I seem to be seeing a lot of new tiers concerned because they don’t have the right material to tie a given pattern. Remember that that pattern was developed by someone using the materials they had at hand. The start of every fly is a vision in the tiers mind of some sort of fish food or lure. If this is a natural insect or minnow etc. begin by observing the real thing if you can or research it on the web if you can’t. Find a picture on the web. This alone puts you miles ahead of where I started tying. Read about the way it lives and acts when it is available to the fish. Then look at the standard patterns for the thing you want to imitate. If you find one that you have the materials to tie and that seems to match your research your all set. If not then look at the materials you have and think in terms of creating an impressionistic image of your target fish bait. You will be influenced by the patterns you’ve seen of course. There is little or nothing that is totally new in fly tying. Think in terms of floating/ sinking, smooth/rough and buggy, bulky/ slender and delicate etc. Think of how you need to present the fly and apply the techniques you have learned as well as any you come up with to make a fly. Maybe we’ll be reading about your fly next.
I don’t think that there is a single fly tying material that can’t be successfully replaced by something else. A fisherman might notice the change and not like it but the fish seldom care. I agree, use what you have! 8T 
You mean I really don’t have to get one micron thin shavings from fossielized possum toenails for the shell back on my FPT (fossilized possum toenail) nymphs?
My wife will be happy that I’ll no longer be digging holes in our yard looking for fly tying parts.
Serioulsy, I was tying some Adams flies a while back and didn’t have girzzly hackle, all I had was brown. So, I tied with what I had. 6 trout in the Lynn Camp Prong of the Little River didn’t seem to mind at all.
I do enjoy the “art” part of tying and like to tie a fly that looks just like the pictures in the books and that’s what I strive for. But I’m not really the fish care about all of that.
As long as it’s the right size, shape, and looks like something good to eat, I’m not sure a fish cares much if the eye spot is real jungle cock or magic marker (or even not there at all).
I’ve only been tying for a couple months, but have been fishing for years and have caught many fish on the “wrong” fly.
Interesting thread.
Tie, fish, and be happy.
Jeff
I had intended this to be the first paragraph of a longer post with examples of various substitutions. I cut it off rather quickly when a lightning storm started. I have already replaced one computer with a burned out mother board this year and that is enough. In retrospect such a list might have become itself a limiting set of recipes. One point I really would like to add is that your fly does not have to look like something you would be willing to buy in a fly shop to catch fish. My first attempt to imitate a bug I had seen on the water many years ago was an emerald damselfly that was very visible on the Pere Marquette river. I found a segment of hombre yarn that was the same color as the bugs. I knew the damsels had no visible tails but I used several moose main fibers anyway to get the fly to float on a #6 hook with a body of wrapped yarn that was much too thick (It didn’t occur to me to break it down into a single ply). I did get the very dark gray wings right and finished with grizzly hackle because that was all I had that was that big. It looked more like a big green cigar that was shredding apart as it burned with a blackish smoke than a damsel fly. It caught trout even on that heavily fished river with it’s educated trout. Remember you are trying to catch fish not impress fishermen with your flies.
Jeff,
Unfortunately, fossilized possum toe nails are the single exception to the substitution rule. A micron difference, one way or the other, will result in a complete refusal of any fish to hit the fly. Sorry, it’s back to the digging for you. 8T
While I generally agree with the idea of substitutions, there are some items that just don’t look like the real thing. Does it matter to the fish? Perhaps not but it does to the fly tier and/or the fisherman and therefore, it does have an effect on the fish. Here’s an example of what I mean: You are standing in a river fishing a streamer when you spot some Hendricksons (or any other bug) beginning their hatch. You fix your tippet accordingly and reach into your vest for the flybox containing flies for that hatch. You open the box and see a dozen flies that will ‘match the hatch’. Some have wings that are an imitation of what the typical recipe calls for. Some have bodies that are a little off in terms of color. A few are tied with wings and bodies that are in the original recipe and look buggier. Don’t tell me that how you view the flies is not going to effect which one you select to use and if the ones you don’t select stay in the box, the fish will never get a chance to see them.
