Tying v. Buying

[karstopo]

I hadn't bought a fly in years. I'm not sure how I got on the track of having to roll my own, but there I was and have been almost from the beginning. Then, I got a gift of a few flies and that opened my eyes to buying flies instead of tying. So I did and they came and I am thrilled.

So now I'm thinking I will let someone else tie them unless I can't find what I want. Save that tying time and invest it into something else, maybe even fishing. Faithfully copying something someone else came up with has lost its lustre.

Has this happened to anyone else?

 

[comeonavs]

I only buy ones I will use rarely and its not worth buying materials, like hoppers or stimi's

I continue to tie cause I load my buddies up and we lose a lot of flies so I can't afford to buy flies at $1.99 a pop and wont buy the 59 cent cheapies. On bad days I will go through 10-12.

 

[think trout]

Since I discovered the Big Y Fly Company I haven't tied my own flies in three years. Excellent flies at a very reasonable price!

 

[scotty macfly]

I only buy ones I will use rarely and its not worth buying materials, like hoppers or stimi's

I continue to tie cause I load my buddies up and we lose a lot of flies so I can't afford to buy flies at $1.99 a pop and wont buy the 59 cent cheapies. On bad days I will go through 10-12.

10 or 12? What in the blazes are you doing man? Fishing from the trees? I thought I was bad, but I bow down to you.

Seriously though, no. Well, very very seldom will I go to the fly shop and buy a fly or two, but that's only if I am curious on how well they will do where I fish the most. I tie just a few flies that are proven flies for the waters I fish, and that's all I need. If you look in my box, you'll see rows of the same fly, but in different sizes. I like to keep things simple, so the less choices of flies means the less time I stare into my box wondering what fly to use, and it gives me more time to do what I went out to do; fish.

But if I were to buy a lot of flies, because I may be low on them, Jerry ( Hairwing 530 ) will be the guy I go to.

 

[don_p]

Tying for me is relaxation therapy and the satisfaction of fooling a trout with something I've created. Lately the only purchase has been some hoppers. I really need to teach myself how to tie some productive imitations.

 

[fq13]

Dude! Tie your own, you'll save money.

 

[fredaevans]

Interesting this tread has just come up on the Board. I tied my own for many years ... then less .. then less ... then ... Boxes of the things that will never see water or get an eye-ball from a Steelhead.

Just yesterday I passed on a tonne of years of collecting to a fellow to distribute as he sees fit. :frogdance

Me? If there's a fly I want it's just less expensive to just pony up the $$.

fae

 

[Rip Tide]

I don't even enjoy tying and yet I've tied every one of my own flies since the mid '70s
To buy them instead of tying my own is unimaginable to me.
It would lessen the accomplishment

 

[airborne 82nd]

This will always be a topic for discussion , but honestly I enjoy tying my own flies as much as I enjoy fishing , it's fun and relaxing , I don't even debate the money , or say I'm saving money , I just love tying my own flies ,
I look out the window ,it's snowing like crazy ,wind is howling and it's cold ....
Pour my favorite , and sit at my bench , love it
Airborne (David )

 

[toothybugs]

Buying flies doesn't allow you to innovate an idea or adapt a pattern or use a new material. I don't remember the last time I mindlessly copied someone else's pattern - just about everything I do is either an agglomeration of ideas blended in to something new(ish) or is in my own color, or is somehow uniquely mine.

Plus it's about impossible for my flyshop or even Orvis to carry every pattern I am going to want. I've never seen #12 olive, chartreuse, and white marabou Clousers with chain eyes for sale, and that's a killer little pattern.

 

[bigjim5589]

Over about he past 10 years I have bought more flies than I had in the previous 40. There's just so many really good looking fly patterns these days & as much as I enjoy tying, only had so much time to do it. In some cases I bought flies I could get cheap, and more to see the pattern, for replicating than to actually fish the fly.

Tying has not lost it's appeal to me, but I have no qualms with buying some flies either.

 

[mtboiler]

I have not bought a fly in years. The main reason I tie all of own flies is I get what i want. I only use three nymphs and two dries now. I have friends ask me all the time, "where did you get that fly? I have never seen that before." And I truly believe part of the reason I catch fish in high traffic areas is that the have never seen the flies I toss.
Plus, I enjoy tying. I pour me a beer, sit at my vise and watch a game. If the game sucks, i get 7 or 8 flies per hour. If it is a good game I might refill a couple of times and still have the same hook sitting in the jaws an hour later.
But I enjoy it and as long I can do it I will keep tying.

 

[dennyk]

I enjoy tying my own. Great therapy. Am I saving any money? probably not going to be in the black for a long time. But that's not why I'm doing it. I do look forward to my tying time on nearly a daily basis.

Denny

 

[ejsell]

If you don't enjoy tying or don't have the money for the initial investment in tools and materials, I get it. I also buy the occasional fly either at a shop or a box from Hairwing but those are flies for special occasions. The flies pictured run $1.59 each at my "local" shop, I tied 40 of them so they would have cost me about $60 had I purchased them. I've got about $12 in materials wrapped up in them and tied them in less time than it would have taken me to go buy them. Plus I had fun tying them and enjoy catching fish on something I made.

P.S. I'll probably lose about half of them in a week of hard fishing.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[karstopo]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm still going to tie my salty patterns because they are different enough or unique in a way as to not be found in stores and I have tailored them to fish better in my local conditions and I think they are better at catching fish here locally than what I can otherwise buy. Early on when I started fly fishing the salt, I bought some variety of salty flies but there wasn't what I considered a good selection for our conditions and fish, outside of clousers, or a variety that made sense or worked all that well here. So I found patterns online that looked to have potential, that maybe some local guys did well with and then worked on copying them and then making them better if I could or just tried to come up with my own stuff. Some experiments were good and some were terrible, maybe a half dozen patterns, some recognizable or otherwise have stood the test of time.

