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  • Mar9

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    Back to the Future of Fly Tying

    Posted in: Fly Tying

    vise |vīs|

    noun

    a metal tool with movable jaws that are used to hold an object firmly in place while work is done on it, typically attached to a workbench.

    New Oxford American Dictionary

    Fancy... Too Fancy

    There you have it; the definition of a vise. Pretty simple right? Well, when you start talking about fly tying vises, it gets a little more complicated than that. They do “hold an object firmly in place while work is done”, but they also do so much more. Too much more.

    Not long ago, I was tying on a newer vise and feeling frustrated with the lack of quality in the flies that resulted from it. The hook would move or not even set properly, the jaws were too large and cumbersome with smaller hooks, and overall the fly tying experience was best described as annoying. No, it wasn’t the “cream of the crop” $600+ vise pictured here (and for that much I’d expect it to tie the flies for me), but it was about a $100 vise which I expected would get the job done just fine.

    I’m not saying all modern vises are horrible, actually they are quite good. What I am saying is that they maybe a little too much. In fact, there are many good vise reviews.

    So one day after rummaging around in a bag of old fly tying materials I stumbled upon an old vise. I’ve seen it before, and often laughed at the idea of it, but the recent frustrations experienced with my “newer” vise pushed me to give it a try. There’s a reason some things never die; they work, and they work well. Some people still use really old bamboo rods, and now I use a really old simple vise to tie flies. This bad boy will hold any size hook I’ve tried to put in it’s jaws; no wiggle, no falling out.

    I’m not sure where it came from or how old it is. Research has turned up very little. There’s no branding anywhere marked on it, so I can only guess at its age. What I do know, is this simple little vise is absolutely amazing. No, it doesn’t spin the fly around, it doesn’t hold my thread for me; but it does do one thing hold the fly steady and secure, which is really all I need it to do.

  • Feb11

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    Montana Fly Company Design Contest

    Posted in: Fly Tying, Updates

    The good people at Outdoor Blogger Network and Montana Fly Company are holding a wonderful little contest to become the next fly designer at Montana Fly Company. Seeing as how I’ve been tying since I was about 12 years old, I figured why not give it a shot.

    When you’re young, excited, and begging someone to drive you to the river, you can get pretty creative with your flies. Random materials and crazy colors were the name of the game back then. 10 years later, I’ve become a little more refined when it comes to tying flies, and probably some of that creativity has also faded away.

    Nonetheless, I have come up with a few patterns that have been quite successful for me over the years. I thought up both these dry flies a few years ago, and have fished them quite often since.  There’s not really any “match the hatch” going on with these flies, just some observation of materials, colors, and textures that have worked well for other flies.

    I like to keep fly tying simple. As far as I’m concerned, fish are more put on by the shape and color of the fly than it’s imitative pointless finite details. Sometimes I even take tried and true patterns and “dumb them down”. For example, do fish actually see wings on a dry fly? Or do they pay more attention to the hackle? After all, the wings aren’t even in the water, or even (theoretically) touching the water.

    1. Pheasant Tail Dry Fly

    This fly has brought more fish to hand than I can count. Big or small, they all seem to like it.  The idea behind the design of this one was simple: pheasant tail nymphs are awesome, pheasant tail fibers are an amazing material, and lots of bugs are brown.  This was somewhat close to my line of thought when I came up with this fly. Most effective at a size 14-16, it’s made up of a few pheasant tail fibers on the tail, then wrapped around the body, more pheasant tail fibers on the wings, and some brown hackle; pretty simple; pretty awesome.

    2. White Biot Dry Fly

    Similar to the pheasant tail dry, this fly was designed more on form and color than matching something alive. I did match the hatch to a certain extent though. I often noticed small, light colored bugs coming off the water in the evening. I never payed particular attention to what kind of insect they might be, I just knew I didn’t have anything similar in my box when the fish were keyed in on them.

    So I sat down at the bench with a few materials and an open mind. What resulted was one of my favorite evening patterns in the summer, which has also produced fish in all seasons.  This fly has been a skunk buster on more than one occasion. I’ve had best luck fishing this guy in a size 16-18 (although smaller might work too), it consists of grizzly hackle fibers for the tail, white biot wrapped body (the black thread gives it a kind of grey-ish color when it gets wet), grizzly tips for wings followed up with grizzly hackle.

    This is where I’m gonna need your help. If these flies are selected by MFC, their names will be lame. Please help me out by commenting with some awesomely creative names for these guys.

    Now that you’ve seen my submissions to be considered by Montana Fly Company, I urge you to check them out as well as Outdoor Blogger Network.  MFC has some amazing looking gear (brown trout flask and brown trout flybox look amazing!) and some good looking flies as well. Should you be one of the millions on facebook, give them a “like” on there too.

    The flies are all packaged up and on their way to OBN and MFC. Best of luck to all the other entrants!