Fly-Tying to Prepare for Great Spring Fishing

Whether taking a deer with a cartridge you handloaded or hanging a gate you crafted from salvaged barn wood, there is something deeply satisfying in doing it yourself. For a fly angler, the pinnacle of this idea is tying your own flies. With fur, feathers and your own skills, you add texture and dimension to your time on the stream. And it’s oh so gratifying to watch a trout slash at your creation with suicidal abandon. Besides, what else are you going to do on a snowy day? Bake cookies? Let’s get to it.

FUNDAMENTALS MATTER

Like hitting a golf ball or shooting a bow, you’ll benefit from practice. Tie your first flies on a big hook until your movements become precise. Watch videos, take a class, go at your own speed and enjoy the process. There is no competitive fly-tying circuit. Besides, you’ll hide your freshly tied flies in little boxes away from prying eyes and then throw them in the water. Nobody will be able to look down their noses at your work, but they’ll all want to know what you used to catch that 3-pound brown.

Most experts advise you to make your first tied fly a simple nymph, a sub-surface imitation of an immature aquatic insect. But why not have some fun on your very first attempt? Instead, we’re going to discuss tying a basic dry fly that imitates everything from a caddis to a mayfly ... nothing in particular most times, and everything sometimes. As a bonus, you’ll be able to watch your creation as it floats temptingly downstream.

Pull out your reading glasses and add a desk lamp to your setup. Pour a calming beverage from Scotland and settle in.

• STEP 1: Place a hook in your vise. Hold your thread to the hook with your off-hand index finger and slowly wrap it over the tag end and down to the bend of the hook. Trim off the tag end if not covered with thread.
• STEP 2: Your thread-holding bobbin can now hang down, keeping tension on the thread. Pick up a small wad of dubbing and tease it out until you’ve got a dime-sized “pancake.”
• STEP 3: Lay the dubbing on the hanging thread and gently twist it in one direction until it’s all tightly clinging to the thread and looks like yarn. Take up your bobbin and evenly wrap the dubbing from the hook bend toward the hook eye. You’ve just made your bug’s body. If you still have dubbing when you run out of hook, simply take it off the thread by unrolling and make a couple more wraps with bare thread, then leave the thread and bobbin hanging.

• STEP 4: Here’s where the magic of deer hair turns your ugly bug-in-process into a merry, buoyant faux insect. It’s also where less is more when it comes to materials, lest you end up with a nightmarish mess. With thumb and index finger, hold the tips of a small bunch of deer hair, lift and cut off an amount that’s roughly half the width of a pencil from the hide. Pull out all the fine hairs near the base. Place hair, tip-first, into your hair stacker. (Tip: Keep your stacker relatively horizontal and your deer hair will come out in a handy bunch rather than a scattered jumble.) With the stacker still held at an angle, tap it a couple times on your table so the tips are all aligned.
• STEP 5: Carefully remove the bottom of the stacker and you’ll see your fly’s wing. Lay it so the tips are at about the hook bend; the butt ends will be on the top of the hook near the eye and your thread. They will be too long, but don’t worry, you’ve got this.
• STEP 6: Carefully and slowly make a few snuggish wraps around the hair butts and hook, keeping the hairs on the top of the hook. Do a few more wraps even tighter, let go of the hair tips and cross your fingers. (Tip: If you put tension only on the upward pull of your thread, the hair will stay on top better.) I’ll bet you’ve now got hairs fanned and sweeping back like a jet fighter’s wings. Pick up your scissors and carefully trim the butt ends close to the hook without cutting your thread.
• STEP 7: Wrap your thread up and back to cover the butt ends in a tidy tapered head. Looks good, doesn’t it? Do a whip finish and you’re done! What’s a whip finish, you ask. OK, this’ll take a bit of practice: With 5 inches of thread hanging, hold the bobbin in your left hand and lay your right hand’s index and middle fingers along the thread. Keep tension on the thread with both hands and bring both hands up with your fingers twisting a bit to make a backward number 4. Twist your wrist again, bringing the loop over the thread that’s lying on the hook. Repeat a couple times. Close the loop by bringing your fingers together, wiggle one out and gently pull with your bobbin as your other finger sneaks away. Clip off your thread and apply a tiny drop of head cement to the thread with your bodkin.
• STEP 8: Push back from the table, pour another dram and toast your accomplishment. You deserve it. Hey, self-reliance is your thing, and here’s another way to show it. Some day soon you’ll watch your masterpiece coax a trout to the surface, and then proceed to tell everyone you know and complete strangers alike all about it.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

• The items you’ll need to get started in the art of fly-tying.

• Vise
• Small, sharp scissors
• Hair stacker
• Head cement
• Thread-spool holder (aka “bobbin”)
• Bodkin (needle)
• Hackle pliers
• A good supply and many colors of thread, tinsel, hides, feathers, hooks, fur and petroleum-based synthetic yarns

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This article was featured in the March 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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