I recently took a look at the first flies I tied in March of 2004. I immediately set to modifying them, fixing them, or dismantling them. Wow, have I learned in just over one year of tying! One of the things that has helped me is to enter swaps - lots of swaps. I was nervous at first and for the reasons you all have stated. Who was I to be tying with masters? However, I discovered tht I was extra careful with the flies for swaps. I knew that they were nothing as good as most of the ones I would receive, but they were my best and to me that was good enough. Please enter a swap and you will be proud of yourselves. Plus you will see other folk’s work and get ideas just by looking at their flies. ALso, those flies that I tied for each swap - every flie has caught fish and plenty of them including a lovely wild Westslope Cutthroat. Wait not! You will find yourselves checking the mailbox each day and then you will open the swap package with impatient delight. Now get those hooks and feathers out and have at it.
Hi Gardenfish,
I suggest you save a few of those “first flies” rather than trying to fix them or cut them off the hook. In years to come they will give you a perspective of where you came from. I still have my first fly I tied almost 50 years ago and the first married wing salmon fly I tied in 1978. That salmon fly is aweful but I have it mounted in a glass dome just to remind me how bad I was when I started. We all had to start somewhere. Take care & …
Tight Lines - Al Beatty [url=http://www.btsflyfishing.com:d302c]www.btsflyfishing.com[/url:d302c]
Al, I have a dozen or so of those flies saved for the reasons you stated. Awful they are, but they are also indicators of how much I have improved. I never thought of displaying them in public. Yikes! Talk about exposure! Cya.
The first year after I started tying my son gave me a shadow box with a bunch of my first ties as a Christmas present. Most are really bad, but can you measure where you are going if you don’t remember where you’ve been.I think i look at my first ties as the foundation of a hobby that has become extremely important to me and my family.
I have a framed fly in my tying room ,well it could look like a fly,feathers wrapped with scotch tape. When my grandaughter was very little she watched me tie flies went home and made her own for me. Now grown in college wants it back to destroy.
Bill
I gave a bunch of my first flies to someone who was a big factor in my tying, and my first Coffins to my grandmother just so she could show them off to her friends that her grandson did that on his first try. Even though that first Coffin looks great I now see that the tails are not split like I like and the hackle color is off a little. Plus the cliped hackle body was just not perfect. They kinda remind me of the things that keep my flies looking great.
Im only 16 years old right now, and i started tying flies when i was about 10 years old. I was to young to keep some of my first flies, but i still remember some stuff i did, to try to make the flies look better. Man people must think in nuts when i just start laughing when i think of these things. Some things i used to do was use hackle that was way to large for the size of flie, then I would trim the hackle until it looked “right” (if you have never done that give it a try, it looks disgusting), and i always made the hackle as thick as i could.
Great memories…
Everybody has to start somewhere!
I have a magnetic board that I put the first fly, of any fly I tie, on. It’s fun, after the first hundred or so you tie, to go back to the first one, and see the improvements. some are REALLY funny.
Trouts don’t live in ugly places
I enjoy teaching children to tie flies–over 100 scouts in a year. At scout camp one asked if he could use some of the different color marabo. It was a mess of color but on his secound cast he caught a 2 1/2 pd bass. I should have copied that fly------
Bill
Fishy,
I also started tying at the age of 10-11 and all I had to learn by were some pictures of flies from fishing catalogs. Have you ever tried to tie a fly just by looking at the finished product? I did! Bucktails weren’t to bad. Dry flies were a disaster because I thought that you had to tie in every single hackle fiber individually. I didn’t realize that you tied in a whole feather and wrapped it around the shank. Given the thickness of my mother’s sewing thread, I soon had a marble sized ball of thread around the hook. Your cut hackle couldn’t have looked all that disgusting by comparison. I regret that I never saved any of my early flies—I thought they looked too bad. 8T
You had better learn to be a happy camper. You only get one try at this campground and it’s a real short camping season.
How would one enter or get into a swap? I know not where they are or how to register.
Gem
Jim,
Check out the Fly Swap Forum (just below this one on the Bulletin Board Page. There are many swaps going…
L
Thanks Lonnie. Funny, just saw that just now when I signed on…Mon nite. Hadn’t noticed it before. Didn’t go to board but when coming to this board I just saw the thing. Been away from home all week-end…wife fell Fri and broke her hip…after I called 911 and they took her to local hospital…they took her via ambulance to Phoenix, 170 miles away. So I have been gone all week end. So…I won’t be around for awhile. I gotta head bak to Phx. But, thanks for the info. (sounds like it was a rough week-end for a lot of people)Oh…she already had the hip replacement surgery and looks like going to be ok.
Gem