Fly tying is a hobby that at times can seem overwhelming, expensive, and hard. I unfortunately can’t help out with the “hard” part of tying, it’s something that will get easier with time. However, I think I can offer some advice to folks interested in keeping to simple patters or working with a tight budget.
I recently graduated from a four year degree granting institution. Some call this college; I called it a hell of a good time. More often than not I would end up having too good of a time and be strapped for cash, or just have a really shitty job that didn’t pay too well. Being perpetually broke teaches you how to do two things, be creative with what you have, and learn what works and stick to it. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
Because of the location of my University, I was able to fish for two different strains of Great Lakes steelhead from September through most of May, and stripped bass the rest of the summer. This caused me to focus most of my time on tying only a small variety of flies, steelhead, and stripper flies. Because I didn’t have the time or the money to be tying a great variety of flies form tons of different materials I had to start narrowing down my selection to “staple” flies that I knew would produce consistently and that I had materials to tie. For steelhead this consisted of single eggs, glo bugs, sucker spawn, blood dots, scrambled egg, jelly stones, and bead-head cadis pupa. Four of these flies are all tied with the same material, egg yarn. Egg yarn is in expensive and versatile enough that you can make several patterns out of it. I would like to focus on a beginner’s box for a season on a steelhead stream, and we’ll see about what it may cost to get started.
Ok, so now that I’ve given away my entire “secret” fly selection (insert drum roll and cymbal crash). Let’s figure out how much it’s going to cost us to stock a steelhead box, or at least purchase the materials to stock one. (Now, I’m going to do this bare minimum, so please realize there are better ways to do this, I’m shooting for the cheapest.) Before we begin this let me point out one important aspect not included in the material costs, thread, I’m going to assume that you all have thread to tie with, if not allow your self about $3.00 to buy a few spools of 6/0 thread red, black, and neon pink are my colors of choice for steelhead flies. I simply match thread color to the body color of the fly.
Hooks, If I have to choose one type of hook to buy for steelhead it will usually be scud hooks that were 2x heavy, there’s a variety of patters that you can tie on them from eggs, to nymphs. And the wide gap and strong wire gave me confidence in the hook setting and holding ability of the pattern on the end of my line. The hook I often chose was the Daiichi 1120, 1x short, 2x heavy, down eye. These hooks run about $4.00/pack of 25. I would recommend that if you are sitting down to tie steelhead flies from scratch to start with at least 50-100 hooks and pick them in sizes ranging from 12-18. So let’s say we go high end and start with 100 hooks that’s $12.00.
Next let’s go pick out some egg yarn. Again egg yarn is versatile and can be used to tie several patterns glo-bugs, sucker spawn, blood dots, scrambled egg, and my favorite “Don King.” Glo-bug yarn runs for about $3.00/pack. So let’s say you get two colors that contrast, to use when making the blood dots and scrambled eggs. Now that’s $6.00 for the yarn, and a new total of $18.00.
Now, with just the hooks and yarn you have selected off the shelves, counters, and racks of your local fly shop you can probably tie a pretty good combination of flies hit the water and catch a good number of fish. However, there are a few items that I’d like to point out that can really assist you in tying a few key patterns.
First I would recommend Mcflyfoam. The cost is about $4.25/pack and there is a “clown” pack available that has all the necessary colors to get the beginner started. Hands down there is no better material for tying single egg patters a fly that any steel-header should carry. Second I recommend a few spools of lava-lace or jelly-rope. I use this as body material on stoneflies and rock worms, again two patters made out of the same material. The lava-lace will run you about $1.25/spool. Lastly, choose beads. Beads add weight a key when steelhead fishing, as it is paramount to keep the fly close to the bottom. Ask your local shop guru to help you match the beads to the hook size you’re using and expect to pay about $2.50/pack of 20-24 beads. The beads can be added to any of your nymph patterns in particular jelly stones and rock worms.
Alright, so that should square you away. We’ll the damage comes to right around $27.75, give or take a few dollars depending on your local prices. Now keep in mind the materials that you buy as “body” materials will out last your hook supply. So you don’t have to re-buy glo-bug yarn every time you need a pack of hook. Now periodically you may want to add some colors to your assortment, or try a new fly. Once you have these basic materials covered branching out to new colors or a similar pattern is relatively inexpensive.
Ok so let’s say you think that $30.00 still isn’t possible (there were times when I couldn’t pony up that kind of cash). We could knock it down some more. If you go back through your list of materials you could start with hooks. If you go down to 50 hooks you’ve already cut cost by about $8.00, leaving us around $19.00. Let’s say you decided to nix the bead heads, you’re now down to $16.50. There are a lot of options when you really want to keep it cheap. As you can see we were able to drop our cost by almost half by simply cutting out a few items. These items can always be replenished later on.
Remember that what you already have in your trout nymph box is also suitable for steelhead. Those trout flies may boost your selection and variety by several hundred depending on what you have available to you. And if you’re really “hard-up” for some cash you can always splurge and spend $3.00 on some flashabou and simply add that to your next batch of trout nymphs you tie.
What I can tell you is that a “shopping list” is beneficial. Figure out exactly what your “need” to get and write it down. You can research cost and come up with an approximation of what it will hit you for. Once you have an idea of your costs, let’s say $25.00, only take that much with you leave the debit card, and credit card at home. There have been plenty of times where this has saved my bank account.
I was able to tie on a budget while in school and making just barely enough to consistently buy cheap hot dogs so I could eat (most of my money did go towards fishing). It isn’t just a sport/hobby for the CEO of “Big Oil” making billions of dollars a year. Really, anyone can afford to tie a good solid variety of “staple” steelhead flies. Good luck.
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