That's what a lot of us do. Find something that works and tie that or try to modify it to make it better. Fly fishing in the salt here has not been historically huge so it would make sense there isn't a huge catalog of proven patterns. Maybe something for East Coast Stripers or Florida Snook could work well here, but that has been mostly untrue in my experience. We don't have a decades of thousands of fly fishermen working the same water and the vast permutations of flies that comes from all that experience. A lot of guys here work up there own variations drawing from whatever experience or information that is out there, usually from other local fly tiers and fishermen or artificial lure folks.

This whole warmwater fly fishing scene that I have delved into is new to me and I felt the need to interview a variety of patterns to see whose going to make the cut. The lake I live on has a variety of fish and while the fish might be the same as in other lakes, the structure, depth, water clarity is unique to this lake so a pattern that works well on someone else's lake may not work all that well here.

It was sure nice to open up a $45 package of 38 flies shipped to my door and that looked like potential winners to me at least in the catalogue, many of which are ones that I likely would have never gotten around to tying and would have spent 3 times or more of the amount on materials to get set up to tie them.

Hopefully out of the mix I'll be able to find a few that have staying power and then I can acquire all that's necessary to tie them in as is or in some modified way...or just keep on buying them as is.

 

[silver creek]

I think if you are going to fish the classic flies like a parachute adams or an elk hair caddis, you need not tie. But if you are a tinkerer or want to remain connected to fly fishing during the winter, fly tying is a great way to do it.

I started tying because the flies I needed were always sold out at my local sporting goods store.

A couple of years ago, a friend showed me a fly that was a "killer" on one of the driftless streams. He had only a bedraggled fly left and he had never seen it before and did not know what the fly was even though he had owned an Orvis Fly Shop in Milwaukee. He was given the flies years ago. He showed me the fly and asked me to tie some up. As a fly tier I happened to recognize the fly material and fly as Eric Leisher's woodchuck caddis, a fly that was first tied with woodchuck underbody fur and hair. I tied him a dozen and so nor he owes me a favor.

Woodchuck Caddis

Remember when bead heads were first introduced in a magazine or CDC was the acronym for the Communicable Disease Center rather than a duck's butt? I had bead head variations and CDC flies because I tied them. They went from fly tier magazine right into my fly box. I had Copper Johns down to size 18 in my fly box right after John Barr's article came out.

Even when I do buy the occasional fly, because I tie, I know how to judge the quality of the flies I see in a fly shop. I don't buy often but when I do, I want a well crafted fly. I can go through a bin and see which ones are tied well. Fly shops generally buy from companies and these companies hire individual fly tiers. You can find differences in flies because each is hand tied and some tiers are simply better fly tiers than others.

 

[ia_trouter]

Not tying would take too much of the sport away from me. There are about four months a year that tying keeps me engaged and looking forward to early spring.

 

[flyminded]

For me tying gives me the option to "tinker" based on what I observe when fishing - for example, our local fiddler crabs have what I perceive to be a white claw ...so my patterns for Redfish will more often than not include some white ....does it help I'm not sure, but I do know my flies catch consistently more Reds than local flyshop offerings, for me and my friends.

In freshwater, I find tying, helps/forces, me to understand aquatic life behavior better which I believe can only help me catch more.

 

[Ard]

A long time ago (maybe 8 years) I ordered 2 dozen Whitlock Sculpins from Millers Fly Shop, they're down your way............... Then about three or four years ago I got 2 dozen of their Mouse patterns and was happy with those also. Most of what I use are things that I couldn't buy even if I wanted to. Because of that I tie my own tubes and shanks. Toss in the occasional Dee wing salmon or steelhead pattern and they keep me at least sharp enough to make what I use most. My new project is tying the Pinkies Revenge on tubes, and I'm waiting for a copy of Fusion Fly Tying to get here. I try to stay up to date with the changes in material uses and types and sometimes that lends itself to my lack of practice on classic style tying.

But when it comes to the need for dozens of deer hair patterns I order from Millers.

 

[comeonavs]

10 or 12? What in the blazes are you doing man? Fishing from the trees? I thought I was bad, but I bow down to you.

Seriously though, no. Well, very very seldom will I go to the fly shop and buy a fly or two, but that's only if I am curious on how well they will do where I fish the most. I tie just a few flies that are proven flies for the waters I fish, and that's all I need. If you look in my box, you'll see rows of the same fly, but in different sizes. I like to keep things simple, so the less choices of flies means the less time I stare into my box wondering what fly to use, and it gives me more time to do what I went out to do; fish.

But if I were to buy a lot of flies, because I may be low on them, Jerry ( Hairwing 530 ) will be the guy I go to.

Lets just say I am good friends with the trees/bushes in rocky mt park, also my knot tying ability leaves a bit to be desired and are known to bust off a bit of 6x tippet with a Roland Martin bass master style hookset. Compound that with my affinity for snagging rocks and branches underwater yeah it can add up

Some days are better than others and I might not lose 1 , but sadly 10-12 fly days are really common for me.

---------- Post added at 03:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:09 PM ----------

I have not bought a fly in years. The main reason I tie all of own flies is I get what i want. I only use three nymphs and two dries now. I have friends ask me all the time,

Me too, when I started tying the number of patterns I carried got out of control now I carry/ tie is below, I just vary the sizes and colors and bead no bead stuff.

Dries
Parachute Adams
BWO
EHC

Nymphs
Franks Flashy
Hares Ear
Prince Nymphs
Caddis Emerger
Rainbow Warrior
Barr Emerger (BWO/PMD)

Midges
RS2
Jujubee
Zebra