Fly tying fishing For Beginners - How to Cement and Finish a Completed Fly Head Using a Feather
As far as hobbies go, Fly Tying Fishing is not one that should be attempted by the impatient or easily angered, although neither is fly tying fishing. When you finally get fed up enough with the ridiculous prices that fishing stores are asking for flies and decide to take up the hobby yourself you can expect to be told to buy the very best fly tying equipment available. Do not be fooled, the only real equipment you need for fly tying is a good vice and a better pair of scissors. I have been fly tying for 15 years, one of the very best tricks I learned throughout my experience as a fly tyer and fisherman is a fly is only as good as the knot you start with and the knot you finish with.
Fly Tying Fishing 1
When you start a fly always cover the hook stem completely making sure to double up on the back of the stem near the curve. When finishing, always make sure give yourself enough room to tie it off using a finishing knot. This is especially true for the novice fly tyers, you will want to add dubbing, feathers and hair to the whole stem but you need to make sure you don't cover the eye of the hook.
Your finishing knot should be a simple over under knot, similar to a clove hitch or a doubled overhand knot. Instead of buying a finishing knot tool that they sell in fly fishing product stores, take a large feather (I have found turkey to be the best), and cut off the last three inches of its base. Where the feather would have connected with the birds flesh there should be a small hole.
Fly Tying Fishing 2
That small hole should be inserted around the eye of the fly. Take your bobbin and form the finishing knot around the feather base. Once you have made the knot, slide the knot down the feather until it comes off onto the fly hook stem, then pull to tighten. Put one drop of finishing cement into the hole on the base of the feather and insert the feather onto the eye of the hook again. Take a small piece of feather and insert it into the eye of the hook to clear out the excess cement inside the eye. This small trick will save you time and agitation so that you wont have as many flies "die on the vise."
