I have always tied my flies with barbed hooks and flattened the barb before use. Reading an article by Bryan Clarke I see the advantages of using barbless hooks to tie. Having had a look on ebay it appears that barbless are :
A) expensive!!!!! (not good for a yorkshire boy)
B) only supplied from Partride or Varivas (both manufacturers I haven't used.)
Has anybody obtained barbless hooks for their tying and if so where did you get them? I was looking for 12,14 and 16 in dry and nymph formats. Any help greatly appreciated.
P.S I would prefer to avoid the debate of barbed v barbless.

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Norman Maclean

Loads do barbless - Tiemco are also popular. Pretty sure Kamasan/Drennan also do them too and maybe Fulling Mill. I have recently used Grip (Lathkill Tackle or Lakeland, can't remember which I got them from now), but they have so far proved very good, light and strong. its a very similar pattern to the Tiemco one I was after but they didn't have the sizes I wanted in the Tiemco. Barbless are sharper than flattened barbed hooks, but obviously you do lose the ability to chose barbed or de-barbed whilst fishing.

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Dont overlook the kamasan coarse fishing hooks, thewre are plenty of relatively cheap good barbless hooks in that range which make lovely nymph hooks. Especially the carp hooks which are very heavy gauge in a lot of cases and help add some weight to the fly without the need for beads or lead.

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Some of the smaller barbless, Partridge hooks I've used have been worse than useless, they've been opened up by trout of little more than a pound in weight! Mustad do some barbless, eyed carp hooks that are extremely strong.

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How poor a thing, sometimes I find,
Will captivate a greedy mind - Isaac Walton.

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I've also had that problem with some Partridge light guage patterns, barbless and barbed. I don't use them now, only the heavy wire patterns. Just checked the Grip pattern I have used and its 11011BL, which looks identical to a Tiemco pattern. KDH/Arthur Wellesley gave me a barbless elk hair sedge pattern back in May for use on rivers up in Cumbria as top fly on a duo set up. I think that was tied on the Tiemco pattern I am thinking of. Anyway, over three days, that one fine wire fly/hook took probably 25-30 river brownies up to 1.5lb and also half a dozen bigger, hard pulling rainbows from Watendlath when I fished it dry there! I kept using it to see how long it would last, fully expected it to straighten on the rainbows, especially as some of the takes were very violent, but no, I was well impressed. I think the very sharp, inturned barbless point drives the hook in, giving a deep, strong hold, maybe even stronger on a proper hook-up than a barbed pattern with a straight point.

Picking on the comment about coarse/carp barbless hooks - yes - some excellent, very strong heavyweight patterns - try the ESP Raptors, you could tow a car with a size 10! Very sharp too.

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I don't like Partridge barbless, they tend to drop fish, or that's my experience. I am seriously in love with Dihoku, Gamaktsu, and Kamasan barbless. Grip is ok, for dries, but I don't like their barbless nymph hooks.

There are some others not mentioned here which are very good. The ones I use are Dohiku and Grip that I get from Phil at the fly tying boutique.

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Many thanks for your help and advice Gents.

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All good things come by grace, grace comes by art and art does not come easy.
Norman Maclean