bringthepain
Well-known member
Glad to hear it!! I'd love to get back to Penns i dont think i have fished it since 2017
Do fly shops still sell U.S. tied flies?
- Thread starter Tiogadog
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Glad to hear it!! I'd love to get back to Penns i dont think i have fished it since 2017
bigslackwater
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My rule of thumb is under $2.00 = imported, over $2.00 = made locally.
Bamboozle
Well-known member
You better adjust that rule for inflation...
As an example, I don't think Orvis sells a single fly under $2.00 online or at any of their stores and I almost guarantee they aren't tied locally or even in Vermont...
Same goes for TCO closer to home but at least they admit they outsource flies.
mattofcarlisle
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Some of their musky flies and a good chunk of their smallmouth patterns are tied locally.
mtelesha
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As a kid I use to tie dozens of nymphs for my local shop for in store credit 🙂
Back then it was a hidden black art. Now a days you can learn so quickly. Thank God I had a mentor at Trouts Unlimited and Eric Leiser was a patient of my dad who was a Chiropractor. He would get free adjustments and teach me for free. I got the best end of the bargin.
I have a network of people who will occasionally call me for flies but it is getting less and less frequent. Custom orders by American fly fishers are still happening but I think the people who would order are now mostly tying.
Custom orders = better hooks and better beads usually. The over seas African and Sri Lanka tyers are amazing so it is hard to beat them with tying skills anymore on standard patterns.
Back then it was a hidden black art. Now a days you can learn so quickly. Thank God I had a mentor at Trouts Unlimited and Eric Leiser was a patient of my dad who was a Chiropractor. He would get free adjustments and teach me for free. I got the best end of the bargin.
I have a network of people who will occasionally call me for flies but it is getting less and less frequent. Custom orders by American fly fishers are still happening but I think the people who would order are now mostly tying.
Custom orders = better hooks and better beads usually. The over seas African and Sri Lanka tyers are amazing so it is hard to beat them with tying skills anymore on standard patterns.
dudemanspecial
Well-known member
Orvis flies are made by Fulling Mill which are tied in Kenya. Tom Rosenbauer did a podcast with a guy from Fulling Mill and they went surprisingly indepth about the whole deal. Very good listen.
Podcast: Where Flies Come From, with Steve Carew - Orvis News
My guest this week is Steve Carew of Fulling Mill. Steve is the guy who gets fly patterns from an original sample to those gorgeous flies you see in the fly bins of your local Orvis store or dealer. How do commercial flies get made? Who are these people who . . .
news.orvis.com
What brand of hooks do you use?
bringthepain
Well-known member
Glad to hear that is still the case. 450 dozen, holy moly
PennKev
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Nope.
Higher price generally gets you a better quality fly but it has nothing to do with country of origin, though that is certainly not a rule.
From what I've seen the cost of flies is as much linked to tourism as anything else. Buy flies in Central PA, price goes up. Buy them in Montana, price goes through the roof.
Agree. What the local market will bear is what the drives the retail price. If a shop pays a dime for a fly but can get 5 bucks for it they will sell it for 5 bucks. Fly shops are in business to make money and the ones that have stayed open know that. The ones that have shuttered their doors were not running a business.
bigslackwater
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fair enough. Point me in the direction of shops making quality local flies for less than $2 please!
Would love to help you out but I tie every fly I fish so my recommendation is to start tying your own quality flies at roughly a quarter per fly. It’s a very straight forward and easy process requiring only the most basic of equipment.
PennKev
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Right next to the gas station selling regular for .99 a gallon.
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Do they have pepperoni rolls?
bigslackwater
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already do. I tie 90% of the flies I use. Sometimes I purchase just because I'm fishing harder than I'm tying, or the pattern is too time consuming to tie.
My earlier point about $2 flies...
If a shop is selling $2 flies, they want to be paying the tier (manufacturer) no more than $1 to get to a 2x markup. The tier then needs to be investing no more than $.50 per fly in material and time. Maybe a beadless zebra midge fits that criteria, that's about it!
I just spent $90 on materials to tie roughly 75 flies, and half the materials I already have. That's $1.20 per fly, my cost, not including my time and previously bought materials, to tie. I don't know how professional tiers can make any money. It must be a labor of love. It just makes me think, we shouldn't get upset if a fly shop is charging over $4 for locally tied flies, because it's probably still a slim profit margin.
PennKev
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A true professional tier is not spending $90 on those same materials. Set up a legit fly tying business and contact one of the major tying material suppliers and you can get a wholesale account.
