Videos and Tying

[Andy B]

Recently my mentor has created a DVD on tying wet flies for sale that I own and love and highly stress to others to buy and own. This video provides a lot of tips and techniques and presents tying classic Bergman wet flies that no other video or book has really ever done. The closest thing to this DVD was Hellem Shaw's book Flies for Fish & Fishermen. Hellens book I feel was good, but you have to follow the book page by page and if you jump around to find a pattern you really wanted to tie, you would miss all the techniques how to tie this fly because is was presented in the pages and chapters that you skipped over and now would have to go back and read every thing. Yes Don's DVD does this a little, but with the user friendly menue you can easily go to the fly where a technique was shown. Matter of seconds vs matter of how fast can you read and comprehend. Now let's get to the heart of this post. Don's DVD presents a lot of Techniques and shows you how to perform them. Keep in mind that when going to your tying area or shop, you need to practice these techniques. Some people will pick them up quite easy and others it may take a little bit of effort on your part. I have seen a lot of people get frustrated and claim the video was good but you flies are not coming out the way they look in the video. I can not tell you how much practice I have done to get my wet flies to look close to Dons. All the techiniques and tricks I have learned from Don as well as looking at Don's DVD does work 100%. It was that you have to practice them and master them in order to tye beautiful looking wet flies. For some people out there they think they can watch any video or DVD and tie the fly and make it look exactly the same. Wrong. Osmosis will not happen here and practice and patience is what is needed. Not just Dons but Dave Brandt or Ralpg Graves videos also require practice and learning. These video's and DVD need to be sat down with and watched, and if you can play it while you tying, see what tying in a floss body looks and feel like and so on. The techniques in Don's DVD are not difficult, but they do require practice. If you practice all the Techniques presented in the video you too should be able to produce a very nice looking wet fly. I can not stress enough Practice, Practice, Practice and Patience. Don's video works, it just comes down to practicing all the techniques provided and taking your time tying these flies. After awhile, you tying speed will increase and the techniques will become second nature. I find this to be true with a lot of things in life. I know some of you will be able to pick up the techiques and tie wet flies quickly and easy, I also know that some of you will have to take more time maybe ask a question or two and be able to pick it up. Once in awhile there are a few that never gets it no matter how many times you show them or answer there questions. Lastly I have taken Don wet fly tying class twice now. I have seen a student or two not be able to pick it up because they did not take all the tricks and techniques and practice them and apply them. I have also recently at this past class seen a student or to that were just picking thing up like it was candy. From my own experience and quite a few have seen my flies know how much time and work have put into my wet flies. I am not Don's competition, I am Don's student that is following techniques and practicing all that has been shown to me from the DVD, class and questions asked. I am an example that if you follow the techniques, practice and take your time at first, your wet flies will look like mine which looks like Dons. Wet flies are a thing of Beauty and desrve a place in your fly box, your tying bench. Most important is fish them, they work quite well and the results of fish taken on them may just surprise some on this board.

Andy B

[Mike.K]

[url=http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/Forum5/HTML/004486.html:e727a]http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/Forum5/HTML/004486.html[/url:e727a]

MIke.k

[Feenom]

Hi Andy......I just ordered mine and can't wait to get it! I love the flys but, lately it just seems like I am banging my head against the wall with trying to figure out the techniques on my own. You have always been more than generous with your help on this board and others and for that I thank you. I hope some things click when I see and hear the video. Jason

[Don Bastian]

Andy - you write just like you talk. I can actually hear your voice, your vocal inflections, your tone as I read your post. It's funny! LOL! <G>

I believe Poul Jorgensen said, (quoting someone else), "Fly tying is a school from which no one ever graduates."
A. K. Best in "Production Fly Tying" said something like, "You don't really know a pattern until you've tied at least 100 dozen of them." I admit I scoffed out loud when I first read that passage. It was around 1991 when that book was first released. I was tying commercially at the time, and in a three-year period I tied 2900 DOZEN flies. Feeling pretty cocky about my tying ability, my reply to A. K.'s statement was, "Any good tier can tie a few dozen of a pattern and then he's got it down.
Then a year or so later I did something during one of my commercial Comparadun runs. (Three minute per fly average if you're interested). I don't recall what it was, it was just some little thing, perhaps I did it the first time by accident. This was a minor step that ended up cutting my tying per fly so significantly that I was suddenly able to increase my hourly production by three flies. At that time, that was the equivalent of getting a raise of $1.80 per hour. At once I thought, "Holy S---!" AK was right."

Wet flies, you know I've tied literally thousands of them. I have probably tied over 200 Trout Fins alone. At least 100 Parmacheene Belles. (Both flies I can tie in less than six minutes, five if I'm on a roll). Andy - that's where your drumming of practice, practice, practice, practice comes in. The more you do this, (anybody)the better you get.

Yet recently I (discovered, created, invented, devised, you choose the term that makes you happy) two signficant steps that:
1) make preparation of married wings so much easier than the method I have been teaching and using for YEARS. I mean so much easier that it's practically "Moron proof." It's not in my DVD because I just thought it up a few weeks ago.
2) The other step involves a wet fly with a rib of floss. Difficult to keep it even without flattening out or fraying. I again, discovered (or whatever) a technique for doing this that makes it so-o-o-o-o simple. A mere child could do it.