Sure, if you happen to be at a camp and need to tie up some flies to match something and you have no alternative, by all means you have to substitute and use the flies you tied. However, if you go to a river and have a choice of flies tied with ‘something’ versus flies tied with its substitute, I’m guessing that, all other things being equal, you’ll choose the flies tied with the ‘something’.
Oh, yet to find any good substitute for jungle cock.
Deezel
Yeah, the most fish catching fly. in the history of the obsession,The Royal Coachman, sure looks like a lot of insects I’ve seen on the water!
As stated, so well, “Flies to catch fish, flies to catch fishermen”.
Tying God; I hope, as you continue your search, you take 8T’s advice to heart!?!
He’s right, when it comes to this pattern.
Also, on that particular nymph, (if you’re tying to fish it and actually expect results, that is), the shavings must also be from only;
“THE LEFT, REAR, FOOT-CENTER NAIL OF THE OPOSSUM”!!
Be sure to shave the nail, about an 1/8th" out, from where the nail forms on the foot,as this is the thickest part and far less likely to break when tying it in.
And, for God’s sakes, DON’T FORGET to use saliva stained cheek fur, for dubbing the thorax! (it’s easy to differ, from other cheek fur. It has that “chewed tobacco brown” color to it).
Eightthumbs, you missed the other absolutely irreplaceable material. Your iron blue dun hackle must be from a rooster killed by a maiden at midnight on the dark of the moon or you just won’t catch fish. The mere presence of other iron blue dun hackle in your tying kit will significantly impact you fishing success. I keep a couple of maidens chained in my dungeon just for the purpose of killing these birds. so contact me to get your sorcerer’s hackle.
c’mon fisher people use your imagination, I have often used scrapings from a knitting needle that was soaked in tea for a week to simulate fosilized Possum toenail. and you guessed it “The fish don’t seem to mind”
Eric
I’m one of those new tyers and really haven’t been fly fishing all that long. Two comments: one concerns matching the original food source. I never saw a bass eat anything like a buzz bait or a safety pin type spinner bait in the wild. I believe that there are times durring a hatch that the fish are so keyed into a food source that you must, but most of the time, it it looks fishy it can and will catch fish. One guys opinion only.
The second point that I remember from a presentation by Gary Borger a few months ago was that he keyed in on 4 main points of a fly. Size, wing type, color and the final one was what he said most people did not consider and that was movement. In other words how the fly acted in the water. If you dead drift a match the hatch type pattern when the real deal is moving franticly in a repeatable way you aren’t doing to catch as many. If you are fishing an emerger on the very top almost out of the water, you will do better fishing an emerger in the film instead of on top of it.
As far as substitutions go, my material selection is no where what a fly tyer of 20 years has in their room full of stuff. I have to substitute.
Just to play devil’s advocate, I have to say while substitutions are fine, there is a virtue in trying to capture the original intent of pattern’s creator by adhering closely to the original recipe.
I personally like to copy the original pattern as close as I can to start and if it is a producer for the me, then I might start tweaking and simplifying the pattern to see what else would work. Quite often there is a given feature of a fly that makes it effective, and moving too far with substituted materials can result in a less useful pattern.
What really gets me is when folks substitute a material or two and then start referring to it as “their” pattern. But that’s another thread…
Rainbow,
You are purposely trying to mislead our readers about the iron blue dun hackle by omitting important details about the maidens who perform the sacrificial killing of these
roosters. Was it intentional or did you just forget that the maidens must be Scandinavian maidens and they must be pure. I suspect the omission was intentional.
Eric,
I have caught fish after fish on flies tied with genuine fossilized possum toenails but NEVER even had a rise on the simulated toe nails made from tea soaked knitting needles. The simulated toenails catch fishermen not fish. The simulated toenails are just poor imitations manufactured in China where the laws are far more lenient regarding the use of genuine materials. 8T
And here all I have been doing is trying to make imitation bugs out of what I have here on the bench. I never could see that imitating someone else’s idea of what a fly should be was inherently better than making one of my own. I leave others to agonize over the lack of a specific material in a “traditional” pattern. I will just keep tying and catching fish.
