Materials Used to Tie Flies: Basic Fly Tying Instructions

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Robert Brown on behalf of Expert Village.com and in this clip I am going to be talking to you about some of the various materials that are used commonly for tying flies. When fisherman first started transitioning to fly tying and fly fishing, they did not have modern materials so they used what they had available to them which included furs, feathers and other naturally occurring fibers for manufacturing of their flies. There are many types of materials used in tying flies and one of the most used materials is a hackle. Hackle fibers are small little feathers that come off of the neck and cape; the cape is the back side and the neck is the front side of a chicken. They come in different colors. This is a grizzly hackle. This is a beautiful brown rust colored hackle and we have white hackles. All three of these are necks. Necks are an excellent way to start if you are just getting started in fly tying because hackles are probably one of the most expensive materials and you get every imaginable size of hackle in one neck where as if you buy cape hackles which eventually if you get into the hobby you will, cape hackles have a lot longer fiber, lot longer usable fiber so sometimes you can get 3, 4, 5, or 6 flies out of a single cape strand and there is one strand right there. It is very important that if you are buying hackles whether their necks or their capes that you make sure the feathers are really loose and free flowing. You don’t want ones that are stiff and hard to work with. The quality of the hackle can easily be determined by flipping the thing upside down and seeing how it behaves. This is a very high grade hackle. Another material that is very common in fly tying is hair. Hair is vital to fly tiers. One other really commonly used material is actually called dubbing. Now I have my dubbing in this box that has little holes in the top so that I can pull just bits of dubbing through as I need it. Dubbing is basically like wool but it is finely stranded and it is broken down so that you can pull it apart and you get the little hair fibers with the color and it is usually what you use to build up the bodies of the flies. "