What You Wish You Knew Then That You Know Now

[PennKev]

I mostly agree with your list but...

I wish I had standardized on one or two brands of hooks. Having boxes of orphan hooks for patterns long forgotten is a waste. A 1x long nymph hook is the same regardless of who made it.

You gotta try a bunch to settle on a brand/style. I don't agree that all hooks of the same style are equal. There's definitely more good hooks out there now than in the past, but I've bought some brands or styles that I ended up disliking to the point of refusing to use them any longer. Some current Mustad streamer hooks come to mind as their points refuse to stay sharp and their point geometry makes re-sharpening difficult.

What are some best practices that you have learned?

DO NOT CUT SHORT SEGMENTS OF MATERIAL FOR EACH FLY. Work from the spool or work from very long lengths for things like chenille, wire, etc. You will end with one piece of waste rather than a piece of trimmings from each fly.

Also, return any loose beads, hooks, etc. to their packages after done using them for that particular fly. I have a bad habit of counting out a bunch of hooks thinking I'll tie a dozen or so of one fly and only make it to 10, leaving the other to sit out for an eternity before throwing them in a cup of mismatched hooks and beads.

Finally, not a "practice" per se, but I wish there hadn't been so much hype around dry fly hackle when I first started. The reality is that a medium dun, a grizzly, and medium brown colored capes will cover 95%+ of your dry fly tying. If you had to get by with one, either the grizzly or dun would work on a good many flies. And even then, you can now get away with buying packs of loose hackle before dumping a bunch of money into full capes or saddles.

 

[PennKev]

If you find a packaged material you like and will use, buy a lot because it WILL be discontinued.

Similarly, if you see a color you like, buy a bunch because dye lots are inconsistent for many materials.

 

[Tigereye]

The reality is that you, a medium dun, a grizzly, and medium brown colored capes will cover 95%+ of your dry fly tying.
.............

And even then, you can now get away with buying packs of loose hackle before dumping a bunch of money into full capes or saddles.

Now you tell me.

Would also add, a good number years back Steve Tyler of Aerosmith started a craze of putting saddle feathers in his hair. There was a bit of a shortage then so I didn't sell any feathers in my cache. They were going for $20-40 PER FEATHER. I still have them.

I could have retired 15 years early

 

[dryflyguy]

I tie a big majority of my flies with dun and ginger hackle. Prolly 90%
Brown hackle just for grannoms and march browns.

But I suspect medium dun hackle would work OK for everything

 

[Letort]

Similarly, if you see a color you like, buy a bunch because dye lots are inconsistent for many materials.

Boy, that’s the truth. I picked up 3 bags of Fulling Mill Mustard dubbing at TCO the other day and the clerk pointed out that one bag wasn’t like the others and asked if I wanted to trade it out, which I did. Wasn’t even close to the others.

 

[Bamboozle]

Now you tell me.

Would also add, a good number years back Steve Tyler of Aerosmith started a craze of putting saddle feathers in his hair. There was a bit of a shortage then so I didn't sell any feathers in my cache. They were going for $20-40 PER FEATHER. I still have them.

I could have retired 15 years early

One thing I did know "then," meaning right at the beginning of the "hair feather" craze was price gouging was coming...

So I was buying as many Whiting 100 packs in colors & sizes I'd use as fast as I could. I even found some at unlikely places like a few local bait shops with a tiny bit of fly fishing stuff.

I can't tell you how many packs I got for $6 - $11 and a few weeks they were going for well over $25 a pack.

Another thing I knew was the price would never get back to where it was before, so I held onto my stash. Even so, with the number of 100 packs I have, I could still turn a tidy profit if I sold them at a discount from today's prices.

 

[dc410]

Similarly, if you see a color you like, buy a bunch because dye lots are inconsistent for many materials.

This is so true. Back when I worked part time for The Evening Rise fly shop in Lancaster 15 or so years ago we had a variety of strung saddle hackle that we stocked from Wapsi. They called it Gray/Var we typed it in as Barred Variant Gray. It was an awesome color of varied saddle hackles that I used for one particularly effective Smallmouth pattern that I tied. At $4.50 per pack, knowing what I know now, I wish I would have bought every pack that we had in the shop. This is the only pack I have left and it has been totally picked through - there are a few decent feathers left in that bag but not very many.

 

[Letort]

Organizing some of the fly tying stuff over the holidays, I was looking at pricing from the 90's on some of my earlier materials. Huge difference in price.

Who knew we should of invested in feather futures.

 

[PennKev]

Huge difference in price.

Huge difference in quality in a lot of cases. Hackle is an obvious one. My Metz #2 and #3 necks from the 90's do not hold a candle to current "Tyer Grade" quality necks. I remember the prices seeming outrageous at that time for Metz and Hoffman(Whiting) hackle.

