In my readings and online searching, I have noticed that there are a ton of hook styles available and in each class( dry, nymph, streamer, etc.) there are many options as well. My questions is how important is getting the hook syle right for a pattern. I understand that a dry isn’t going to perform well if it is tied on a heavier wire hook. And the lengths make sense to me as well. But will it really be all that bad if I use a streamer hook for a big stonefly pattern, or a dry fly hook for a nymph? What about if I use a different style dry fly hook in the same size to tie a pattern that calls for a certain size? If the fly looks right, fishes right, and does anything that I would ask a hook to do, does it even matter?
If it pleases you and the fish it is good. If you don’t like it or the fly doesn’t perform as expected then you may want to try it with the reconmended hook.
I often use heavy wire streamer/nymph hooks for foam terrestrials; I find the heavier hook helps the fly land upright. Do what feels right for you.
Regards,
Scott
Agreed.
I use a streamer hook to tie my Stimulators instead of the usual 200R hooks. I’ve used both and honestly feel I get better hook-ups on the fish with the streamer hook.
It’s good to start out with some basics and no you don’t need every hook to start with. If you watch a scud in the water they are only bent half the time then they straighten out so a nymph hook is fine to tie scud type patterns on. What happens to most of us is that over the years your hook collection will grow almost liked weeds and you have to make an effort to keep it under control. These days I focus on dry, scud, streamer and nymph styles. Some patterns I just like better on the compact scud style hook. Some patterns fish better with a certain style though. Clousers tend to favor a straight eye and not a down turn eye. No one says that you have to spend this weeks salary on hooks right this instant but over time you will develop a collection that will cost more than a weeks salary easily. Do it for hobby and not to save a dime. If you want to save money, you can buy flies on line that are fine flies for $.70 each. Me buying Whiting hackle and TMC hooks at my level of buying, I would go broke quickly selling flies for $.70. Be careful what you are getting into because if you get too close to the edge you will fall down the slippery slope and there is no stopping your lust for new hooks and materials.
Rick
I’m new at this, but I’ve been reading a lot. In the course of these adventures I’ve found that hook style inarguably matters in one specific way: the hook must let you tie the fly to the correct proportions. For example, if you tie a Woolly Bugger on anything less than a 2x hook, it’s going to look cramped.
I’ve tied dries on wet fly hooks and they still float. I’ve tied wets on dry fly hooks and they still sink. Are these ideal, no. But they are definitely workable. As for substituting a “standard dry fly hook” for an “extra fine dry fly hook”, I’ve seen no difference whatsoever, in practice.
Again, I’m new at this and don’t have nearly the experience of many of the fine folks on this site. Maybe the differences are readily apparent in fast water. Maybe the differences are readily apparent if you fish the same fly for an hour and it gets water logged. I’m not sure, but I do know that the weight difference between some hook styles is a matter of a few grams and I’m not yet convinced that it’s vitally important to get that exact.
You can tie most any pattern there is, on a standard dry fly hook. The rest catch more fishermen than fish;)
Hi,
I’m not sure if this is the answer you are looking for, however here goes. I look at fly tying as an art. Flies are a form of sculpture. The hook IS the armature or bones of the fly, and in order to give it the correct look, the right hook for the job needs to be selected. I’m not saying you can not tie wet flies on dry fly hooks, or in some instances, vice versa. What I am saying is hook selection is often or best based on what you are trying to imitate, and some hooks are better suited to certain applications over others.
So while different hooks can be interchanged to enhance performance as already mentioned, the other consideration is representation and appearance of the completed fly.
The Tups Indispensable on two different style hooks. Same fly, different look and application.
Mark
Mark do you us urine stained hair from a goats scrodum, on your Tups Indispensible?
Hi Tuber,
No, it’s a combination of red seal, yellow seal, and tannish pink Hare’s mask to soften. I know the Ram’s wool is the traditional additive, however, I don’t know who sells it. I have no intention on gathering it myself. My combination works just fine.
Mark
Actually, I believe urine stained hair is supposed to come from a vixen (female) fox, to be used to dub the body of the original Light Hendrickson.
Regards,
Scott
The only rule in fly tying is that there are NO rules. This isn’t golf. You can tie anything any way you want, on any hook. I let the fish decide whether it is a good fly or a bad fly.
You got that right! Only a few rules need following…
- Does it catch fish?
- If your in dim light…and you squint…while on the back of a run-a-way horse and it looks like the one in the book…“Close enough”…:mrgreen:
A hook in fly tying has two purposes. Hook the fish so you can land it is the primary one. It also needs to fit the fly to be tied on it. Since you can tie any pattern on any hook, this is mostly a function of how long you want the fly to be and porportion. The length of the hook shank dictates the size of the fly.
Jeff, in your example of a wooly bugger, you stated that if you use less than a 2X long hook, it will look cramped. That happens only if you tie the fly based on the size of the gape, not the shank length. If you tie the fly to fit he shank, it will look exactly like any other 'bugger of that length, it will just have a wider hook gape. Thus, you can tie any fly, on any hook, as long as you fit the porportions of hte fly to the length of the shank.
The weight of the hook is another matter. Tying flies that are supposed to float on light wire hooks helps them to do so. But many flies tied on standard wire hooks float just fine. Heavy wire hoks sink faster, but it’s only slightly and if you can add lead to the shank, then it’s not an issue. There are some places where you can’t do that. For those places, heavy wire hooks are available.
As a beginner, I urge everyone to tie any fly they want on whatever hooks you have available. There is no need to go out and buy a thousand or more hooks in twenty diferent sizes and shapes. If you really get the bug like most of us do, you’ll get there soon enough.
Use the hooks you have. Just tie the flies to fit the shank length, and you’ll be just fine. Afte you’ve been tying for a while, you’ll see and/or decide why you’ll want certain hook styles for your own flies. Fly tying has no rules. You can’t do this wrong.
