I love to teach. Seeing the light bulbs of understanding go on is very rewarding. I not only teach fly tying for the Scouts, I help train adult leaders in the various aspects of Scouting up to and including the most advanced training the Scouts offer, Wood Badge, which is the same training

My experience with teaching fly tying is much different than what you have before you. Working with the Hooked on Tahosa program with the Scouts gives me about 2 hours to have the boys tie 2-3 flies. Naturally, I go with dead simple flies, the patterns of which I devised to make them easy to tie and quick to teach.

We start with a size 18 red midge. This one teaches rudimentary thread control. Mount the hook in the vice, start your red thread, back to the bend, back to 1 eye's width back of the eye, wind on a little lump for a thorax, wind a small head, finish with a few half hitches, cement and done. We don't have time to show them how to use a whip finish tool or do it by hand.

From there, we do a D-rib nymph and a foam ant, both of which are very simple to tie. At the end of the tying, the boys either go out for a couple of hours of casting lessons or go fishing. Those 3 flies are proven winners on that lake so the boys have an excellent chance of catching fish with them and they often do.

My classes are small. I have no more than 6 to a sitting and most times have a helper that can assist with showing how to wind thread on the hook, which direction to go, etc. We learn terminology as we go.

To see one of those boys catch a fish on a fly they tied that afternoon, is almost as big a thrill as I got the first time it happened for me. Of course, there isn't much time to bask in the glory of the moment. Now you are teaching how to fight the fish, land it, and how to remove the hook and release the fish, and trying to take pics all at the same time. It is all way too much fun.