Essential fly tying tools

I recommend a two scissor system: one pair of better quality, extra sharp, fine point scissors for trimming a variety of materials in tight places. The second pair can be a cheaper or old pair for cutting materials like lead-free wire and ultra-wire.

These materials will quickly dull any blade. For this reason, many brands build wire cutters into their scissors which can get you down to one pair like the Loon Arrow Point Scissors pictured below.

When your scissors inevitably get dull, there are plenty of tutorials online and even local knife smiths available to re-sharpen your blades. Lighting can often be overlooked but it is a major component of successful fly tying. Proper lighting will help reduce strain on your eyes as you focus on creating your next masterpiece. This is particularly true if you are tying small nymphs and the like. Natural light is best but lamps and overhead lights are great too.

Lighting is essential to creating beautiful, detailed flies for any species. Grab these essential tools and a few tying materials and you will be churning out flies in no time. Article by Evan Garda, he is on the Content Team here at Fly Lords and can be found chasing trout throughout the west with his trusty fly rod check out his adventures at evangarda.

Join Our Weekly Newsletter:. Happy tying! This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Flylords Mag. Sign in. This technique is also useful to bulk up the thorax too. Because lead is environmentally damaging, we use a synthetic lead wire that is soft and heavy but not harmful to rivers.

Most dries and nymphs have a tail of some sort. When you are starting out it is enough to simply buy a few paintbrushes and use the fibres from these as tailing fibres. The other alternative is to use a tailing fibre such as Microfibbets — I use black for spinners and a yellow or grey for some emergers and caddis flies. Controlling dubbing to produce a smooth, slender body on your flies is one of the biggest challenges for the beginning fly tyer.

So there you have it, a list of 11 essential materials to get you started. The F-Fly is an Eastern European pattern that was apparently devised to imitate caddis. Tied with CDC it is a great fly for mayfly hatches. The Parachute Adams is one of the most popular dry flies in use today. Rick Wallace is a passionate angler and fly fisher whose work has appeared in fishing publications including FlyLife. He is a regular on fly fishing podcasts and appeared in the international fly fishing film Predator.

View all posts. As a member of various other affiliate programs we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases. Skip to content. Essential fly tying tools and materials: a full list for beginners. Rick Wallace April 13, This tool proudly brought to you by Ahrex Hooks — made without compromise: ahrexhooks.

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General Affiliate Disclaimer. When used effectively, a bobbin will help the fly tyer create a fly that is more durable and realistic in appearance. Unlike your ordinary household scissors, the scissors used in fly tying are generally smaller and are razor sharp. Fly tying scissors are all about making cuts in closer corners where exactness is key. Depending on the types of materials you are cutting, you may want to have a curved scissor with thinner blades to get a cleaner cut. These days, most fly tyers utilize at least two pairs of scissors while fly tying — one pair for precise cuts where the material is quite fine and soft think hackle or nylon thread and a household pair of scissors for course materials like monofilament or dear hair.

Soft hackle is a delicate material and can prove challenging to wrap around a hook shank by hand. Enter the hackle pliers , which make working with hackle a piece of cake. To use this tool, tie in your soft hackle near the base feather stock on to the body of the fly.

Now, squeeze the sides of this tool to open the pliers and attach the pliers to the end of the hackle feather. Wrap the hackle around the hook shank as desired. Before you complete a fly, you need a way to secure the thread to the head of the fly with a knot.

The Whip Finish is the technique and the Whip Finisher is the tool used to accomplish this. Like many things in fly fishing, this technique takes a good bit of practice to master.