WWKimba

Their are many patterns that can catch fish year round (the Wooly family -Bugger and Worm come to mind). The problem is that fish (especially warm water pond/lake fish) move around in the water column and to have the best chance to catch them is to keep your fly in the fishes water column as long as possible. Fish may move because of the season of the year, light conditions and weather conditions. Here's the challenge - you have two IDENTICAL patterns one weighted and one unweighted. How can you easily tell which is which? I guess you could drop each one and see which lands hook first vs. eye first. The problem with that is 1) I'm just too old to bend over a find the flies and trust getting back up! and 2) I would probably lose the flies in the grass and find them with my feet and not my hands! Luckily the first thing I do before I tie is debarb the hook! Here's a solution - tie each fly with a different color head. Here's what I do. If a pattern calls for black thread I use it on all the WEIGHTED flies. For the UNWEIGHTED flies I'll either use brown tying thread throughout or tie with the black and finish with an under finished head then anchor on the brown thread and finish the head. This way you can tell at a glance which is weighted and which is not. This works for other color threads as well. Just remember that the LIGHTER color is the Unweighted(lighter) version and the dark color is the weighted version. As an extra reminder (due to a senior moment or two!) I put "W" and "U" on the end of my spools. You could also write something like "Dark = Weighted" on your flybox (luckily I'm not QUITE that old yet!) I hope this helps and have fun tying and fishing. Remember there are always two things you can do if if you tie a fly you think is ugly 1) Take off your glasses and it'll look better or, 2) Go out fishing on an ugly day and catch an ugly fish! See you on the waters! Oh, and by the way the "WW" in my name is for Warm Water! (Note: a copy of this post is also located in the Beginners section as well.)

Their are many patterns that can catch fish year round (the Wooly family -Bugger and Worm come to mind). The problem is that fish (especially warm water pond/lake fish) move around in the water column and to have the best chance to catch them is to keep your fly in the fishes water column as long as possible. Fish may move because of the season of the year, light conditions and weather conditions. Here's the challenge - you have two IDENTICAL patterns one weighted and one unweighted. How can you easily tell which is which? I guess you could drop each one and see which lands hook first vs. eye first. The problem with that is 1) I'm just too old to bend over a find the flies and trust getting back up! and 2) I would probably lose the flies in the grass and find them with my feet and not my hands! Luckily the first thing I do before I tie is debarb the hook! Here's a solution - tie each fly with a different color head. Here's what I do. If a pattern calls for black thread I use it on all the WEIGHTED flies. For the UNWEIGHTED flies I'll either use brown tying thread throughout or tie with the black and finish with an under finished head then anchor on the brown thread and finish the head. This way you can tell at a glance which is weighted and which is not. This works for other color threads as well. Just remember that the LIGHTER color is the Unweighted(lighter) version and the dark color is the weighted version. As an extra reminder (due to a senior moment or two!) I put "W" and "U" on the end of my spools. You could also write something like "Dark = Weighted" on your flybox (luckily I'm not QUITE that old yet!) I hope this helps and have fun tying and fishing. Remember there are always two things you can do if if you tie a fly you think is ugly 1) Take off your glasses and it'll look better or, 2) Go out fishing on an ugly day and catch an ugly fish! See you on the waters! Oh, and by the way the "WW" in my name is for Warm Water!

Hi, I'm WWKimba. I decided to branch out to this site from my home site of FAOL. I'm retired and have volunteered for a vast part of my life. I love working with youth so some of the organizations I volunteered with do the same - American Red Cross, Camp TaKumTa (camp for kids with cancer in VT), and Boy Scouts. I've been tying flies for over 45 years now - as I said I'm and OLD guy! On FAOL I contributed to their tips and tricks forum as well as participated in and hosted fly swaps - I always figured tying was a lot like sex - more fun doing it with others. My one claim to fame is that I was the first American to donate bone marrow to help out someone over the pond. In fact they were from India, in an English hospital (her closest transplant hospital!) getting her donation from some ugly guy from central New Yorker - a 3 continent effort! I hope to have fun with some of you and look forward to seeing some of your work and hearing some of your tips. WWKimba - the WW stands for warm water.

I just joined. Might as well hit the ground running. Count me in.