Review of "Cabela's Gunnison Fly-Tying Kit"

[Jeff Clough]

So I'm back after a somewhat extended hiatus from the good old FAOLBB. Life has a way of getting annoying, but things are mostly squared away and I've got me a respectable amount of free time again. On that note, here's my holiday present for all of you: a review!

A Review of Cabela's Gunnison River Fly-Tying Kit

A very good friend of mine presented me with a fly tying magazine, a $50 Cabela's gift card and this kit as Christmas presents last week. (Of course, the magazine was instantly devoured and the card used to replenish hooks and thread.) The box is marked $69.95, the web site has it at $49.99 and my friend bought it on sale for $39.99.

The kit comes packaged in a hard plastic box that measures roughly 9x7x3 inches, sports a handle and sliding locks. The case looks like it could take a fair beating and certainly won't open once the locks are in place. That said, the case is probably the highest quality item here.

The contents of the kit are about what you'd expect for a "starter" kit, with a vice and tools fitted neatly in cut-out foam, materials, a booklet with instructions for a few flies and a DVD. The vice is your garden-variety A-Vise knock-off. The other tools are a bobbin, bobbin threader, dubbing needle, hackle pliers, scissors and small hair stacker. All of the tools are labeled as being made in either India, Pakistan or China and they're all very cheap. However, I was rather surprised at how serviceable they were. They're not pretty, they won't make your life easier or impress your friends, but they all work reasonably well for their intended purpose. The vice itself easily held hooks in sizes ranging from 8 to 16 and seemed to be about as useful as the real Thompson A-Vise I usually tie on.

The materials in the kit are mostly hideous. The hackle feathers might have an inch of useful material each, the black thread frays coming straight off the spool and thank god they shot the poor animal they got the elk hair from, 'cause if the condition of its coat is any indication it was suffering mightily. I'd say the only thing really useful in the materials is a spool of thin copper wire, a bundle of peacock herl, some "rabbit" dubbing in olive and gray, a bit of chenille, white yarn and possibly the hooks (one box of which is labeled "Flying Hook").

With these points noted, I think it is very easy to write-off this kit as possibly being more harmful to a beginner than helpful. Whenever I embark on a new study, I find meeting with some reasonable amount of success early on to be a big motivator. With materials like this, I can't imagine any absolute beginner finding anything but frustration.

That said, I'm going to go out on a limb and stamp a qualified recommendation on it for the average tier. The tools and vice are useful and no one would shed a tear if they were destroyed or lost. This, combined with the nice plastic case and fitted foam means this would be a nice streamside/emergency kit you could toss in the trunk and forget about until you needed it. Swap out the awful materials for a bag of better quality "standards" and you have a decent insurance policy against finding yourself on the water without a matching fly to the bugs zipping around.

Just don't pay full price for it.

[flyguy66]

Jeff,

Thanks for the review.

I personally believe that anyone qualified to write a review of a beginner's fly tying kit will be gravely troubled by the crappy materials that come in all of them nowadays. I've done a major comparative analysis recently inn this price range and found the Gunnison to be the best of the bunch, but all of the tying materials about equal. I haven't published anything on the subject because the study was done for commercial research. The tools, vise, case, and instructional materials in the Gunnison put it head and shoulders above the rest for the money (in my opinion). And the material quality was just as good or better...which is sad. So I agree completely with your analysis in a "perfect world" sense. But in the context of what is commercially available for under $65 or so, I'd say it's as good as they get.

Ken Morrow, AEI, AFFP
Peak Pro Tying Team
Contributing Editor - Florida Fly Fishing Magazine
Publisher - Upstream

[Jeff Clough]

@Ken: That's troubling news, but not entirely surprising. When I got into tying a little over a year ago, I looked around at the various inexpensive "starter" kits and their reviews. I wasn't impressed either. I ended up buying the tools, an old vise and a handful of basic materials piecemeal, shopping for deals here and there. Took about a month, but I managed to get together a "kit" that let me tie a Woolly Bugger, Hare's Ear, Pheasant Tail, Black Nosed Dace and ants. That, plus a book ran me around $125 if memory serves. I doubt a truly quality kit that a beginner could get any real use out of could cost any less.

[LadyFisher]

We have the information on putting together the basic tying kit here on FAOL (of course) and it is really good information.
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flytying/kit/ The late Al Campbell did the article.

[Jeff Clough]

We have the information on putting together the basic tying kit here on FAOL (of course) and it is really good information.
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/flytying/kit/ The late Al Campbell did the article.

I actually made good use of that article (and the many others here) when putting together my kit. My first fly was the EZ-Nymph.

[flyguy66]

Yeah, Jeff. You're about right. The problem is that this is a prohibitive cost-of-entry for programs that introduce large numbers of people to fly tying and want them to walk away with their own kit so that there is a good chance of follow-through. So the quest for the sub-$50 kit that will get the job done is an important one to the future of the craft (and fly fishing in general). Clubs, government programs, etc. can't afford $125/person to intro people to fly tying very often. If you run a class that teaches 10 students at a time 4 times per year, that's $5,000 per year just in fly tying kit costs. That does NOT include shipping, storage, insurance, classroom space, electricity, instructors, record-keeping, etc.

