I want to catch fish with flies that I tie. I tie my flies so that I can catch the most fish with them. I use the materials that allow me to do that. Most of my materials come from craft shops, hardware stores, thrift shops, and sewing centers.

I use lots of synthetics. I've worked my way up the chain of resale/repackage on many of them, or found them sold in different venues for different purposes. This gives me more options, and saves me money. I'm a bit of a materials junky, and being able to buy, say, twenty yards of 'hollow body braid' sold in the craft shop as mesh tubing for flower arranging at a price of $6.99 appeals to me over paying $4.99 for three feet of it at the fly shop. Same with threads and yarns. And, if you are willing to dig a bit, you can find many fly tying materials in bulk from some distributors, saving up to 90%. You just have to spend some time looking at packaging, doing web searches, etc. It's all made someplace, an I guarantee little of it is made in the back of a fly shop in small quantities.

I have no nostalgia about flies, and find that whole 'catskill' thing ridiculous. That a tiny area in the NE US is given all this credit for fly development is really myopic at best, and at worst it's elitist. Fly design was, and is still, being changed, innovated, and improved all over the world. It's just that the things that were written about were those things near where the most writers were, the NE. Public relations and advertising deserve most of the credit for these so-called 'classic' patterns than any skill or innovation on the part of the tyers involved. And, I'll wager that all those folks who we find so fascinating as 'traditional' tyers, if they were still with us today, would laugh at us while happily using whatever material they could to produce effective flies.

If you find researching and acquiring the original materials for a particular pattern enjoyable, or if you decide that you'll only tie with 'natural' materials because it pleases you, good for you. If you think it's honorable or somehow noble to do so, or think it makes you a better tyer or person, you're deluded.

I find the whole argument about 'original' materials tedious and somewhat entertaining. The debate today about such things tends to propose the concept that the historical originator of a fly pattern searched tirelessly for the exact right material before he or she developed the fly in question. The person who 'originated' any fly used the materials they HAD, and if they found a better material for a particular fly, they used it. That's what most fly tyers who are creating new patterns today are doing as well. Using the materials at hand to produce a fly that is effective for a particular purpose or use.

As an artist, when I see someone tie a bunch of classic flies and mount them in a display case and claim it's 'art', I laugh. It's copies. Plagiarism, not artwork. It's like standing in front of a Renoir and copying it. Builds skill, but it's not art. Copying someone else to make a fly for catching fish? Solid plan, works, no one finds that an issue. It's why all these pattern books are out there. But art is innovative by it's very definition. Copies, no matter how well done or how pretty, are not art.

Buddy