cdnvet

Thanks for all the great advice. I fish mostly for walleye, smallmouth bass and speckled trout. They give me the best fight and enjoyment for the money and they taste good too.

As mentioned in earlier posts, I am borrowing a kit that has a limited amount of supplies. I have 2 colours of chenile (black and yellow. about 2 inches of olive), small amount of elk hair (1/8'' x 1/8"), brown dubbin, black and yellow marabou, 1 cermaic bobbin, 1 black thread spool and 1 olive thread spool. What would be a good material list to start with? I heard pheasant tail is widely used along with duck and goose. But there is so many types of materials and colours. It is almost overwhelming.

Here is what took me about 15 min to tie up with what materials I had from a kit I borrowed to see if this is a winter hobby I would enjoy. I did my best to match up materials to that of the actual fly I chose on-line. With a big, clear image to follow, I honestly tried to match up features and materials the best I could. Here is my picture. Just don't laugh too hard.

Wow thanks for all the info all. This is a lot to absorb but I do understand what everyone is talking about. I do a lot of fishing with taylor made flies and have been fly fishing for a number of years. But there were a few things I did not quite understand. My fly box has both plastic and natural winged flies which I have my preferences with each. But I noticed a lot of the tying patterns are largely natural materials which in turn sparked my question. This tying hobby is quite relaxing (except when I tried using the Matarelli-style Whip Finisher or dubbing thread for the first time). Again thanks troops.

Thanks guys. That makes sense to me now.

Just out of curiousity why stick with the natural materials?

Being really new to fly tying, is it better to get cutters and/or burners to make plastic wings or to make them out of feathers or hair? This is a really confusing issue for me. Do I spend the money to get this stuff or just stick with natural materials? I'm not going into any competitions or anything like that, I just love fishing.

Thanks everyone for the tips and critiques. This a lot harder than I initially thought but it is fun and challenging.

I am getting into this and I like it. Here is my second one I just done following the step-by-step video of the CDC Green McKenzie Caddis fly. The only exception I only had yellow foam. What do you think? Will it catch a fish?

Well this one took me about 20 minutes to do. LOL. Going back and forth on tying tips, what materials are used for what, the lingo, etc. So far I am having fun.

Well I am going to tell you this, I am really new to this. I am a very avid fisherman but this is my first to tying flies. A friend of mine gave me his old kit as he really wasn't into it so when I mentioned I would give it a try he said before you go out and buy everything like I did try it first. If I like it he said keep it. So I am giving it a try. He did have limited items in his kit but I looked up on the internet for a fly to copy and this is what I did. The first image is the one I copied and the second is the one I tied.