I tied all of the flies used in the movie "A river runs through it"" I had a couple of beat up patterns to look at, but just winged it as to how I tied them.
I used Balsa wood for the body and Polor Bear Hair for the wing. I then hand painted them. Pain in the butt. I can tell you that much. I can also tell you that the actors could not cast those flies and I had to come up with a light in weight veriosn for them. I used a very lite foam for thoe flies. The one you see hitting the water is one I tide and so are a few of the one's seen in the fly box.
A lot of the equipment used in that movie belonged to locals around here. Ron