Now if a tier spends .60 or so on a fly and can sell it for around $3-4 that ain't bad, but if there's a middle-man fly shop you're back to a point where the economics of domestically tied flies doesn't work even with relatively high retail prices. That's why you see domestic tying for mostly only specialty flies.
Bamboozle
Well-known member
The problem with the business model of tying flies and making/saving money is hardly anybody factors their time at whatever rate they feel is fair as part of the expense/cost AND the actual amount of time it takes to tie a certain number of flies.
Assuming you have actually timed yourself, if you think you can tie a whatchamacallit in two minutes, that means you can bang out 30 in an hour, correct?
However, I'll bet you a beer that unless you prep your materials BEFORE starting to tie those whatchamacallits (which also takes time), you won't come close to 30 flies tied in an hour. So all of sudden your productivity is below expectations and so is your supposed profit or savings.
Most likely you are also buying materials at a much higher cost than the big overseas tying "factories," so all of sudden with everything in the mix, you are working for less an hour than some woman at a tying station in Asia or Africa.
If you DO decide to buy wholesale to get costs down, with that comes purchase minimums and ultimately having more money tied up in inventory. So in actuality, you are paying more for that whatchamacallit than you would if you just ordered it from some fly shop...
The beauty of tying flies is IF you have the talent & materials to cover everything you want in your fly boxes, you can tie whatever you want, when you want, in the size & color you want. IF the fish like what you created, you have the added satisfaction of catching a fish on YOUR fly!!
It don't get no "funner" than that (unless you built your own rod)!!!
However, once you expand beyond Woolly Worms and abominations tied with hand-me-down materials & tools from friends or mentors. you will be entering the realm of not saving a nickel tying your own flies. 😉
I stopped worrying about it decades ago because the "funner" part makes the expense worthwhile.
Assuming you have actually timed yourself, if you think you can tie a whatchamacallit in two minutes, that means you can bang out 30 in an hour, correct?
However, I'll bet you a beer that unless you prep your materials BEFORE starting to tie those whatchamacallits (which also takes time), you won't come close to 30 flies tied in an hour. So all of sudden your productivity is below expectations and so is your supposed profit or savings.
Most likely you are also buying materials at a much higher cost than the big overseas tying "factories," so all of sudden with everything in the mix, you are working for less an hour than some woman at a tying station in Asia or Africa.
If you DO decide to buy wholesale to get costs down, with that comes purchase minimums and ultimately having more money tied up in inventory. So in actuality, you are paying more for that whatchamacallit than you would if you just ordered it from some fly shop...
The beauty of tying flies is IF you have the talent & materials to cover everything you want in your fly boxes, you can tie whatever you want, when you want, in the size & color you want. IF the fish like what you created, you have the added satisfaction of catching a fish on YOUR fly!!
It don't get no "funner" than that (unless you built your own rod)!!!
However, once you expand beyond Woolly Worms and abominations tied with hand-me-down materials & tools from friends or mentors. you will be entering the realm of not saving a nickel tying your own flies. 😉
I stopped worrying about it decades ago because the "funner" part makes the expense worthwhile.
bigslackwater
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I get your point about wholesale materials but I cant imagine it's much savings. Keep in mind my example of 75 flies at 1.20 didn't factor in half the supplies I already owned. I'm very frugal when I purchase supplies. I also run a business that is not fly tying but it's similar in the way we purchase and assemble things. Most of the materials I buy at wholesale, I can also find on amazon at near or even better than wholesale prices. You'd be surprised how many business go to amazon because they can get it cheaper. With online ordering these days the lines between wholesale and retail are really blurring in just about every industry.
falcon
Well-known member
As Bam posted, The beauty of tying flies is IF you have the talent & materials to cover everything you want in your fly boxes, you can tie whatever you want, when you want, in the size & color you want. IF the fish like what you created, you have the added satisfaction of catching a fish on YOUR fly!!
Even if you dont have the exact materials if you understand fly construction and material substitution you can certainly improvise. You no longer have to go to a fly shop that sold you a pattern that worked great and find it is no longer available or sold out.
It does take a commitment and materials are not inexpensive but it is a fun and I see it as being part of becoming a all around fly angler,
Even if you dont have the exact materials if you understand fly construction and material substitution you can certainly improvise. You no longer have to go to a fly shop that sold you a pattern that worked great and find it is no longer available or sold out.
It does take a commitment and materials are not inexpensive but it is a fun and I see it as being part of becoming a all around fly angler,