There are other improvements too. I remember a lot of fur-on dried items like bucktail and duck wings being only slightly less gross than road kill. Cleanliness and packaging standards are greatly improved IMO.

I think that the biggest jump in prices is not in the fur and feather materials but rather in hooks and also the widespread move to tungsten beads. There are no mainstream "cheap" name brand hooks anymore IMO and and anglers have happily switched to tungsten at 2-3X the cost of brass beads. Mustad had previously filled the cheap hook market but they went through a lot of changes when they moved production to Asia and started altering tried and true hook designs. I think that a lot of tiers bit the bullet and switched to more expensive brands during that time and never really switched back to Mustad after seeing how good Daiichi and Tiemco were.

 

[dc410]

My response was entirely to the first post of the OP. I still wish I would’ve bought every damn pack of that cheap Wapsi hackle that I had the an availability to buy back then. “What would you have done differently if you would have known today what you actually knew back then”?

I wasn’t looking at getting into the whole hook and bead, tungsten bead freakin’ circus that it has been turned into today.

 

[Tiogadog]

Replace or sharpen your scissors often. If you think they are getting dull, they are already too dull.

 

[Kms]

Replace or sharpen your scissors often. If you think they are getting dull, they are already too dull.

It is shocking how quickly they dull. To preserve the fancier scissors I now cut all bigger clumps of stuff and everything that doesn’t require precision with much cheaper Rapala braid scissors, which amazingly never seem to dull, and which make me think that *maybe* fancier scissors with better edge retention could be manufactured.

https://a.co/d/hUIqFGV

 

[dc410]

it takes constant attention to detail to keep a good pair of scissors sharp. I am also using a lot more Semperfli Nanosilk thread my tying. This is extremely strong thread and it will dull a pair of scissors very quickly. I cut all of my Nanosilk using a single edge razor blade.

 

[Bamboozle]

Huge difference in quality in a lot of cases. Hackle is an obvious one. My Metz #2 and #3 necks from the 90's do not hold a candle to current "Tyer Grade" quality necks. I remember the prices seeming outrageous at that time for Metz and Hoffman(Whiting) hackle.

So true...

Back in the late 1980's early 1990's I used to frequent a fly shop in Stroud Township (Stroudsburg) called the Windsor Fly Shop owned by a great guy, Andy Charalampos.

When Andy was going out of business and closing out his inventory I took advantage of the deep discounts on some Metz #1 necks which probably set me back about $20 -$25 each.

I still have those necks and what was considered a REALLY good neck from earlier days that was peddled by Orvis as an Orvis "Supreme." None of these come even close in quality to a few newer Whiting Silver Grade necks in my collection...

 

[Bamboozle]

it takes constant attention to detail to keep a good pair of scissors sharp. I am also using a lot more Semperfli Nanosilk thread my tying. This is extremely strong thread and it will dull a pair of scissors very quickly. I cut all of my Nanosilk using a single edge razor blade.

Semperfli Nanosilk is GSP which is tough on everything including non-ceramic bobbins and even whip finishing & half hitch tools.

I only use GSP on certain things like some hair flies and lashing dumbbell eyes on Clousers. For everything else, less wraps and the appropriate size (3/0 - 10/0) of my lifetime stash of Gudebrod works just fine for me.

 

[riverwhy]

Don't buy 100 pack of Limerick hooks. No idea what I intended to use them for!

 

[mt_flyfisher]

This is so true. Back when I worked part time for The Evening Rise fly shop in Lancaster 15 or so years ago we had a variety of strung saddle hackle that we stocked from Wapsi. They called it Gray/Var we typed it in as Barred Variant Gray. It was an awesome color of varied saddle hackles that I used for one particularly effective Smallmouth pattern that I tied. At $4.50 per pack, knowing what I know now, I wish I would have bought every pack that we had in the shop. This is the only pack I have left and it has been totally picked through - there are a few decent feathers left in that bag but not very many.

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I wish I knew then that you worked at the Evening Rise in Lancaster because I would have gone there more often to talk to you (and maybe even buy a thing or two). 😃 I went there more often when Nick had the store down on Rt 30 in Paradise, and even more often when he had it in his house.

I bought quite a few things from him when he still had it in his house, including a Kingfisher pontoon boat. At 10’3” long with 19”diameter tubes and an aluminum frame with cedar wood, that thing was a tank. I used it for a number of years on a number of the bigger rivers in PA and MT, and got into places that I’d probably never have gotten to otherwise (and maybe shouldn’t have gone to alone either).

I also bought some Orvis Spectrablend dubbing from Nick in rust color that I’ve since either used up or lost. It probably only cost a couple dollars back then, but I got much more than that in enjoyment from the fish I caught on Rusty Spinners that I tied with it. They subsequently changed the blend and or the color, and I think no longer sell it. I wish I’d have bought more back then.