We seem to be getting a lot of new fly tyers lately. When you are just beginning, it's often hard to have everything you need to tie a fly. Worse, it's hard to know what you need and where to get it.

Thus, many beginners have a limited stock of materials. Yet they acccess a site like this, or many others, and see a huge variety of flies that they want to tie.

In my opinion, what a beginner needs to do is concentrate on the techniques more than the specific materials. Things like porportion, tieing things down properly in the correct place and attitude, etc..

It's easy to get discouraged because many feel that they can't tie a fly they like because they don't have a specific material.

I thought that maybe some of us could help them out with some basic and simple substitutions. I'll start with a few, and maybe some of you guys will add some as well?

Fly Tails:

Dry Fly: Any straight fiber will work for dries, feather fibers, animal hairs, paint brush bristles. Even very thin mono tippet material can be used. Stiffness is often a good thing here.

Wets and nymphs: Again, any fibers will do, feathers, hair, fibers from yarns. Find the color you like in what you have. Exanple: A gold ribbed hairs ear standard pattern calls for the guard hairs from the hare's mask for tailing. A few pheasant tail fibers, bucktail tips, hackle fibers, or even a bit of yarn will work just fine.

Ribbing:

Lots of flies call for ribbing on the bodies. It can be many different materials. You can easily substitute wire salvaged from an extension cord for most of it. If you want a particular color you don't have in wire, use thread. Monofilament tippet material, or just plain old fishig line, works as ribbing too.

Bodies:

Dubbed Bodies: Many fly patterns will call for a certain type of dubbing. Dubbing is made from lots of materials. It's basically interchangeable at this point. Use what you have. The fish won't care if it's synthetic, rabbit, or goat on most patterns. You can also substitute craft yarns for a dubbed body in most cases on larger patterns.

Floss Bodies: That olde stylle silke flosse is hard to handle, fragile, and unnecessary today. Yarns, acrylic flosses (available in any WalMart), UniStretch, even thicker threads, will work as well for fishing.

Chenille Bodies: The Wooly Bugger is 'the' beginner fly. It calls for chenille for the body on most of todays patterns. It's a great fly to experiment on, though. You can any kind of yarn, dubbing, mylar tubing, or flash type material for the body and have a very fishable fly.

Weighting wire:

If you don't have a ready source of lead wire go to your local hardware store. They sell solder in many different thicknesses. It will work just fine. Just don't buy the acid core stuff, it will rust your hooks.

Anyone else have any simple substitutions?

Thanks,

Buddy