Store Bought Vs Hand Tied Flies

[Guest Apple]

What is the big difference between a store bought fly and tying my own? The price seams reasonable if I buy in bulk on line?How many flies wou;ld I have to tie to realize a savings, including buying a vise, tools, etc? What about learning, any clinics at this time of the season?

 

Thanks.

[danhunt]

The two biggest differences between store bought and personal ties is that you have the flexibility to tailor the personal ties to the fishy foodstuffs you encounter and/or you can offer the fish something different. For example, is there going to be a substantial difference between the black wooly bugger you tie and the wooly bugger tied in a third world factory somewhere? If you go by the pattern, then no, not really. But, what if you happened to find out that a little bit of blue flashy material in the tail got more strikes than the standard pattern? Is something like that really going to make a difference? On the mountain cutty streams, maybe not so much. On a big Bow River Brown that could probably teach flytying if it had opposable fins? Yeah it does.

 

Since I got started in the hobby as a tweener, commercial ties have actually gotten pretty damned good and the materials are now usually about on par with what I can afford. The only way there is any kind of a "savings" is you do it because you enjoy it and you don't put a monetary value on the time you invest in to tying. Then, if you get seriously in to fly tying, there is always a new material, or a new hook, or something that is going to make your next fly the cosmic world destroyer that it should be, and because we really don't know what goes through the mind of a trout we fall for it.

[angler]

You will probably never tie enough flies to even come close to the cost of all the materials, tools etc you'll end up collecting. I'm pretty sure i've got at least $4-5k in tying related 'stuff'.

Maybe it's 'cause I have literally thousands of flies left over from guiding/shop ownership , but I really only tie a few patterns and do a bit of experimenting. And don't think your flies will be as well tied as the store bought for a while.

Knock yourself out. Have fun.

[RedBeard]

I think you can eventually catch up to the materials/tools purchases, but it's takes a lot of tying

 

I started with a vise, tools and only a few materials to tie up about 5 of my favourite patterns. In just over a year I've spent over $1200 on tying materials (hackles are the killers) and tied roughly $900 worth of flies. I feel like I have a good amount of materials for all of my favourite patterns now and only use the flies I tie when fishing, which is rewarding for me!

 

I also got a smoking deal on hooks from murray (thanks again Murray!) which helped me hit the ground running.

[flywiz]

The two biggest differences between store bought and personal ties is that you have the flexibility to tailor the personal ties to the fishy foodstuffs you encounter and/or you can offer the fish something different. For example, is there going to be a substantial difference between the black wooly bugger you tie and the wooly bugger tied in a third world factory somewhere? If you go by the pattern, then no, not really. But, what if you happened to find out that a little bit of blue flashy material in the tail got more strikes than the standard pattern? Is something like that really going to make a difference? On the mountain cutty streams, maybe not so much. On a big Bow River Brown that could probably teach flytying if it had opposable fins? Yeah it does.

 

Since I got started in the hobby as a tweener, commercial ties have actually gotten pretty damned good and the materials are now usually about on par with what I can afford. The only way there is any kind of a "savings" is you do it because you enjoy it and you don't put a monetary value on the time you invest in to tying. Then, if you get seriously in to fly tying, there is always a new material, or a new hook, or something that is going to make your next fly the cosmic world destroyer that it should be, and because we really don't know what goes through the mind of a trout we fall for it.

If you fish enough, you'll probably also find it is hard to keep up with number of flies you need by tying them all.

I tend to buy a lot of the basic patterns and tie the flies that are either really quick (acetate worms and brassies) to save money, or are unique such as foam green drakes, and many of my bulltrout flies.