I'm still trying to figure out why you would want to de-magnitize your forceps. I spend time trying to figure out how to magnetize my tools. Non-magnetic tweezers would solve your problem. So you pick up several hooks at once - most folks tie a dozen or more of the same size of a pattern. Prepping multiple hooks at once seems desirable.

I have a foldtop desk, surrounded by bunches of rubbermaid boxes of materials in plastic bags loaded with mothballs. The desk is nice, though I never fold it up, since I'm always in the middle of tying something. One thing I strongly advise: create a portable tying surface. I have a larger one for my desk at home, one for my cabin in Maine, and a smaller one for traveling. I strongly prefer a c-clamp to a standing vise to allow height adjustment wherever I go. With a bad back, I am acutely sensitive to the height of my tying vise. Both my home and travel surfaces are made from leftover countertop pieces, which resist permanent glues. The base for the one at my cabin is just a cheap piece of pine. The larger home surface goes on my foldtop desk, so I don't ruin the wood with glues/glued hair/materials, etc. The smaller one keeps me from ruining table surfaces when I travel. I lucked into some maple flooring strips which look pretty around the perimeter, but lathe strips will work just as well and are much cheaper. My home surface is 22"x10" with 1"x1/2" strips added on top and drilled out with variously sized holes for thread bobbins, scissors, tweezers, etc. All verticle inside surfaces have glued in magnetic hook-holding strips. Underneath are two 1/2" thick lathe strips to elevate the tying surface, so it accommodates a c-clamp base. All wood strips are secured with sheetrock screws in pre-drilled holes. When I was recuperating from knee replacement surgeries and unable to sit in a regular chair, my travel surface allowed me to put a board across the arms of my recliner and tie; something I could not have done at a regular desk. The magnetic strips prevented hook from falling onto unhappy places, since my recliner created a slant on the board supporting my tying surface.

Try Hook and Hackle. <http://www.hookhack.com/tyingtools.html> Scroll down a bit. Their gauge is $3.25. It's the same as higher priced ones. I have 4. I keep one in my travel tying kit and keep one in each of the three locations where I regularly tie. The gauge fits on the stem of your vise. Hook and Hackle is also good for materials and hooks if you know just what you want.

One can never have too many vices.

You almost had me with the French Flies. I thought it was a pun. Sigh, you meant real French flies. I was looking for a French Fry Fly. There is a restaurant overhanging the water in Seabrook, NH where the stripers hang out and scarf up French fries thrown off the deck of the restaurant. A cut-up piece of yellow sponge attached to a hook will work, but I was looking for something more creative.

::Reads replies:: ::Gasps and slowly begins to asphyxiate:: Dunno what really is in the Flexament. Tolulene does concern me, but if it is in Flexament, I haven't seen any ill effects thus far. However, I do keep it capped with a bodkin through the plastic inside top and only take that off when coating threads or materials. When I'm done, the bodkin is removed and the regular top put back on. I get allergic breathing and skin reactions to a lot of glues and thus far haven't had a problem with Flexament. Hunters Angling sells both Flexament and Thinner at reasonable prices and the 4:1 ratio of Thinner to Flexament is about right.

One thing to remember, irregardless of storage container. The purpose of the container (this goes for food as well as fly materials) is to get the bugs kept in one place and not into everything. That said, most of my materials are either in gallon glass pickle bottles or in Rubbermaid boxes. Under glass, I add mothballs (yes, they stink up the materials and my wife complains justifiably when I open them. The materials stink too.) In the Rubbermaids, I enclose my materials in Ziplock brand bags or similar, with mothballs added or with shredded tobacco from cigarettes (a trick I learned from Mike Martinek). Both smell and I don't imagine fish find either attractive, but I suppose the smell wears off since I still catch the occasional fish. I use the tobacco on my most valuable materials like jungle cock. This summer I had a bucktail bag within a box which I forgot to treat. By September when I opened it, it was crawling with moths and eaten up. Don't make the same mistake. Such mistakes are expensive and disgusting.

Charlie, I suspect you are ambidextrous. You have my respect. No way could I tie with my left. However, if you have properly sized scissors, you can remove your thumb from them while tying and also hold the bobbin in the same hand to save time tying right or left hand. Just let the bobbin dangle while you re-insert your thumb to trim with the scissors. You can have your clip and bobbin too.