These two developments all came about as a result of my doing two back-to-back weekend classes on wet flies. Dealing with the difficulties of some students - some guys could not recognize wing quill feathers as being right or left, let alone whether the "slips" of barbs are right or left once they have been cut from the feather.

Some fellows feather slips are headed for divorce court even before the wedding. <G> LOL.

One guy even had one left RED duck wing feather and one left YELLOW duck wing feather and wondered why he couldn't marry the barbs together for a set of wings. He insisted to me he had "a matched pair" but alas, he did not. I set him straight.

Five out of seven students in the class did not master the floss rib when the class was over. Yet I taught what I felt was the best known (at the time) technique in the class and in my DVD.

A few days after these classes, I was at home, tying classic wets. I guess I was thinking about the difficulties my students had been having, and lo and behold, ideas suddenly popped into my brain. I can not recall actually coming to a conclusion of these two new techniques, they were suddenly just there.

It was one of those life-enlightening moments you ask yourself, "Why didn't I think of that years ago?"

Floss rib: Simple - use hackle pliers to twist the floss and wind it - five evenly spaced turns - with the h. pliers.

And finally, the repeated and regular practice, even for an expert, WILL pay handsome dividends. The wet flies I'm tying these days are better by I'd say 30%, than the ones I tied for Forgotten Flies. Since 1999 when I finished those wets I have continued to tie them, by the hundreds and hundreds. You may be skeptical, but it's true. I can see the difference and improved quality with my own eyes.


------------------
"Feed the good wolf."

[Hans Weilenmann]

Don,

The floss 'pliers' I can follow. Hmmm... you mean you did not remember me doing it that way during the Seven Springs shows Chuck used to put on? *teasing*

Now for that marrying quill segments: Best fess that one up also.

Cheers,
Hans W


------------------
=== You have a friend in Low Places ===
http://www.danica.com/flytier

[mantis]

Hans, Symposium tyers are meeting next Friday , Apr 8th at Seven Springs for 3 days and staying compliments of Chuck...yes I know that is hard to believe. If you are over here then wish you would join us...plenty of bunks...
7 Springs was the first place Chuck put on a show..(his home base) What year were you there? I was at all of them...Great place, great food...Or if you are around Albany Friday am U can ride down with me...or stay at the house Thursday eve for a 8am start. Let me know if any of this is possible....

PS, Andy, Helen is still up on Red Rock Rd and a member of our TU Chapter although since Hermann passed away she sticks pretty close to home. A real classy lady!

[This message has been edited by mantis (edited 31 March 2005).]

[This message has been edited by mantis (edited 31 March 2005).]

[mantis]

Don, When are you going to break the news that you and Andy are engaged.
Show us the ring at 7 Springs..T.I.C.

[Hans Weilenmann]

Mantis,

I will be attending and tying at the Danish FlyFair that same weekend.

Have fun at Seven Springs, and do not forget to pass on my regards to the fish in Gosling.

Cheers,
Hans W


------------------
=== You have a friend in Low Places ===
http://www.danica.com/flytier

[Andy B]

Feenom:

First let me say thank you, second, if you having issues let me know. I can have you come down to my house in the woods and we can go over tying a simple wet fly like the Yellow Sally to a medium level fly like the Kineo. When your ready then lastly it will be complex flies like the Silver Doctor. The DVD will help you a imensely. I feel you will still have a question or two that you will need an answer on. As always, just ask. As you know, I am always here to help and instruct. Talk to you later.

Andy B

P.S was thinking about beginning to Mid May to stay a night or two up in Roscoe. Beaverkill and Willowemoc are calling my name. Feel game to join me and fish. E-mail me and lets get some details planned and worked out.

[Don Bastian]

Hans and all:

Perhaps you did use hackle pliers to twist floss for a rib. I didn't say I originated it, It was simply unknown to me. <G> Now that I've figured that out...

On the married wing simplification. The reason I didn't go into that is that it's too complicated to explain without photos, and I've yet to buy myself a digital camera. I tried on an e-mail to my students from the classes, and only a few could understand it.
Even though it is hard to explain in writing, seeing it makes it yes, so easy. (comparatively). You'll just have to trust me on that.
The easy part about it is that the feather slips are clipped but left on the paired quills. Then the cut slips pulled out at the moment of use for a quill tail, or wing, and matched up using the feather stem as a handle to hold the pair of quills (which I tape together because that's how I bought them at Hille's in Williamsport, PA, when I was a kid) feather while positioning the quill barb slips together. See ... it's hard to explain. But compared to cutting & removing each individual slip of barbs prior to marrying them together, this is so much easier.

So it will have to wait..

By the way, Mantis, Andy is not my girlfriend. She's already married! Ha! LOL ROTFLMAO! <G> <G>



[This message has been edited by Don Bastian (edited 31 March 2005).]