Skip to main content

Methods of growing a fly

Five examples of ways to tie large flies. From top to bottom:
A: Simply tie in large materials (here hackle)
B: Parallel stacking, adding many short bunches of material to add volume
C: Tapered stacking, adding long bunches of material to add volume and length
D: Fanning, adding long material, but sparsely, to give the impression of size without too much bulk
E: Articulated shank, Using a shank to elongate the fly and create a larger fly without a larger hook

Martin Joergensen

Since you got this far …


The GFF money box

… I have a small favor to ask.

Long story short

Support the Global FlyFisher through several different channels, including PayPal.

Long story longer

The Global FlyFisher has been online since the mid-90's and has been free to access for everybody since day one – and will stay free for as long as I run it.
But that doesn't mean that it's free to run.
It costs money to drive a large site like this.
See more details about what you can do to help in this blog post.