Having finished a 25 months tour during which no tying was possible, I am looking to “start afresh”. In the hopes of not picking up bad habits I developed/taught myself in my formative years, I am looking for a good fly tying reference for left-handed tyers. Is there one out there?
Warmest regards.
I’m a Southpaw, but I learned to tye right-handed in part because I couldn’t find any other references. Actually, I learned to tye left-handed because I could hold the hook and material with the fingers of my left hand and wrap the thread with my right, but my right hand wasn’t coordinated enough to do the reverse. It was a while before I got a vise, the one that came in my Boy Scout fly-tying kit. 
Those were good days.
Ed
im gonna say that not many authors write for lefty fly tyers but i think charlie cravens tutorials might be right up your ally. i am a right handed fly tyer and have no problems in following charlies tutorials. the methods and techniques of fly tying should be the same for both hands.
leftys just tie on the wrong side of the hook, like golfers stand on the wrong side of the ball :D:D
Never seen that site before, and I am IMPRESSED!! There are so many flies on there, each with tutorials…FAOL is great, but so is this. not a lefty, here, but I can definately use this. the idea of using lead wire to hold legs/wings back out of the way is worth the price of any admission.
EdD - very impressive…tying by hand. While my interest is piqued - and once I get back into the groove of tying I may tap your experience again for a different, but related, subject (streamside tying) - I am going to stick with initial goal of “relearning the right way” WITH a vise.
Normand - Thks! That site rocks. I’m so used to looking at right-handed tutorials and converting in my head, I had to compare FAOL’s tutorials with the ones on the site you provided…and CLICK. My head didn’t hurt. Very many thanks!
the only other person is oliver edwards. i think he ties right handed but when he ties it looks left handed because he wraps counterclockwise.
it would be like sitting directly in front of a right handed tyer
I don’t really understand the problem.
Are you saying you can’t transpose seeing it tied by a right-handed person to tying as a left-handed person?
If that is the case, try this:
Put a mirror to the side of your monitor and watch the videos that way. It should look left-handed then.
Just some trivia. Charlie Craven is in fact right handed, but learned to tie using his dominate hand as the material hand. All the pictures in his book “Charlie Cravens Basic Fly Tying” were reversed before printing for the benefit of the majority.
ok but doesnt that still make him a left handed tyer??
No, just backwards…
Big Bad Wulff - it’s just a pain to have to figure it out. I was hoping you and your esteemed colleagues of “senior members” or the electronic herd might have run across someone who had written a tying guide for leftys or who had already “flipped” the images.
chewydog - tks.
Warmest regards.
Found something that may help. You are welcome to try it
BBW,
You actually have an advantage.
Both my daughters are lefties and are very right brained (creative) artists.
Tying is an art and you should naturally be good at it.
You also have an advantage watching videos. Think about this:
Watching videos of right handed tyers is just like watching yourself tie in a mirror. Right handed tyers have to reverse what they see because the camera is looking into the tyer.
The fishing world is strange in this handedness regard. 90% of fly fishermen hold their rod in their right hand to cast and have the reel handle on the left side, but call it fishing right handed. Same applies to spinning reels. Both of my left handed daughters fish this way. BUT, casting reels with the handle on the left side are called left handed reels and casting right but reeling left is called fishing left handed. Doesn’t make much sense.
Bluwatr, thanks, but that wasn’t steamside tying, I simply didn’t have a vise when I was a kid. I didn’t have any tools other than a pocket knife and nail trimmers. I used loose lengths of thread and put down a half hitch over ever addition of material. As I recall, I just let my fingers figure out which was going to hold what. I got poked by hooks often, but I didn’t care enough to stop.
You might be surprised by how fast you learn to do things like that. You’ll start to know exactly how much thread you’ll need for a fly and how to hold everything. I didn’t really think about how to hold things, just how to tye the fly.
Best of luck.
Ed
Well I do a lot of things left handed, and I cast my fly rod left handed. It would of been nice to start out as a leftie tyer…but I had to watch videos of right handed tyers, and I would of just been confused…so I learned to tie right handed. Had I seen this book earlier, I may of changed my mind…but now it is cemented into my brain to tie this way. I have been tying for a year and a half or so.
CoachBob,
I’m with you on the casting thing. I’ve actually taught myself to be ambidextrous for casting, because guides just can’t seem to get their head wrapped around it. It was just easier to switch hands as the guide(s) drifted into a spot and set up for a right-handed cast. It has proven invaluable and I recommend it for your daughters.
BBW - tks for the link! A very interesting workaround. And, that’s the interesting thing - we’ve had a couple of workarounds discussed, but no reference. Maybe, there’s just so few southpaws that there’s never been an overwhelming need to write a tying reference for them.
Warmest regards.
I’m a lefty but learned to tie right handed which made it easier for me in the long run. I guess I tie right handed, hold the bobbin in my right hand and use the left hand to hold materials on the hook. I reckon that is right handed.
Jeff