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Alan B

Am I tying so very differently?

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Back in the now dim and distant past when I was taught to tie flies one of the first "rules" I was taught was, "Get one stage right before you go on to the next". In fly tying if something isn't right you can not put it right by adding more turns of thread. If you ignore it it will only get worse. Undo what you have just done and get it right.

 

This is something that struck me as common sense and I have followed it ever since. Even when tying for a living. The results are that I make very few flies that I can not use (or sell).

 

What puzzles me is that I keep seeing posts where people are making many flies that don't come up to standard. Sometimes up to half the flies they tie. Is my deliberate approach to fly tying unusual? Does it make sense to tie 18 flies and discard six to get a dozen, or is it better to slow down a little and tie just a dozen right?

 

Alan

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I'm a little puzzled by the term "standards". Yours or thiers? Many of the posts you see on this Forum are made by beginners in an attempt to obtain feedback to improve their flies. If you see a tyers work that isn't up to your "standards", I am certain that they would appreciate your advice.

 

 

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I guess it depends on who your tying for, if your a professional tyer tying flies to sell, then by all means, hold them to the highest standards.

 

Me, im not a pro, i dont try to sell them, i do give em away streamside, and i do try to tie them the best i can. MY most fearsom fly critic is the one with the brain the size of a pea, usually swiming under my fly looking up at it,deciding if it good to eat.

 

I have seen a lot of posts on this site with some awsome flies, things done with fur ,feathers and thread , that i could never do, and ive been tying for 20+ years.

 

If you see a way for me to improve my tying skills, please tell me how to improve, but dont get on here and slam everyone that posts flies with some generic "it dosnt meet standards " crap.

 

Remember, not everyone here ties 100,000 flies a year.

 

 

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By no means do I mean to impose any standard on any other tier. I just seem to have come across people discarding lots of flies. I may end up taking say a hackle or wing off and discarding it but would never finish a fly if I thought one part wasn't right.

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to me that is why i love fly tying. no one can really tell you if you did it wrong or not. that is part of the art. sure some flies need to be tied a certain way for production purposes, but most of us here tie for the pure enjoyment and to save some money and not have to pay the prices that shops want for them.

 

if i tie a fly and it doesnt look perfect oh well. as long as the fish take the bait i dont care.

 

i take a lot of patterns and find different ways to make them my own unique way. but by no means do i discard any of the flies i tie. they all get used, maybe not by me, but they get used.

 

if i am tying for a customer or friend, i only give them the best flies i tie (if they are paying for them). it might take a few more flies to meet the order quota, but i believe in good product equals good business.

 

so i guess if you are a pure and simple production tyer then yes they need to meet "standards", but if you are tying for personal use on stream then a little bit of variance is no biggie.

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I learnt not to get hung up on how the fly looks. I only tie for myself. I found that sometimes the subtle variations from one pattern to the next help me be more diverse in my fishing. Sometimes fish key in on that one aspect and it can make a whole day (longer legs, smaller wings, fatter body etc.)

 

If I were selling flies though I would have a whole different view on the subject because if I were the customer, large variations in the fly would mean poor tying or not getting my money worth, in which case you could lose that customer.

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It is common sense, but common sense is rare. smile.gif I have never approached tying in that way. My thoughts on it are to just tie your fly, look at it after it's complete, and try to improve the next one. It works for me, and all the flies I tie are fishable with a couple exceptions that get the razor put to them.

 

cool.gif

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Alan I dont mean this the way its probably going to sound so I hope you dont take it as offensive, but how could you make a living tying flies if you take any amount of time to make sure each one is perfect? reason i ask that is I know some people who have tied commercially and usually they will be the first to admit that commercial tyers "usually" are the ones that will be the first to let a fly that isnt tied to perfection go out simply because they are on such a hard time table they couldnt possiably perfect each fly and still make money.

 

SD

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I agree with you all, but am a true beliver in what Alan says, if you know you screwed up, why not take it a step backwards and try not to make that mistake again.

Why bother trying to finnish a fly that you are not going to use. its like pouring a glass of milk, you have to have a glass right?

