Flicking feathers

 Head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers to support the channel, get access to the monthly zoom tying sessions and be entered into the giveaways Here's another from Sexy Loops I like tying flies, I like seeing nice flies tied by other people which social media is great for. However I am not so enamoured about the number of people who proudly declare that their flies catch fish, not fishermen. It's an attitude that worries me and I'm sure that it's not isolated to flytying -what percentage of fly anglers actually practise casting? Often, when I run a tying class on trout flies I have to make the point that scruffy and buggy doesn't mean badly tied.  Practising and improving will allow the tier to make the decision about how rough-or not- the fly on their vice is going to be.   Obviously there are other advantages to being able to tie more than your shoe laces, not least consistency. If I tie 10 or 100 of the same pattern I want them all to look exactly the

  Head to https://www.patreon.com/flickingfeathers to support the channel, get access to the monthly zoom tying sessions and be entered into the giveaways. Here's another old one I wrote for sexyloops Golden Oldies I've recently been spending a lot of time looking through old tying and fishing books which has been thoroughly enjoyable.  One think it's made me do is start thinking about older fly patterns and how the profiles and materials have changed.   I like a lot of aspects of the old school streamer patterns, not least the simplicity of many of them.  Although many old flies like the Mickey Finn have fallen from favour with most anglers nowadays they still work.  The problem I think, is that they don't look as natural in form as some more modern patterns and don't have the modern mobile materials that have replaced bucktail for many.  The first one I think is a legitimate  issue with these flies , stacked wings, clean cut tails and prominent black thread head

An early article of mine from sexyloops.com "How do I get better at tying flies?" Practise! Probably the most common question I get asked when tying at club nights, shows or through the YouTube channel.  Unfortunately, my answer is rarely what the questioner is looking for.  There aren't really any shortcuts-you need to practise, pay attention to what you're practising and be critical of your work. "But I tie lots of flies, I'm practising all the time!"  That's not really practising. If you really want to improve something in your tying work on that. When I started learning to tie flies and I wanted to learn a technique, say slip wings for dries or elk hair caddis wings, I would tie sets of wings down a long shank 8, cut them off and start again until I was happy they were all good enough. Then I'd tie some split wing dries for my box and they'd all be good enough.  There are any number of videos and images around the internet for you to use