Other than the fact that you have way too many materials (do let me help by taking your excess), you need a roll-top desk. Pack all the stuff in tightly in back and roll the top down. Voila! The company only sees a closed desk.

You are kidding, right?=)

I have no idea where Mississauga area is, but is readily available online. Try Cabela's, Hunters, LLBean or others.

I don't know if they still have them, but I got mine from Hook and Hackle in NY. I'm disappointed to hear they may be out of production.

Fly tying on TV? Where? The best I can do in Boston on our cable is Walker's Cay.

This post was stimulated by the vigorous response to the poll on vise choices. One thing I don't get, irregardless of vise model is the fascination with pedestal models. I much prefer a C-clamp. It just doesn't move, and my shoulders and back couldn't survive without the ability to adjust height to the tying surface. Do you all tie on the same height surface? Since I tie on my mother-in-law's picnic table, dining room table and kitchen table on Cape Cod, my cabin's kitchen table or adjustable table in Maine, tying desk at home, and parents' tray table in Albany (all mentioned are different heights), there is no way I could tie without height adjustablility. (Admittedly, I carry a small portable, home-made tying surfaces for those instaces where the tying surface like the picnic table is too thick to accommodate the C-clamp.) I have back problems and shoulder problems (both with rotator cuff issues), and if I couldn't adjust the vise height, I probably wouldn't be able to tie. Why the preference for pedestals?

Oh yeah, I forgot to add one other comment. One can never have too many vises!

I still love my Regal. I started with a Sunrise, a Thompson A knockoff, got a Thompson A, and then finally sprung for the Regal. I've tried the Renzetti and would like the full rotary function for woolies and fancier salmon flies, but hate the chromed aspect (glare bothers my eyes). I know Renzetti can produce a flat black vise; Bob Popovics has one custom-made as a gift from the company but not available commercially. If I could get one in flat black in the cam lever version like that, I might save up to buy it. The Regal would still be my primary vise, since I tie a lot of saltwater flies. Once when I was exhibit tying at a fly show, an observer challenged my Regal's hook holding ability, I put in a 3/0 stainless steel Mustad hook and bent it double without moving it in the Regal. If you need to put pressure on the thread and are tying a durable fly, nothing beats it for holding ability. The comments on the Thompson Cobra may eventually intrigue me, since it is more affordable and an alternative to the Renzetti. Anyone want to add more on the Cobra?

The fly posted will catch fish, lumpy body not withstanding. No offense, my body is lumpy too. Not my flies, just my body. Ditto streamtyer's several comments. With floss or thread, management is the issue and both have the same issues. As you wrap the floss/thread, you are actually adding twists which set up a lumpy body. Where you start also matters. Start your thread/floss a bit behind (on the hook) a bit short of where you want it it end up when you wrap back toward the head, i.e. if the body ends before you get to where you end the wing (as in the Black Ghost), start the floss just short of where the wing will star, then wrap to just short of the bend and then back to where you want the wing to start. To get the hang of it: Since both floss and thread twist as you tie, irregardless of number of fibers or type, play around with applying it on a bare hook when you aren't trying to tie something real. Start your thread on the hook, wrap a few turns and then let your bobbing and thread hang off the hook. Watch what happens. It will start to unwind the twists. You can accelerate the process by giving the bobbin a slight twist in the same direction. Wait until it settles (slow it down if it starts to reverse itself). After it stops and if you then start to wrap the floss/thread, you will find it lays flat, and then after several turns of the thread/floss, starts to bunch up again. Unwrap a few turns, let it straighten and then resume wrapping. After a while, you will see what to do. Even if you get your thread/floss twisted up, you can always go back over to additional wraps to fill those hollows in the body if you want to cheat. The fish won't know, only you will. Some very good tying instructors taught me: if it doesn't look right, back up, unwrap, and do over if you want to get it right. Fish your mistakes, they will still catch, but the next time, do it right.

I really would consider changing materials dealers if the dye is coming off on your hands. It should never happen.

Welcome, Agreg. Tie well and be well.