Tips on Fly Tying with Natural Materials

Video Transcript

"ALVIN DEDEUX: The first group of fly-tying materials is the natural materials. And that's probably the traditional stuff that flies have been made out of, fur and feathers. A lot of it probably started just from guys sitting around with something that was left over from when they went bird hunting and they said, "Oh, well, you know, I think we could tie this onto a hook and trick a fish with it." A lot of the materials are just sort of a byproduct of other industries. There's pieces that hunters don't use and would otherwise have been gone in the trash. And then there's actually some materials that are specifically for fly fishing and fly tying. Some of the rooster feathers and stuff or not used in anything else, they were designed specifically for fly fishing, and then some of the other stuff like the dyed bucktail. There's not really much other use of it other than that, maybe except for in the costume industry which is also where a lot of these things come from. It's in the costume making industries. They'll dye these animals in all these crazy colors, and then fly fishing, we'll use them to make flies with."