influences

Last week I helped with an intro to fly fishing taught by a gentleman who had learned to tie by hanging around the Darby's shop as a kid. He was very critical of the heads on the flies shown in the tying books I had bought along to show various flies. He said that Winnie Darby would have thrown them out. At any rate as I tied a few flies today I found myself paying extra attention to making nice tapered heads. I think to some extent the habit will stay with me. Do you find yourself changing your tying style in response to tyers you watch or speak with?

Absolutely. As a learner, that's how you improve. Even once you're past the steepest part of that curve (a good tyer is always a learner), there's always room for improvement and innovation. I've learned so many tips, tricks, & techniques from others, and even come up with a few on my own. Several times, a tip sounds great, but in practice it doesn't work so well...I don't feel bad about not using it or going back to my old method, but even in that case, I've still learned.

Hi,

I continue to learn new things from books, on line videos, articles (as in the FAOL archives), and from the various fly submissions. Reading some old books has shown me a few tihngs about how things used to be done, and some still work and others not so well. I find the ones that don't work well are often due to the fact we use a bobbin holder more, and in the older books they are often tieing with a piece of thread. In particular, one of the books was going on about tying a partridge and orange and he would wrap the body once to the bend, tie two knots, then wrap back, tie a knot, add the hackle, tie it off and form a head. Tying the "holding knots" at each end is hard to do with a bobbin and we leave them out now. However, the fly would have been stronger and, as the author Bill Tagg pointed out, if the fish cut the thread it only unravels one layer.

- Jeff