Benchside Reference for Southpaws
Having finished a 25 months tour during which no tying was possible, I am looking to "start afresh". In the hopes of not picking up bad habits I developed/taught myself in my formative years, I am looking for a good fly tying reference for left-handed tyers. Is there one out there?
Warmest regards.
I'm a Southpaw, but I learned to tye right-handed in part because I couldn't find any other references. Actually, I learned to tye left-handed because I could hold the hook and material with the fingers of my left hand and wrap the thread with my right, but my right hand wasn't coordinated enough to do the reverse. It was a while before I got a vise, the one that came in my Boy Scout fly-tying kit.
Those were good days.
Ed
EdD - very impressive...tying by hand. While my interest is piqued - and once I get back into the groove of tying I may tap your experience again for a different, but related, subject (streamside tying) - I am going to stick with initial goal of "relearning the right way" WITH a vise.
Normand - Thks! That site rocks. I'm so used to looking at right-handed tutorials and converting in my head, I had to compare FAOL's tutorials with the ones on the site you provided...and CLICK. My head didn't hurt. Very many thanks!
the only other person is oliver edwards. i think he ties right handed but when he ties it looks left handed because he wraps counterclockwise.
it would be like sitting directly in front of a right handed tyer
I don't really understand the problem.
Are you saying you can't transpose seeing it tied by a right-handed person to tying as a left-handed person?
If that is the case, try this:
Put a mirror to the side of your monitor and watch the videos that way. It should look left-handed then.
Last edited by Big Bad Wulff; 07-15-2009 at 08:16 PM.
Good fishing technique trumps all.....wish I had it.
Just some trivia. Charlie Craven is in fact right handed, but learned to tie using his dominate hand as the material hand. All the pictures in his book "Charlie Cravens Basic Fly Tying" were reversed before printing for the benefit of the majority.
Big Bad Wulff - it's just a pain to have to figure it out. I was hoping you and your esteemed colleagues of "senior members" or the electronic herd might have run across someone who had written a tying guide for leftys or who had already "flipped" the images.
chewydog - tks.
Warmest regards.
Originally Posted by bluwatr
Bluwatr, thanks, but that wasn't steamside tying, I simply didn't have a vise when I was a kid. I didn't have any tools other than a pocket knife and nail trimmers. I used loose lengths of thread and put down a half hitch over ever addition of material. As I recall, I just let my fingers figure out which was going to hold what. I got poked by hooks often, but I didn't care enough to stop.
You might be surprised by how fast you learn to do things like that. You'll start to know exactly how much thread you'll need for a fly and how to hold everything. I didn't really think about how to hold things, just how to tye the fly.
Best of luck.
Ed
Well I do a lot of things left handed, and I cast my fly rod left handed. It would of been nice to start out as a leftie tyer...but I had to watch videos of right handed tyers, and I would of just been confused...so I learned to tie right handed. Had I seen this book earlier, I may of changed my mind...but now it is cemented into my brain to tie this way. I have been tying for a year and a half or so.
im gonna say that not many authors write for lefty fly tyers but i think charlie cravens tutorials might be right up your ally. i am a right handed fly tyer and have no problems in following charlies tutorials. the methods and techniques of fly tying should be the same for both hands.
leftys just tie on the wrong side of the hook, like golfers stand on the wrong side of the ball
http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox/index.cfm
Last edited by Normand; 07-15-2009 at 07:27 PM.
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