Winter tying

[TheCream 0]

Most of us seem to do a lot of tying over the winter, do you follow some sort of set plan of re-stocking certain patterns, try a lot of new stuff, or just have a big jumbled unstructured mess of a tying marathon like I do? :yahoo:

 

I'm jumping from steelhead patterns one day...bass the next...carp and crappie patterns one night, etc...with no real plan.

[Bryan Wright 0]

Well this is my first year of tying and so far I have not been super structured at all. I too jump around from different patterns.

[Mr. Vegas 0]

me too. But I still am a beginner so I am trying all sorts of techniques and patterns

[narcodog 0]

Jumbled mess. I have just finished tying for two swaps and now another but other than that no rhyme or reason.

[Gaddy 0]

I will tie certain patterns but I am all over the map as well I tie what tickles my fancy at that moment. This web site definately helps with the motivation of what to tie next there is so much great stuff here.

[Mickalo 0]

I gotta agree with Gaddy. I like to do allot of experimenting with different materials and see what I can come up with. I don't fish for trout, mainly panfish, so I like to see what I can come up with that entice them wqorking with proven patterns in the past that work and reworking them and see what I can come up with.

 

Lately I've been on kick working with strictly natural materials and coming up with different dubbing mixtures.

 

Mike

 

 

[flytire 0]

i tie year round and whenever i run out of the hot fly of the moment

[Big J 0]

I have my 5 go to patterns I use and about another 10 that work well so I would like to really restock this winter on these patterns.

[JohnP 0]

I make lists, but then I tend to ignore them. Then a couple of days before a trip, I think, man, I should have tied up some more of the Purple Whatzits. I usually end up fishing with about a half a dozen patterns, and I am chronically short of those because I tend to give away a bunch of flies to friends and people I meet on the stream. So I guess the answer is, jumbled mess ...

[boynabubble 0]

First I restock on all the guide flies I used up during the summer. Luckily I keep these patterns pretty simple so they don't take long to tie. Then I'll go through my boxes and see what I'm light on and make a list of what essentials need tied up. Usually I try to keep up on my nymph box first and then I'll tie up dries and others. After that I'll look into new patterns and/or tweak some of my favorites.

 

I forgot to mention this is all hypothetical and doesn't account for spur of the moment fishing trips, fly swaps and experimental tying tangents that have a way of interrupting my 'highly structured' tying schedule.

[zug buggin 0]

I've got about 10 patterns that I fish 80% of the time. I'm working on building good stocks of them. I seldom tye or fish Dry flys so I'm big into nymphs, soft hackle, subsurface midges and other emergers. I tye all year but the in season tying is generally time of the year/seasonal hatching stuff which I tye after getting some local knowledge as to where I'm headed fishing.

[Bryan Wright 0]

First I restock on all the guide flies I used up during the summer. Luckily I keep these patterns pretty simple so they don't take long to tie. Then I'll go through my boxes and see what I'm light on and make a list of what essentials need tied up. Usually I try to keep up on my nymph box first and then I'll tie up dries and others. After that I'll look into new patterns and/or tweak some of my favorites.

 

I forgot to mention this is all hypothetical and doesn't account for spur of the moment fishing trips, fly swaps and experimental tying tangents that have a way of interrupting my 'highly structured' tying schedule.

Do you do guiding yourself up in South Dakota. I would love to come up sometime and take a tour from you. I am in Omaha, NE.

[Moscow 0]

I usually go through my boxes and remove any that are chewed up or that I know I wont use again (or that I just don't like the way I tied them) and razor the material off. Then I'll go through and fill the gaps in my boxes. I also like to tie up extra flies for our ff club monthly raffle. I keep a notebook of patterns that strike my fancy during the year and the winter is a good time to look over them and pick out one or two to try.

 

Each year, in addition to tying flies, I like to pick something new to learn like a technique or a style of fly. One year it was parachutes (I hate tying them), another year it was learning not to put down my scissors while tying. I kept threatening to learn to tie paraloops so maybe this winter ...

 

Moscow