While you are looking at this forum or searching YouTube or other fly tying forums or any other places on the web, how often do you find a fly pattern that is truly new and different and not just an old pattern with a different material or two? Do you, like I do, get excited about it and tie one as soon as you can? What are some you have seen recently?
Joe
“It was the best of time, it was the worst of time” It seems to me most flies tied by people I know vary slightly and sometimes greatly from the original. There is very little truly original and very little truly the old. Hans’ posting are frequently original to my knowledge, I don’t know about the truly learned tyer. I still think the best advice I have heard concerning fly tying, “Make your fly look like something a trout eats, not some other guy’s fly.”
Joe,
That is a very interesting question and one that makes you sit back and think on it. For me, I do not think that there are that many “new” patterns out there but more patterns of existing patterns tied with different materials which is good and helps other tiers to “think outside the box” and gets them to experiment more with older patterns.
What gets me excited and go running to my tying table is watching how another tyer ties a pattern and what techniques they used that I never thought about or have heard about but never really tried or seen used. A perfect example, for me, is watching Hans’ SBS tying that he has been sharing here. Thanks to him, I tried the split thread techniques and really like it. Watching his tying techniques has shown me how to tie flies using less wraps and producing flies which I feel are “works of art”. In my opinion, Hans’ is a fantastic fly tyer and a lot can be learned from him and there are other tyers out there that have been sharing their skills here on FAOL which inspire me to copy their style too because they have shown me that applying more time at the vise and concentrating more on what I am doing produces a much nicer fly.
There are many YouTube tying instructions out there, but, the person doing the tying, does not take their time to explain what they are doing and why.
So, my answer to your question is that I do not think there are very many actual “new” patterns and what gets me excited, more than the actual pattern, is the tying techniques that are being presented and those new techniques will get my creative juices flowing.
I am very thankful that we have some great fly tyers who are willing to share their techniques here on FAOL and in doing so, have presented their techniques in a matter that is easily understood and, being in the SBS format, we are able to spend more time studying the “how” in their techniques. My only regret is that these great SBS instructions are not stored somewhere on FAOL so that we can revisit them later. We have the FOTW patterns and tying instructions which I refer to very often and I wish we had a SBS section attached to it so that we could refer more often to them.
Sorry that I got off course on what you were really asking, but, that is just me…
Warren,
Could not agree with you more about Hans. Some of his flies are what I’m talking about. His Drowned Turkey jumped out at me as something I hadn’t exactly seen before and it really looked like a bug. The Jacobpattern and the Megabyte were two others. I know the Jacobpattern is Griffith’s Gnat-ish, but it still is a little different. I should have included new techniques in the original post, as well. Tying in the collar hackle first and reverse wrapping it has completely eliminated my awful problem of head crowding, at least on standard hackled dries and soft hackles. Some of his ribbing techniques are brilliant.
Hans, are you listening? Do I get paid for being your PR rep?
Joe
Sorry Joe - I already blew my PR slush fund on Warren…
Cheers,
Hans W
Phooey…
I really don’t think that a ‘new fly’ (at least one to me) would get me to the bench as quickly as a ‘new technique’. Hans, don’t get a swelled head (LOL), but often I see a fly you’'ve tied and think, ‘That’s interesting and I have to remember that one’. Then I see a fly you’ve tied and think, ‘That is a new technique (again, for me) and I’ve got to tye one or two right now before I forget’.
As an example, the technique with the tinsel body and spun tinsel ribbing on the ‘Rolled Muddler Varient’ was entirely new to me. So I went directly to the vise and tied up a few.
Nice job Hans and thanks.
Allan
I tied my last new and different fly too many years ago to recall. The same old ones just keep catching too many fish for me to get excited about others.
Here is one that’s on my “to do” list…
http://hatchesmagazine.com/blogs/Hatches/2013/02/20/wedding-veil-by-brian-wise/
You should come by; I am teaching a classic spey tying class tomorrow at a local fly shop. 
For me there has been very little truly unique and different in tying for many years. The Haymaker by Mark Heronymus is the only one that comes to mind, though the counter-wrapped bunny flesh flies are pretty cool and work very well to reduce tangling…
While I agree that most patterns shown here or in the magazines are just variations on a theme with slightly different materials or technigues, every once in a while someone comes up with something very different. I enjoy learing new techniques, but I really get jazzed up when I see a pattern or material that I haven’t seen before. It could be something simple like Michael Verduin’s Cap Spider, which has become a killer bream fly for me, or some of Joe Popovich’s epoxy flies back in the day. I really enjoy experimenting with new or different materials to get a new look or even come up with a new pattern.
I also get inspired from many of the patterns shared by fellow FAOL members; like Hans with his beautiful soft hackles. For some unknown reason, I’d gotten away from tying softhackles for the past few years. Just seeing the beautiful flies tied by Hans inspired me to tie up a box full for next season. Getting to learn from with such talented and sharing people is just another example of why FAOL is such a great place to hang out.
Jim Smith
First, one sad thing is that Deanna and Neil have had to ask several times for people to contribute FOTWs to the twice monthly edition of the Home Page, but some folks don’t seem to care about supporting the FAOL website ( without which there is no FAOL Bulletin Board ) in that way. As Neil phrased it to me one time, roughly, without the twice weekly edition of the Home Page there is no reason for the FAOL website to exist.
The really sad thing is that once you’ve done an SBS for the Bulletin Board, it only takes a matter of minutes to put together a FOTW submission and send it to Neil, but it seems that is too much effort for some folks to make.
Second, it would be pretty easy to collect all the SBSs on the Bulletin Board into one thread. If that were done, Deanna would probably be agreeable to making it a sticky, so it would always be at the top of the Fly Tying Forum.
New SBSs could be added to the sticky thread by the contributor, or copied or linked to the sticky by anyone who took the time to do so. There is a downside this approach - only visitors to the bulletin board would get the benefit of the sticky thread, not visitors to the website. Another downside is that if an SBS poster uses something like photobucket.com to post the pix, when he removed his pix from the source they would disappear from the SBS.
John
Late strike comes fails to connect, it’s an old story…
(And one I’m all to familiar with.)
Ed
Two flies that I have never tyed before last week. So I guess they are new, to me, Ray Smith’s Fish Pot and Charles Meck’s Patriot.
Have you seen Charlie’s Green Patriot?
http://www.frankenfly.com/green-patriot/
I’ve used the standard pattern for a while now, but never saw this version.
Regards,
Scott
I have the material, I just might tye some up tomorrow. Thanks
Every once in a while, if you take the time to look at LOTS of tying videos, you will see something ‘new’.
It, at least for me, usually has nothing to do with the ‘fly’ being tied. It’s new concepts and techniques to achieve a ‘new’ result, or an easier way to do something.
Sometimes it’s something so simple that you wonder why you didn’t think of it.
I’m especially impressed with some tyers, usually newer ones that haven’t got too entrenched, who will come up with novel ideas to cause different actions in a fly.
And those folks who blaze the trails of new materials not normally associated with fly tying, things you get at craft, hardware, and other ‘non fly’ shops.
Remember that we can all learn something from anyone, if we take the time to really look at what and how they do things.
Buddy