Okay, everyone take a guess. Oh, if you were there, please hold off answering.
Fly tying speed contest at the show in Danbury this passed Sunday. Here’s the scenario:
About 10 participating tiers were seated at a long table.
Tiers were each given a spool of the same thread, unlimited supply of size 12 wet fly hooks, and a hen neck.
Tiers were shown a simple soft hackle fly(thread body and collar of 2 turns of hackle) and told they were to tie as many of those flies as they could in 1 hour.
They tied for a monitored 60 minutes, after which the flies each tied were counted by neutral observers.
but using the thread for the body and with a slightly heavier collar. Also, I was not asking for the combined total. Just how many flies the top(fastest) tier tied.
Oh, yes, I was one of the contestants but was not the winner.
Allan
[This message has been edited by tyeflies (edited 14 November 2005).]
[This message has been edited by tyeflies (edited 14 November 2005).]
I would guess that the winner tied around 55 flies. I also guess if that same competition was conducted over in Africa or in the Philippines with some of the professional women tiers, that the number would be much higher Now if I was in the competition, you would have to add a decimal point to the winning number.
The quantity of flies tied or the number that made it through quallity control? Whats the gain in tying 100 an hour if 80 of them are no use. You are really tying at 20 an hour and wasting a lot of materials.
Not sure that I would have liked to be in such a comp though I think I could probably sprint to somewhere in the region of 30 to 40 of such a simple pattern. An hour isn’t really all that long. Crusing speed over 8 hours is a different thing.
Cheers,
Alan.
"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”
Interesting comments some of which I’d like to reply without revealing the answer.
James - Actually, I don’t believe that those who work ‘professionally’ in factories as you mention would be able to tie any faster over a short period like an hour. Also, if you were tying we probably would have to add a decimal point. It would be placed one digit to the left (-;
Alan - This was solely a speed contest, not a speed and quality contest. The object was to tie as many completed flies as you could within a specific period of time. There’s no doubt that many of the flies tied, and I have no estimate, would not have made it through a quality control criteria. Also, I totally agree with your description of the activity as, “a sprint”. We should not extrapolate a 1 mile distance race based on a 100 yard sprint. It would likewise be ridiculous to extrapolate daily projections based on the number of flies tied in 1 hour.
By the way - with a group of tiers and standby hecklers, this was a fun event.
My guess is that the winning tier tied 60 flies, maybe a few more. Remember that these are very simple flies with a minimum of materials to tie on the hook and none of the materials require any prepartion. I would have stripped the useable hackle off the neck before starting so that I would only have to pick up a hook and a hackle for each fly.
You don’t say whether the heads had to be cemented and I assumed they were not. I seldom cement my trout fly heads.
The materials were not pre-prepared. The only thing we were allowed to do in advance was thread the bobbins. No one knew what type or pattern of fly we were going to tie until 5 minutes before we actually began. By the way, don’t you think that prep time needs to be calculated into the total time?
Now if I was in the competition, you would have to add a decimal point to the winning number.