just wanted to see if anyone had any pro tips to put out there or anything to help clean a fly up or if you have found materials elsewhere than the tackle shop that are cheaper. ill start:
if after im done with a fly and there is anthing around the eye of the hook that is in the way, i will heat up my bobin with a lighter and carefully “clean” up the eye.
wal-mart has craft foam (40 sheets of diff colors) for really cheap along with craft fur, feathers, and sometimes mylar tape.
a dot of super glue on the finished product where you whip finished the fly will secure it
SH Hard as Nails as wellas TFO’s Hard as Hull are great to finish a fly. Hard as Hull is as good as I’ve seen at putting a professional looking finish on your flies. SH Hard as Nails is an old stand by if you can’t find your first choice. Both are fairly transparent.
sorry i meant heat up the bodkin not bobin. ive never had a problem with it cutting the thread i usually put a drop of super glue on it then once its dry use the bodkin.
I normally talk to my buddys that hunt and getthe tails form the deer they kill, drop it in the freezer for about 6 months thaw it out, remove the meat/bone and microwave for about 30 sec and freeze again and I have plenty of buck tail… just have to figure out how to dye it
I also use super glue on the heads of my flies to help secure them and keep it all smooth.
Cool… Cool aid. Hmmmm… I guess I’ll have to try it now I was sitting at my bench last night tryng to decide what I wanted to tie and I realized my tools were a mess. I went out to the garage and took a peice of 1x6 drilled a bunch of holes in it of different sizes and whammo I have a solid block of wood that holds all my tools upright and easy to grab and it cost me , well nothing but time really. Another “tool” I found a while ago, I was at a symposium where they have all the vendors that sell stuff, like boeing, lockheed and stuff… you know " Buy our airplanes…" type stuff, well the boeing guys had these business card holders that were basically a stiff spring mounted into to a solid base and an aligator clip on the end. I grabbed about 12 of them and when I get my flies done and I am waiting for the head cement/epoxy to dry I just clip them on here and whammo I have a drying stand that was again free. I am sure you could find the peices parts at Home Depot or Lowes for pretty cheap. I am always looking for the cheapest materials for tying and for you freshwater guys, Dubbing fur… My wife has a long haired persian cat, when the kids brush him the soft fur that comes off goes into to a bag on the side of my desk and I now have all the brown/cream/orange dubbing fur I could ever want. You wax your thread and dub it on like normal and it is VERY durable. I have some nymphs I use in the back yard pond for bream and I catch a lot of fish before the fly falls apart. I am trying to get her to buy a black long hair and if she can find it an olive colored one
Here’s an inexpensive trick for something to dry your larger flies on. Just take a piece of Closet Board and cut it to a desired size. Next, attach 2 of these same size boards together and secure to a smaller base plate which should form a small triangel. The other options is to simply use a piece of scrap wood and attach it to the one end of the closet board so there is some elevation on one end sloping downward toward the bottom. Just play around with the angles until you get the elevation and angle that works best for the flies you tie. The final step is to attach some ripple foam or a few foam sheets from your local craft store or Walley World and you’re good to go.
The cheapest and easiest thing to put flies on to apply head cement and let them dry is… a Noodle pool toy.
How to do it:
-Buy a noodle or steal one from your kids.
-Cut it to the desired length that you want it.
-Cut it down the middle from top to bottom, forming two half-circle like pieces.
-With one section lying flat part down, cut a small slit along the top of the noodle. Be careful not to cut all the way through.
-Squeeze it on the ends and it should open up, allowing you you to put your flies on it.
Here’s a picture of what I mean, I know my wording is probably confusing.
9 “Blackheads” (all-black Copperheads) ready to go for the swap!
kool aid is the easiest to get the color you want. but it is just food coloring which you can buy cheaper. kool aid lists the colors in order of concentration so its a good place to start reverse engineering. clean the grease off with dawn. heat up a batch in a glass pot til you get the color you want and set it(forget the tech term) with white vinegar. Rinse out the vinegar after a sshort time or it will denature the protein. this only works on protein so hair, feathers, your stomach, etc are the things that work.
the knitting ladies have got this down for wool so they are good place to start. there are also cheaper kinds of coolaid at dollar type stores.
i got a good electric chicken pink with kiwi watermelon and cherry.
i haVent tried any two tones but i expect you could.
you could also go to a rave, rodman event, or a phish concert and ask how they do their hair. heck some of em might give you a sample.
we dont need no reservations we dont need no cruise control
I see folks on other forums talking about using Rit dyes as being the best for dying tying materials.
