Blackwater Virgil 0 Report post Posted April 30, 2015 Well, from my simple country boy perspective, fly tying HAS saved me a BUNCH of money IF you consider what the cost would have been to buy the flies I've used. However, it's a lot like reloading your own ammo. You don't REALLY spend less. You just get a lot more shooting (or fishing) for your buck. Of course it helps that most of my ties are pretty simple, and that I often use scrounged stuff to tie with, or feathers I pick up in odd places for cheap. It's all in how you do it, but mainly, for most of us, the only limiting factor is how much moola we have AVAILABLE to put into it - just like with any other hobby/pastime/love. Saving money is really not a very valid question, really, because that's not the point of it at all in the first place. I'm sure we all got into this by just WANTING to see if we COULD do it, and once we learned how, we naturally want to advance to the point our skills and learning will allow. THAT is what it's all about, in the end, and expenditures and economy are NOT the prime considerations at all. Never has been. Therefore, it's really an extraneous question that doesn't really HAVE an answer, properly considered. It's just a human endeavor that we love, and what THAT is worth can't be calculated in dollars, EVER. They just don't relate at all. What measure can anyone put on things like satisfaction, knowledge, skill and the simple enjoyment of it all??? If you think you can place a dollar value on that, you're probably fooling yourself. BIG time! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BH206L3 0 Report post Posted April 30, 2015 Well Mr. Blackwater Vergil beat me to the punch with reloading, I bought the nonsense about saving money, I just was saving so much money that I shot 20 time more that I would other wise, and I always bought state of the art bullets for my big game hunting! Would not bat an eye to spend $ 2 for a bullet, Its the same thing with fly tying, I been doing it for 50 years now, I got stuff I bought in packages that I have not even opened yet that I bought back in the mid 1980's! Saving money is not what fly tying is or should be the reason to take up the craft! I tie a wooly bugger a simple pattern that you can tie with materials that are common and inexpensive, my version is very effective on my local waters and else were that I have fished it over the years, I could not buy in commercially, most commercial flies are tied for fisherman and not for the fish! I also tie a Zonker pattern that is a dead ringer for the atlantic salmon smolts the state stocks with wild abandon, the fall brown trout will not leave it along every year I catch a brown or two or three that are better that 24 inches long and wild fish in a state not known for it! Its worth the expense in my opinion, you don't mind loosing a fly so you fish more and the way you are suppose to! Right now, I am on a modified purple haze kick- I am dubbing the body instead of thread, moose for the tail, the hackle and wings Grizzly and Brown- A purple adams if you will, and its been working pretty good on some heavily fished waters, its going to be interesting to see how well it will do as a mid summer attractor, with a PT trailing off the back! As for the materials we have today, guys we are living in a golden age, the hackle I started with was class A junk and even some of the Grade 1 Metz necks I bought in the early 1980s would not make the grade 1 cut today! We have it really good! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mikechell 0 Report post Posted April 30, 2015 I'm sure we all got into this by just WANTING to see if we COULD do it, Um ... noooooo ... I started because I wanted to save money. I had no doubt I'd be able to when I started. Saving money is not what fly tying is or should be the reason to take up the craft! Gee ... I feel really bad that I "took up the craft" for the wrong reason. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
