New to fly fishing, have questions

[Hardyreels]

Hi Rick,

I'll just say welcome to the forum, it looks like the fellas are helping you out. Good to have you on the forum board,

Ard

[peregrines]

Originally Posted by hillbilly rick

If there is a white streamer with black on top and red by the gills it would match our minnows.

Rick that's one of the neat things about tying-- you can whip stuff up to "match the hatch" - or in this case your local minnows, and have a alot of options depending on how you want to fish it.

For example, here's a common minnow found in many eastern streams, the Black Nosed Dace (if the pictures don't come up click on the blue box with the question mark)



And here's a classic bucktail, called, oddly enough, the Black Nosed Dace tied to imitate it:
Print Black Nosed Dace

If you wanted to bump bottom with it, you could tie something like this black over white Clouser, also with bucktail

http://www.leftyray.com/images/Clous...ck%20white.JPG

Or if you wanted something that suspended and breathed as you twitched it in slow water, you could tie something like a simple marabou wing streamer witha white marabou wing and topping of peacock herl 9 to imitate the dark back of a baitfish):


All of these patterns imitate a typical long thin minnow profile pretty well. There are other patterns like a Lefty's Deceiver or Zonkers that are better at imitating baitfish like shad with more of a tear drop profile.

Gizzard shad

Deceiver

Zonker

With just a little bit of practice, none of these are too difficult to tie, and of course you could tie them in whatever colors and sizes you want.

[hillbilly rick]

Ard, thanks for the welcome. I'm glad i'm here.
Mark thanks again for the links, I had no idea this much info was on the net. One vid showed the vise turning 360deg. many times to tie a fly, do all tying vices do this?
I made my own wooden lures for a few years and it took many hours to do just one. I think I might be able to tie flies a little faster after some practice.
Thanks again
Rick

[peregrines]

Originally Posted by hillbilly rick

Ard, thanks for the welcome. I'm glad i'm here.
Mark thanks again for the links, I had no idea this much info was on the net. One vid showed the vise turning 360deg. many times to tie a fly, do all tying vices do this?
I made my own wooden lures for a few years and it took many hours to do just one. I think I might be able to tie flies a little faster after some practice.
Thanks again
Rick

Rick, you're very welcome. I thought including a couple different vids and step by steps would give you a good taste for what's out there. As you begin tying you'll learn different techniques as you learn new patterns, and pretty soon you'll be combining them to whip together your own creations.

Vises for fly tying come in a bunch of different designs, and it would be a great idea to actually try a few before you purchase one if you can. There are great vises in virtually every type of design, so a lot of it comes down to personal choice.

The most important quality is how securely it will hold the hooks in the sizes you plan to tie. Inexpensive imported vises tend to have problems with poorly machined parts and/or soft metal jaws.

Here's a couple different designs

Pedestal or c- clamp - whether it attaches to the table (c- clamp) or sits on top of a table. This is a matter of personal preference. A c-clamp can scar good furniture, and may not easily attach to different table tops depending on their design and width. But they are usually pretty sturdy, and are lighter to pack for travel. A pedestal base can be convenient and , with some felt on the bottom, less likely to scratch up a good table top. It should be heavy and large enough that the vise won't be tippy if you are tying large flies for bass with a lot of thread torque.

Vises use a variety of designs to hold the hooks. Here's a good link that explains different hook holding designs and gives pics of many different styles of vises:
Get a Grip | MidCurrent

The jaw angle can be fixed, usually at a 30 degree angle which is comfortable for most fly tying, or adjustible through a wide arc up and down, which can be helpful for tying some types of flies. Here's a pic of a Griffin 2 vise with an adjustible jaw angle, but the jaws do not rotate.
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And here's a link to a thread showing a Regal Medallion vise with the jaws adjusted from a "normal" 30 degree angle to pointing straight up to make it easier to tie on a small hook. This can be a helpful feature for tying inverted flies that ride upside down (with hook point up) like clousers.
For Sale- Regal Medallion Series Vise

Whether or not the jaw rotates, and if it does rotate, whether the jaw rotates the hook shank in a constant plane called a "true rotary" vise, or not. The tyer in the video clip used a "true rotary" vise in the video clip. because the hook shank rotates on it's own axis, you can spin the vise to wind on materials. Here's an example of a Peak true rotary vise. Note that the jaws are set at on a horizontal stem at a fixed angle, but the stem rotates within that gold sleeve. (That L shaped arm thing attached to the stem of the vise is called "bobbin cradle" and is designed to hold the thread bobbin while you spin the vise, and they're usually included with true rotary vises):


On other types of rotary vises, called "360 rotary" you can flip the jaws so the hook is upside down without taking it from the vise, and you can view the fly from all sides, but the hook shank does not revolve around it's own axis. This is called a "360 rotary" vise. This HMH SX is an example of a 360 rotary vise. The jaws are held in a sleeve set in the vertical stem at a fixed angle. But the jaws can rotate within the sleeve and you can view the fly from all sides:


Having a rotary feature, whether "true rotary" or "360 rotary" can be helpful, but there are many excellent high quality bullet proof vises out there to choose from. And many people that have "true rotary" vises tie mostly in the conventional way without spinning the vise to put on materials.

To help visualize the difference between a "true rotary" and a "360 rotary" vise, imagine a dart board, with 2 darts. One dart sticking out of the center of the bulls eye, and the other dart near the bottom edge of the dart board at the six o'clock position.

If you rotated the dart board so that the dart at the 6 o'clock position was now on top at 12 o'clock, the dart in the center of the bullseye would have rotated on its own axis and be essentially in the same position (like the hook shank in a true rotary vise). The 2nd dart would have also been rotated, but in a wide arc and be well off center from it's original position (as the hook shank in a "360 vise") .

Having a rotary feature, whether "true rotary" or "360 rotary" can be helpful, but there are many excellent high quality bullet proof vises out there to choose from. And many people that have "true rotary" vises tie mostly in the conventional way without spinning the vise to put on materials.

So there are a wide range of bells and whistles out there to confuse and confound. Bottom line is you want a vise that holds hooks securely. Everything else should be a very distant consideration.

Hope this helps-- you might also want to look through some of the older threads in the fly tying forum to read the replies from other folks about different vises.

[hillbilly rick]

Thanks Mark,
I do not need the whistles and bells. I do want one that will hold securely and handle large bass flies. I believe I'll go with a clamp type. but probably won't do anything until winter when the days are shorter and colder.
Rick