Want to get better results when tying flies? Don’t buy your way there. Tie your way there!
OK, let me come clean here. When it comes to acquiring too many materials, I’m one of the worst offenders! I own way too much fly tying stuff, and that includes materials, tools, books and whatever you imagine will make your flies better.
So with the advice that I’m about to give, don’t do as I do, but do as I say, OK?
In the beginning
When I started out as a fly tyer, I didn’t have much stuff in my fly tying case. I could store basically everything that I had in a small bag, which was about Letter or A4 in size and perhaps a few inches or about 5-8 centimeters thick.
My vise was a metal rod with jaws. I had one pair of scissors, one hair stacker and one bobbin holder. Yes, just one of each! The misery!
I didn’t have a dubbing teaser or a dubbing spinner, no hackle pliers and no hair packer, and my bodkin was a piece of dowel wood with a darning needle glued into it.
I had three colors of thread: brown, black and red, and my materials were a few pieces of deer, some marabou, a few bags of feathers like grizzly, red and black, some bits and pieces of wool yarn, some raffene, some chenille, scraps of rabbit fur and maybe some oval and flat silver tinsel and some peacock herl. I may even have had a golden pheasant skin. That was back when they were dirt cheap. Lucky me! Such a skin can deliver excellent materials for many great flies in the right hands.
I don’t remember what I had exactly, but judging from my first flies, that probably sums it up quite well.
Don’t do as I do, but do as I say
I found the selection severely limiting when I was tying. Both the lack of tools and the small selection of materials was holding me back, and kept me from tying some really nice flies.
If I just had ...
If I just had ______ (write your desired item on the line), I’d be able to tie some really cool and nice looking flies!
And the solution to that was of course to drop by the flyshop and burn some more money on some essential materials and some absolutely need-to-have tools.
But you know what? It didn’t make a difference.
Other than emptying my wallet of course.
My flies didn’t get better even though I now had feathers on the skin, better deer hair, real dubbing in small bags and a dozen spools of thread in many colors and qualities.
No *beep* Sherlock
So what did actually make me able to tie better flies?
Yeah, you guessed it: practice!
The more I tied, the better I became, and I realized that the materials or the tools weren’t limiting at all – or at least not as much as I was convinced they were. Most of what I had was fine. Not the best, but fine. Once I learned to master the tying techniques, use the proper methods and selecting the right bits of what I had, my flies suddenly started winding up acceptable.
It was like that time when I was forced to fish with my first fly rod. The rod was absolutely OK. My casting had just improved by an order of magnitude.
So, practice makes you better, huh?
Who would've thought?!
Applied to your tying
If you are a new tyer or at least starting out, and cast envious sideways glances at your neighbors materials stash, and think: “Hey, if I had all that stuff, I could tie flies just as nice as that!”, don’t fool yourself.
You probably couldn’t.
In stead of feeling the sting of envy, make do with what you have. Most new tyers actually have a decent selection of materials and tools, and when a seasoned tyer sits down and ties a fly with what you consider insufficient or mediocre, some surprisingly nice flies can come from it.
I read this quote recently:
“Thinking about doing the thing, is not doing the thing. Cleaning the space before doing the thing, is not doing the thing. Buying stuff for doing the thing, is not doing the thing."
No, doing the thing is doing the thing – in this case tying flies if how you get better at tying flies.
I don’t remember exactly where it came from. It was dealing with buying art supplies to get better at art, but it applies well here.
The quote could be a variation of this fine list from Strangest Loop.
Do it and get better in stead of planning how you can stock up and prepare and then do it to get better.
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