I understand that some want to call fly tying an art. Mainly because when it’s done, you can have something pretty. But it’s not art. It’s a craft. Don’t misunderstand me. I get all the skill involved in doing it. It requires a sense of porprotion and manual skills. But art and craft are different.
Real art is original. Since almost all of the flies folks tie that think it’s an art are based on already established recipes, usually acompanied by copious photos of each step, it’s clearly just copying. It’s takes a skilled craftsman to do it, but only the guy who made the first one was an artist. Everyone else is just copying him.
Buddy
Bravo Buddy.
The hook is the scaffold or skeleton on which the fly is built. A hook has 3 main properties - length, shape and weight.
Weight can be added but never subtracted so a dry fly hook can serve as a heavier hook by adding lead wire. A heavy wire hook will function poorly as a dry fly hook. As long as the shape of the hook is not a critical factor in the function of the fly, most patterns can be tied on a straight shank hook. Even scud patterns that use curved hooks function well on a straight shank hook because scuds are straight when they swim. Critical to function would be a keel hook whose shape makes the fly ride point up.
Most of the time one can determine whether a straight shank dry fly hook will suffice for a given pattern. Just use a hook that is the length of the fly you want to tie. A streamer pattern that calls for a size 12 2XLH hook can be tied on a size 8 dry fly hook with lead wire to weight the hook. It may not look pretty but it will catch fish.
Remember that before scud curve hooks (TMC 2457/2486) and the nymph and streamer curve hooks (TMC 200R) were developed, we did quite well with Mustad straight wire hooks.
I agree with Buddy Sanders especially this part of his post:
"As a beginner, I urge everyone to tie any fly they want on whatever hooks you have available. There is no need to go out and buy a thousand or more hooks in twenty diferent sizes and shapes. If you really get the bug like most of us do, you’ll get there soon enough.
Use the hooks you have. Just tie the flies to fit the shank length, and you’ll be just fine. Afte you’ve been tying for a while, you’ll see and/or decide why you’ll want certain hook styles for your own flies. Fly tying has no rules. You can’t do this wrong."
I would like to add - don’t be afraid to tie some flies on those inexpensive bait holder hooks to start out with. You can bend down the shank barbs if you want and the fish won’t care.
Have fun.
Tim
a sheep, not a goat. Whether the hair is urine stained or not depends entirely on the Ram’s level of personal hygene. Actually, the hair is technically “hair from the indispensible part of a Tups Ram”, hence the name, Tups Indispensible. But R.S. Austin also has the recipe this way in his book “Manuscript of Dry Fly Fishing”: “White ram’s testicle fur and lemon spaniel’s fur in equal parts, with a little hare’s poll fur and enough red mohair to give pinkish tinge or shade. Applied sparsely.”
Regardless of the recipe, Mark’s Tups is a real thing of beauty, and if he thinks hooks are important so do I. I love his Tups, especially the first one, the one tied on the right hook.(grin)
Seriously, I agree with Mark that there is a point to using the right hook for the right circumstance. I’ve used #20 dry fly hooks for small Olive wet flies that I wanted to fish near the surface and done very well with them. It’s always helpful to have an idea of what you’re trying to accomplish, how you want your fly to behave and know enough about hooks to pick one that will work for you best.
Eric Austin (R.S. Austin’s long-lost cousin)
Buddy is spot-on and very well said.
The best advice I got when originally learning, was to buy Mustad #94840 hooks…and a spool of medium lead wire:D I listened and tied everything from #20 griffiths gnats to #6 wooly-buggers.
Once I got the basics down, would be the time to start buying “pattern specifc” hooks. I must say…I caught alot of fish on those #94840’s…just as many as I do now, with my boxes of hooks I have laying around.
Sully, what book? I tie flies that are supposed to look like food to fish, not like a picture in a book. I don’t need a recipe and a picture to do that, just a mental image of what I want to fly to resemble. There are no tying books in the house. So, you can throw out rule #2. S I do tie specific flies on specific hooks, usually, but that is more for physical reasons than because the “book” says I should.
I am not an artiste of any sort, nor do I subscribe to the belief that because some Named originator (all shall genuflect!) of a fly developed one many years ago, there is intrinsic value to copying their pattern exactly, just because it is “traditional”. Not to say that is a bad thing, but it holds no appeal to me.
But people who would go out and shave a sheep’s scrotum? To make a FLY? You people are weird! :p. Not to mention suicidal.
“Real art is original. Since almost all of the flies folks tie that think it’s an art are based on already established recipes, usually acompanied by copious photos of each step, it’s clearly just copying. It’s takes a skilled craftsman to do it, but only the guy who made the first one was an artist. Everyone else is just copying him.”
Buddy,
After studying art and fly tying for over 45 years, I’d have to disagree. Fly tying IS an art and can be very creative. Many tiers that tie may well be following a pattern, and for the most part are just copying, however, there are those that create new patterns everyday using new materials and old for that matter. This is what tying is all about–making flies that meet your needs for the places you fish.
I know of one good friend and creative tier who creates new flies daily. One of his recent creations uses the plastic material taken from fruit bags, but using new materials is not necessarily the criteria for calling it art. Older materials are used as well to create something new, however that’s not necessary either. For years artists have been basing their art on the art that came before. It doesn’t make it any less art.
One of my own new creations: Buffalo Plaid
Another: Green Goblin
ScottP,
As Eric has said, the Tups calls for the urine stained scrotum hair taken from a Ram. I know that some tiers still use this material like Roy Christie. We’ve discussed this subject at great lengths. Preparing the wool is a very long process. I find my combination of materials works very well.
Sit down and tie something new, everyone. Be creative!
Mark