One thing that I do to get those expensive prismatic eyes is to “recycle” them from grubs that are torn or worn out - I keep them in my pocket and just pull them off at the end of the day when I get home. I even found one of those wallyworld special bins with little ugly grubs that no self respecting fish would eat that I cleaned out just cause they all had those nice eyes and the price was right.
On my “tying stand” (a piece of plywood with a couple of 2x4s) I put up a pole on each corner in the back and draped bead chain between them. I can hang drying flies on it when I am done and they will stay in place and not slide towards each other.
I have been tying some epoxy flies lately using the Devcon 5min stuff. After I mix it but before I apply it I cut up little pieces of Krystal Flash or Flashabou (like 1mm length) and mix it in. When it dries you have built-in sparkle to the epoxy head.
I also have been using some of that sheet foam for poppers - if you roll it up and lash it to the hook it makes a nice body and you can shape it a little by how you lash it to the hook shank.
Fishbrains, I used to do the same thing and it does work well, but what works even better is to go to the craft store and buy yourself some extra fine glitter. That way you don’t have to do all that cutting and I find it far easier to work with.
I guess my tip would be if you are tying with epoxy and want a dryer wheel and don’t want to pay a bunch of money do what I did. Buy a disco ball motor off of ebay. It will run you about 12.00 for one that plugs into the wall, which is another plus (no batteries). You want a motor that turns at about 5 RPM. Mount the motor on a wood board and then mount that board on a wood base. Add a foam wheel to the shaft of the motor and now you have a drying wheel for less than $20.00.
2005 1442LW Alumacraft With Camo Clad System
2006 25hp Yamaha Four Stroke
Ive seen alot of good tips on here… some that I already knew, some that I didnt, thats good, keep it up.
The one tip that I would add to the list is simply this, Slow Down!
That sounds really simple, but there is alot behind that statement. Slowing down will allow you do to alot of things better. It will allow you to better evaluate you patterns, What materials you will need, in what order they will be tied in, etc… etc…
Slowing down will also keep you from making as many mistakes and improve the over all quality of your flies. You will be able to make deliberate thread wraps, space your hackle out evenly while palmering, splay feathers perfectly to give you the desired action in the water, and the list of goes on…
Slowing down will let you tweak your patterns while your working on them. Sometimes while tying you may see something that you want to add or change, and since you were moving slowly and deliberately, you will be able to do so without backtracking nearly as far.
All of us as one point or another get comfortable in our tying abilities, and as a result tend to rush through patterns, I am as guilty as the next person. When I find myself getting hurried I reflect on what my grandpa used to say when he was teaching me to tie years ago. “Tying fast won’t catch you any more fish, it will just make sloppy flies.”
Slow down boys… you’ll get a more harmonious outcome.
I would have to agree 1000%! This last weekend when I sat down to tie up some flies I thought about it and slowed myself WAAAAYYYYY down and my fies looked much better. The heads were cleaner, neater and the entire fly just looked better. A couple of patterns I have had problems with in the past came out better all because I slowed down. Great Tip Mike! How about some deciver tips… I still can’t get mine to look right
I was sitting at my bench last night tryng to decide what I wanted to tie and I realized my tools were a mess. I went out to the garage and took a peice of 1x6 drilled a bunch of holes in it of different sizes and whammo I have a solid block of wood that holds all my tools upright and easy to grab and it cost me , well nothing but time really. Another “tool” I found a while ago, I was at a symposium where they have all the vendors that sell stuff, like boeing, lockheed and stuff… you know " Buy our airplanes…" type stuff, well the boeing guys had these business card holders that were basically a stiff spring mounted into to a solid base and an aligator clip on the end. I grabbed about 12 of them and when I get my flies done and I am waiting for the head cement/epoxy to dry I just clip them on here and whammo I have a drying stand that was again free. I am sure you could find the peices parts at Home Depot or Lowes for pretty cheap. I am always looking for the cheapest materials for tying and for you freshwater guys, Dubbing fur… My wife has a long haired persian cat, when the kids brush him the soft fur that comes off goes into to a bag on the side of my desk and I now have all the brown/cream/orange dubbing fur I could ever want. You wax your thread and dub it on like normal and it is VERY durable. I have some nymphs I use in the back yard pond for bream and I catch a lot of fish before the fly falls apart. I am trying to get her to buy a black long hair and if she can find it an olive colored one 