a look back

[james1983]

No pictures of flies...

Just a post taking a look back to the very start of Fly fishing which soon followed to fly tying.

Brian who kindly offered his free time to come and teach me how to cast said from the start he can tell i am into fly fishing and YOU WILL eventually get into tying your own flies ( he said ) and i remember laughing at him saying i have absolute no interest in tying flies....
WRONG, Brian you were indeed correct i was tying my flies that very winter only a few months after we had that conversation.

i had joined my local tying club ( Loch leven fly dressers ) that year and had lost count in the amount of flies i had tied before joining. and then over the winter period. And i had always said i would leave the tying for the close of season so it gave me something to do. And i now find my self tying flies almost daily or at least twice a week.
I tied lures to start with , then progressed onto wets and winged wets. tried some buzzers and hated them for some reason. and gave up tying buzzers that is. But having caught my first wild broon on a black buzzer and a further 8 on an an other outing i love buzzer fishing ( not on the bung ) just a very slow fig 8.
so i will be making an order to tie up 200 buzzers of various patterns.
Ok so i am still not the best at producing flies in proportion or the most neatest but there is the odd one or two which come out the vice looking great...
I had tied a Leven Stinger and one of them looks great in my opinion and i am reluctant in using it lol. i used one of the other Stingers i had tied and half the winging material came out and i only noticed when changing flies so no doubt i have the odd fly in the box that will fall to bits.
but hey with every fly i tie i am learning all the time and improving all the time. even starting to look for brooch , hair pins to tie up some to sell through my business. most all my own ideas and some will be salmon patterns so yet an other style to learn to tie.

hopefully someone will get what i was trying to say in my post lol, i just get enjoyment tying flies and working with the materials, every order i make for materials is like christmas when they arrive lol. always on the search for unusual / diff patterns . i dare not think in how many boxes of flies i will soon have at this rate.

[Chris Reeves]

We all have flies in our boxes that have been there for years and fall to bits when used.
In desperation put on a very old (first one i'd ever tied) Teal, blue and silver that I tied about 15 years ago at Eyebrook on Friday gone and the wing fell off on the first cast. Needless to say the Blue and Silver didn't catch anything ( 24 anglers 16 fish so no flies caught much!)


Regards