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QUOTE (steeldrifter @ Dec 31 2004, 01:53 PM)
Alan I dont mean this the way its probably going to sound so I hope you dont take it as offensive, but how could you make a living tying flies if you take any amount of time to make sure each one is perfect? reason i ask that is I know some people who have tied commercially and usually they will be the first to admit that commercial tyers "usually" are the ones that will be the first to let a fly that isnt tied to perfection go out simply because they are on such a hard time table they couldnt possiably perfect each fly and still make money.

SD

This is one of the reasons I started tying flies in the first place

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Not offended at all Steeldrifter,

I used to limit myself to 10dzn a day or if they where complex flies 10 hours at the vice. I didn't tie so fast that I wasn't in full control all the time and I would not have described myself as a fast tier but when tying with a friend (very competent fly tier) I didn't get my vice out until he had started to put the thorax on his Klinkhammer I set up my vice, got out tools and materials and completed my Klinkhammer first. Out of the dozen flies he was tying to support his branch of the Fly Dressers Guild I did 9 to his three. To a similar standard as he did. Most of the speed coming from careful analysis of the pattern. There is often much faster ways to put a fly together without compromising the dressing.

In the end I gave up tying full time as even at 10dzn a day here in Britain you can't make a good living at it. This probably has more to do with things like gas at over $6 a gallon.

Not every fly is perfect but each of us should set a standard for ourselves (not dictated by anyone unless that’s what we want) If one part of a fly is not up to that standard there is no point going on to the next step. If you are going to razor blade or burn the fly why finish it?

 

Best wishes

 

Alan.

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10 doz a day blink.gif that would drive me crazy after about 2/3 days wink.gif

 

ok i dont think i really understood what you acutally meant untill I just reread this whole post but now I think i do. I guess the reason I think alot of guys (including myself sometimes) will finish a fly that they think might have a problem is because they need help and they know they need help.

 

Many of the more experianced tyers on this site such as TB,Charlie,OSD,etc etc..already know what is wrong with a fly just by looking at it in their vise but for some of us if its a pattern that is "new to us" we cant readily see those problems ourselves because our eye has not been trained to that pattern.

 

just as an example:

I have been tying for around 10 yrs but i never tied consistantly up till about 2 yrs ago so there are still alot of patterns that i have not tried tying or am just now attempting such as hair wings. I started tying hair wings for the first time about 2-3 months ago and one thing I have found is that a certian pattern is tied a bit differently it seems from one of my books to the next, so its hard for someone just attempting these patterns for the first time to know which way to follow depending on which book he has.

 

Also when i try a new pattern sometime i will not really know that i did something wrong till i have ethier finiahed the fly or am about done with the fly so a mistake might not be evident to me till i am past that point and someone mentions it. Or if i know that i am not good at this pattern and maybe i did make a mistake i will finish the fly and post a pic knowing that something could be wrong but i will post it anyway because i want to see if there is anything else that needs to be addressed before i waste my time tying another and only correcting the one obvious mistake.

 

Really thats the reason for a forum such as this so that we can help each other by pointing out mistakes that we as the tyer may not see right away and get to the point of going from someone that has to ask "hows this look" to the goal of being the person that replies "fix this step by doing this".

 

SD

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QUOTE (JarrodRuggles @ Dec 31 2004, 05:29 PM)
If I just totally screw it up,.....I take a razor and POOF! A new hook to start again.

Jarrod,

 

Why did you waste all the time and effort and totally screw it up when all that was necessary was to back up a step or two and get it correct in the first place?

 

When I tie, Ive got a foto of what I'm tying either from a book, on my computer monitor or on a paper I copied from the net. If my fly dont look similar, I'll find out right away where I goofed up and redo the step not the entire fly.

 

Everybodies methods to this madness of fly tying is different anyway! biggrin.gif

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I agree with SD. Having taught people from age 5 to 80 to tie, I have to ask any critic to walk a mile in the other person's shoes.

 

Some people can try the same step 20 times and still not get it right. If the thread is at the front of the head position when material is tied off, the head will always be poor at best.....(but how many books tell exactly where the thread should be for each step?) Unfortunately it doesn't dawn on them that this is the reason for their problem.

 

Quite a few flies have points of no return. Once you get there you can't go back (material has been cut off) so the only thing is to go ahead and finish the fly.... if it is good enough fish it....if not cut it up.

 

When my wife was in 4H sewing as a girl, she took out the zipper of her dress so many times there was finally no material left and couldn't sew it back in again. She didn't sew much after that......wonder why?

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