TEACH A KID TO TIE :)

I found my old vise the other day when I was doing some rearranging.  I decided to give it to the kids so that they could start tying their own flies.  Here are some of Oceans and Sephoras first flies off of the vise.  They managed to do all of the steps by themselves and I helped them tie them off.  I wish my first fly that I tied looked as good as theirs :)  Talk about making a Dad proud :)  Sorry about the terrible pics, my Nikon is in for repair.

Sephoras very first fly.

Oceans very first hand tied fly.

Once I showed Sephora she just kept on tying until she had a nice pile of flies.

Until Next Time......Tight Lines to All!!!!

MINI MUDDLER MUD HONEY

Here is a fly I tied up on a size 14 hook with the Muddler Minnow on my mind.  I ditched the deer hair and chose some peacock instead.  I am thinking that this will hammer the Brookies, or the Brookies will hammer it :)  I hope you like the Mini Muddler Mud Honey. 

" Mud Honey "

Until Next Time......Tight Lines to All !!!!!

Sephora's Indispensable Fly

I was tying flies the other day when my daughter Sephora asked if she could help me.  I told her I was going to tie up a Tup's Indispensable fly and she could help pick out the materials.  I know that this may not be the exact materials used in a Tup's Indispensable so I decided to call it Sephora's Indispensable.  The tail was made using a few of Sephora's hair strands and part of the body was pink Marabou used from one of her broken purses.  She brought it to me and asked if I wanted the pink feathers.  Of course I was glad to have them.  Here is a quick how - to - on the fly.  Hope you like it :)

Tie in the tail. ( I used a few strands of Sephora hair ) Very hard to get :)

Next after wrapping tail in with thread, tie in the pink Marabou feathers. ( I used 4 strands )

It really made her day when I used those pink feathers :)

Wrap the Marabou around the hook like you would hackle.  Then tie it off and snip extra.

After tying off Marabou add the piece of hackle of your color choice.

Next you want to form a little body with some dubbing of Sephora's your choice.

Take the hackle and wrap it up around the body part formed by dubbing.  Snip extra and finish of the fly.

So there you have it.  One happy little girl and one winner of a fly.  She is almost as excited to get out there and test it as I am.  Do you fish Indispensables often?  Do you use the standard materials or mix it up with your own variations?  Who taught you how to tie flies?  

Until Next Time.........Tight Lines to All !!!

Whoolah a Parachute !

I received a comment the other day from Witham Piscator of the trout fishing blog Witham Piscator. (Fellower Blogger from across the pond, go check it out. Good Stuff.)  He said that he needed to work on his parachutes, so I decided to work on mine :)  I had tried a parachute when I first started tying and kind of gave up.  This was years ago so I decided to give it another go.   I am sorry about the terrible how - to - post on this particular fly.  It was late into the night and when I went to wrap the hackle around the post I got so caught up in it that I forgot to snap the photos after that.  By the time I had it tied it was to late :)  Here are my first 3 attempts at a successful parachute pattern.  I will make sure to get better pics next time and re-post the how-to- part of this fly.  The key for me when tying this fly was patience and concentration.  Keep things neat(neater than I did) when tying so that it doesn't get to bulky.  This particular fly was tied on a size 16 Hook.  Some of you may want them bigger, some of you may want them smaller.   

Top View Reminds Me of a Helicopter

Step 1.) - Secure Bobin to Hook

Step 2.) - Secure the post material onto hook

Step 3.) -Wrap a few times in front of post.  Then wrap 4 times counter-clockwise around the post.  Then secure behind the post.

Step 4.) - Wrap back to tail then secure calf hair. 

Step 5.) - Choose your material for body. Wrap dubbing all the way up to back of the post area.

Step 6.) - Next you want to tie in a piece of hackle, wrapping it in tight right in the front of post.  Then wrap hackle around the post counter-clockwise , starting at the top of the post and  wrapping it down from there about 4 times around.  Tie the piece of hackle off about where you tied it in.  Clip excess hackle off.  Continue with the dubbing  infront of the post and finish off fly.  You may want to add a dab of glue to the post.

Whoolah it's magic

Grey Hares Ear Variation

Olive Green Variation Parachute

A Para-Midge Variation

 I hope this helped somewhat.  Again I am sorry about the lack of pictures at the end.  I will post them as soon as I get a chance.  What size do you usually tie your parachutes? 

Until Next Time......Tight Lines to All !!!!!

Is It Spring Yet ??!!!!

Here are few creations fresh off the vise.  It will be a little while before I get a chance to test them out.  When spring time comes I plan on splashing these down on top of some trout.  I hope they work.  :)

" The Stunner "

" The Smyth "

" The Irritator "

What's Your Vise?

When I first started tying flies,  I bought a kit with a vise included.  Now don't get me wrong, I loved that vise, but man was it a hunk of junk.  In order to get the vise to tighten up on the hook you had to damn near be a scientist.  Finally I broke down and bought my self a cheap but reliable vise.  It is a Dan Vise.  Granted it's not shiny heavy duty metal, but it is heavy duty none the less.  For a price of under $80.00 I think it was a great deal.  I am what you might call a frugal Fly Fisherman.  I love fly fishing but I choose to spend most of my money on buying the kids new toys, games etc.  Which explains why I choose to wet wade instead of getting new waders, or reuse old flies so that I don't have to buy more hooks :)   I have used the same rod now for the past 5-6 years and see no need to spend $200.00+ on a new rod, when the one I have works perfectly fine and then some :)  So was the reasoning behind getting the vise that I chose.  It is light weight, durable and has a nice size set of jaws so that you can lock down onto the thickest of tables.  It can fit a huge variety of hooks.  It has the ability to rotate the fly in 360 degrees.  It also came with some other attachments that I never use.  I'm am curious as to everyone's opinion on how much is too much when spending money on a vise.  What vise do use?  How long have you had it ?  Why do you like it?  Just curious.

TRUSTY OLD FAITHFUL

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Until Next Time......Tight Lines to All!!

C.R.K. Bomber Fly !

I know there are some fellow bloggers out there that like to tie up and use Bombers to catch some beauty trout.  I first heard of this fly from BrkTrt of Small Stream Reflections.  I too have grown to love this fly for fishing Brookies.  I also am a big fan of chucking out my Castle Rock Killer pattern to some hungry Browns.  So this got me thinking,"Why not combine the two and see what happens."  Here is a quick photo step by step of the fly that was created.  Running low on hackle I was forced to use larger than usual feathers.  It ended up a little fluffier than I was going for, but I look forward  to seeing how it works. 

This is another pattern I came up with .  It is tied on a size 14 Hook.  Does anybody else out there use the thread to hide the shine of the hook.  I do this because it seems to me trout will see this as it looking more like a leg or abdomen instead of a shiny hook.  I usually try to use a natural looking color for thread.  Green seems to be my go to color.   

Until Next Time...........Tight Lines to  All !!!!

All You Need Is a Hook :)

Hello everyone.  This blogs soul purpose is to show some of the flies I have and will create.  I am going to try and tie flies that are created from things found outside in nature.  I will try and create each fly with the only thing man made will be the hook itself.  I will also be posting flies made from all kinds of materials, man made and around the house.  This blog will also include how to posts and flies for sale.  I hope you will enjoy and learn something new from the posts to come.  I look forward to everyone's input and hope to do some giveaways too in the future.  This website will be dedicated to all things flies.  Tight Lines.