8T and Flybinder, I knew I could count on you guys for the real scoop. I guess it’s back to digging.
Jeff
Other than rudimentary choices in fly patterns and/or materials, fishing catching ability is 90% or more to do with the fisher. By direct observation, it should be readily apparent that the good fishers just catch much more fish than the bad fishers. For most people, the actual fly or what it is made of, or what its supposed to look like, simply doesn’t matter much at all.
At advanced levels of fishing, choosing the right fly and materials for the right time, location and presentation can make the difference between say a 30 fish day and a 60 fish day. But those fly selections won’t help someone who catches less than 5 fish a day. They may have all the whats, but they don’t know the when, where and how.
One trait I’ve noticed amongst very good fishers is that they don’t use what others are using, i.e. the standard patterns tied with the standard materials. That is one key to their success 
Well, Tying God, look at it, this way… “If you’re out back, digging in the dirt, you’re NOT in the house marking up Leslie’s poor cat, like a English Crop Circle”.
Thus, you’re not in any trouble at the moment.
Your digging, if asked, can and should, be explained to the lady of the domain that; “You’re saving her delicate grasp from hard and dirty labor by making her new flower beds”.
if you get “Look #214”, quickly toss out the fact that… “I realize, dearest, that no matter WHAT type of flower I plant out here, for you… next to YOUR beauty it will pale in comparison!”
Hopefully, this will end in the inquisition and interrogation and you can go back to your quest for left, hind, foot toenails.
If Leslie, isn’t a projectile vomiter, you might even get a nice smile and a “thank you, Dear!”, from her for the comment you’ve made.
My favorite has always been Art Flick’s Hendrickson recipe that called for “urine stained pink fur from vixen of red fox”.
That one had a youthful Bamboozle frantically searching my limited resources for incontinent foxes scampering through the woods wearing Depends.
Fortunately I found some drier substitutes.
Bamboozle,
I’m glad you found a substitute for the urine stained vixen fur. Peeing on those female foxes can be both difficult and dangerous. They are really quite fleet-footed and it’s extremely difficult to run, aim and urinate at the same time. Even worse for female fly tyers. 8T
I’m with RainbowChaser on this one as my earlier post “you don’t nee pink polar bear hair from South Africa will testify”. As he states, when I was a novice - and too many novices - think that a particular pattern is the magic bullet. In reality a tier tried to imitate a bug/minnow with what he thought would work. The prey species was from his region and to a degree so was the material. So use what you have to achieve what you need - thus you purchase from actual need and not from fantasy need based on some article or new pattern. My earlier post and RainbowChaser?s are both intended to relieve the anxiety of new fishers/tiers IMO.
Regarding the attachment to ‘true patterns’. Sure it is nice to tie an Adams just like it was developed. But remember that advertising/promoting/marketing/articles made it a known pattern. If the promoted one had been tied with Cree hackle instead of the brown and grizzly mix (was that actually a substitute for Cree !!??), then the devotion to the original would be different, but the result the same.
Urine stained female fox fur is in fact the same colour as fox armpit hair (true). The scrotum hair needed for Tup’s was not only pinkish, but also stained (possibly) by some urine but also from the pasture grass when the goat laid down. Get over it, colour and texture are what we need, not some material that was all that was available 100 years ago.
And finally, I agree with Borger (who I have seen speak twice). Size, colour, shape and movement all create an impression on or in the water and THAT is what the fish attacks - the fish sees what he wants to see, and if you are in the right place with the right impression you will catch him (or her).
hahahahahahahahaha even more ROTFL this leaves a very vivid imagery behind, tears streaming here haven’t had such a good laugh for ages.
Thanks for that…hehehehe
Jeanne