Your first fly pattern

T

tracker12

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Was wondering what was the first fly that you ever tied. I will be starting to fly tie after Santa delivers all the goodies that he has promised to bring. I have been watching a bunch of youtube videos and trying to decide what fly to tackle first.
 
WOOLY BUGGER
 
My first fly was an Emerald shiner pattern
 
Wooly bugger. Apparently it is quite productive, I don't use them that much honestly. They are a great way to get into tying though.
 
The best way to go about this is tell us what your favorite flies to use are, then the more intelligent people can say which would be the easiest to tie from your list.

Like Patriot said, buggers may be easy, but why tie them if you dont use them?
 
Green Weenie. Easy to tie.
 
I had a book that had to be written in the '50s about how to fish. It had a chapter about fly fishing, including tying flies. It suggested using some found objects.

I remember I made a vice from a pliers and rubber band. I can't remember how the "bobbin" was made, but it definatly involved a rubebr band, too. I would steal tinsel and clip hair of my mother's ugly pink winter coat. Nail polish and a pair of regular paper scisrors completed the scene. I'd use whatever hook I had that looked right enough.

My first flies were, technically, a sort of hair wing streamer. I wish I knew where one was, but I'm sure they've all been thrown out.
 
I was lucky enough to be given a bunch of tying materials and tools and mostly taught myself from books. I think my first pattern was a caddis larva from a book called The Caddis and the Angler. But it has been so long I can't be sure. I highly recommended buying and working through Charlie Craven's Basic Fly Tying. He teaches solid fundamentals and you learn new skills as you move through the patterns. All of the patterns he presents are useful in practice. The first few are the brassie, black beauty, RS2 and GRHE.
 
I agree with FrequentTyer, hope santa brings you Charlies book. But starting with a wooly bugger is a good way to get your fingers and hands trained. Not mention that the larger size helps you get proportions and a handle on how to hold and transfer materials. As for using them, after a dozen of them your be ready to move on to a pheasant tail or green weenie. So consider them growing pains and who really doesn't have a woolly bugger in their flybox??
 
I personally went to a fly shop, told him where and how i fish, and he hooked me up.

im not dirt poor, but money is tight. I didn't want to bang out 25 wooly buggers just to get the hang of tying. id rather start tying stuff i used and hope it catches fish.

i started out on pheasant tails, walts worms, scuds, and hares ears.
 
THIS is a cool thread cool subject............My first one was using a friends , my teachers vise an old Thompson A he still has. It was at the cabin in Bedford , August sometime in 1962 , it was the old local "brown hackle" downwing wet fly , we didn't have feathers to do the wing properly so i cut a piece of plastic from and old "Tiger Bread" bag and used that for the down wing , there was a pattern on it that looked buggy. We went immediately to the pond that is there and caught a pile of bluegills before i stuck it on the brim of a cap , where it was for decades , don't know what ever happened to it , in 1962 who else was using synthetic cut wings for wet flies? LOL THAT'S my story and i'm stickin to it. Thanks Dave the mailman for lighting me up.
 
Gochs
I like your list. The PH was the fly I took my first trout on so I am partial to it. Scuds and HE's are also some of my most productive now. Wooly Buggers are really popular but I have never had success with them and rarely use them. The Green Weenie was actually a possibility. I love that fly and have had even more success with a Pink Weenie. Used that fly in Mnt Lakes in CO this post fall and it kicked A** on those cutbows.
 
Learn thread control first. tie a one material fly till you get it right while learning thread control. Then move to a simple 2 material fly till you have it right. then a 3 material, then add a wing and tail. then hackle. I use a program that teaches you close to 60 patterns, while learning all the methods of tying..
 
If it's truely your first fly...san juan worn and then progress to the green weenie.

If you can master thread control, material positioning and head spacing on those two patterns you'll be ready to move on to more complex patterns.

Dubbing is hard for beginners so I would stick with palmering material first like weenies and buggers.
 
first fly tied?.....unless you did it within the past few years, i dont know how the hell you guys remember that. I remember the first fish i caught on a fly, quill gordon wet on Tobyhanna special regs section. This was after we caught a few using worms on the fly rod...we were just under the special regs wire area and tossing the worms upstream....ha ha...we were probably 16 or so.
 
White pipe cleaner. I died it in coffee and wrapped it around a snelled hook. No thread necessary, and it caught fish on the breeches.
 
First fly tied was a muddler minnow ,haven't tied one or fished one since lol
 
I took a 9 week fly tying course, and we tied 2 flies every week.
For the first class, I had to tie white marabou and black nose dace streamers.
Couldn't wait until week 4 however, when we tied dries - cahill and adams
 
The best advice I could give someone starting out with flytying would be to learn the basics of thread management, proportions, and consistancy. My first pattern ever tyed was a wooly worm and I must have twisted up 3 dozen of them before moving on to the wooly bugger then nymphs, wet fly's, winged wet fly's and so on. I feel it is important to learn the fundamental foundation for all the classic "style's" of fly patterns before moving on to the more exotic and unconventional patterns that we are bombarded with thanks to the internet and print media these days. I've seen some sad looking fly's showcased in magazine articles and web blogs that display a lack of quality workmanship that give a good fly pattern like say the "Comparadun" some immortality in world of fly tying. Don't get me wrong, just because a fly is "ugly" does not mean it's not a fish catcher! What I am referring to is some details that stick out like a hook eye thats crowded or a thread head that's photogragphed in Hi-Def that has a loose end protruding. I'm not a perfectionist but I appreciate a tyer who goes the extra mile to turn out a fly that is durable, proportioned and proven to behave on or in the water. Lessons from an accomplished tyer or TU or a flyshop class will shorten the learning curve dramatically and give a you a foundation to build off of. I also believe that once muscle memory is imparted into the hands (which comes from practice at the vice) you can accomplish anything that you desire no matter what the level of difficulty. Sorry for the rant but I hope this helps you get started and pointed in the right direction.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to All!!

Jeff
 
I would also start with patterns that you can deconstruct to reuse the hooks.

You won't be too happy with your original ties but theres no sense in throwing all those hooks away. (I gave mine to local kids to fish with)
 
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