[kbproctor]

I bought a kit from Sportsman's Warehouse under the brand name "Barely a Ripple". It had the usual bobbin, threader, bodkin, scissors, and whip finisher. Nothing to write home about, but not pure junk either. The kit came in a nice nylon zippered case which I really like. The best part of the kit is the vice. It has a Regal knockoff that holds whatever I stuff in it.

The included materials were not junk, just not much I could use for trout flies.

I paid about $60 for the kit and still use everything in it with the exception of the materials. Yes, I have added scissors, dubbing twisters, ceramic bobbins, and other tools and materials, but the kit was functional and of decent quality to begin with. I have a Griffin Spyder vice that I do not like as much as the one I got with the kit.

[aged_sage]

Flyguy66:

You are in the wrong part of this great State!!! You need to move to the eastern part of the State, where we have both salt and freshwater to fish!

I am Director of Education for Texas FlyFishers here in Houston, and can assure you that we do things much cheaper here. Our annual beginners Fly Tying Course is a ten week, 2 hours per week, course, for which there is a $50.00 Registration fee. This course is followed by an identical Intermediate Tying Course, again for a $50.00 Registration fee. We have tool kits we 'loan' to the students who don't already have tools, upon a $25.00 refundable deposit. Given the variety of patterns taught, and the specific materials required, especially for the Intermediate Course, we make materials kits available with all of the threads, tinsels wires, hairs, feathers and hooks necessary for both courses, for $150.00. It is NOT mandatory that the students purchase these materials kits. These are all top quality materials, and the same kit purchased at Retail locally would run close to $300.00. We also provide a nice syllabus for each course, which we have printed.

We hold these classes only once a year, and will average close to 20 students in the beginners Course, with about half typically going on in to the Intermediate course. We use the very ample facilities of a large, centrally located church, where we store the audio visual equipment used in these courses. We make an annual contribution to the church in the neighborhood of $1,000.00 for the use of their facilities. We only pay for part of their expenses associated with being open for us, as there are other groups who also use their facilities most of these same evenings. At these prices, we break even every year, and some years, we may have a small surplus. Being recognized by the IRS as a 501 (c) 3 tax exempt organization, we cannot afford to "make" much, if any, money off of our Educational Programs.

Any unsold materials kits are carried forward as "Inventory" for the next year's courses, as are any unused syllibii. We have only one page replaced, the class schedule, at a VERY nominal cost by our printer for the following year. This all reduces our 'Capital Outlay' each year. The students pay for everything; resulting in a 'zero' expense to the club per se.

aged sage

[flyguy66]

Aged Sage,

I understand exactly what you're talking about. I've taught courses very much like you're describing...even undergraduate university courses with lab fees and tuition. We did all of these through two different FFF clubs in Missouri while I lived up there. The university course was the Southern Council Club of the Year for 2008's sole fundraiser every year. Club members taught the course and donated the instructor fees (PE adjunct faculty at a major state university) to the club. They've been doing it for a long time now.

That 50% progression rate is pretty good. It means you're teaching a high quality class. However, I have found through all of my various fly tying course development, teaching, and management over the years that when students are GIVEN a kit to KEEP that number increases to about 75% - all other things being equal. I've also found that an "across the board" average progression/retention rate from a wider sample of programs from around the country (all of which I had a big hand in designing and implementing) is about 40% vs. 50% if kits are not given to students, but loaned. So a jump to 75% runs between a 50% and 66% increase in progression among the introductory fly tying students results from giving them their own tools, remaining materials, instructional materials, some catalogs, a membership in an area club for 1 year, and a list of on-line resources for their future growth (of which FAOL's fly tying resources appears at the top). It is the "now go ye therefore and tie more flies," approach. I want students leaving with a complete answer to the question: so now what? And when they get that, about 3 out of 4 of them continue to tie flies for as long as 4 years that I have been tracking them now. Furthermore, about 1 in 5 begin teaching OTHER PEOPLE to tie flies after they leave my classes! And I KNOW that I know that it is because they walk away with the tools, materials, skills, knowledge, and resources to continue to grow and enjoy fly tying.

Finally, I am concerned with the cost-of-entry for the STUDENT first and foremost. I want that to be as close to ZERO as possible. That means someone else has to pay for it. In many of the programs that I develop, it HAS to be zero to the student. So you're using government funding or private donations most of the time. Trying to secure long-term funding for these types of programs isn't easy. But when the clinicians we're supporting see the results it gets a LOT easier! So the key is to get the funding for the FIRST series of classes and then try to nail down the long-term money behind that. If we could raise enough money to fund these start-ups internally, we could start at least 30 new programs per year with our existing resources and demand that we KNOW ABOUT. As it is, we can't afford to pay attention because charitable giving has dried up to next to nothing for small non-profits. We had a 500% growth rate in the number of certified instructors this year, but not fly tying instructors. It was about 2:1 in favor of casting instructors. BUT...as our pool of certified instructors around the country grows, that number of programs we could start if the $$$ was in the bank to do it will grow exponentially in proportion to the number and distribution of those instructors. In just ONE major metro area, AFFI could easily train and develop over 200 new fly anglers and tiers per year...all of whom would be people with special needs and/or their family members/primary caregivers. That would mean 200 new FFF members per year, about 2/3 of whom would renew their memberships the following year. So you're looking at about 150 new FFF members/real fly anglers/tiers per year just from ONE program in ONE city. And they say there's nothing we can do about the aging and shrinking fly fishing population...