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"Flytie" correctly flytying for beginners
Flytie, flytieng, flying tying...how do you actually spell it correctly? Flytying, of course!!! Lets' start form the very beginning. I just started myself this great activity with instructor Antonio Rinaldin at the flyfishing club I belong to
- the Flyangling Club in Milan, Italy -
and guess what! I got...hooked!
EXTRA!By the way, if you want to see some pictures of Milan, you can click here!
I made at first a very simple but beautiful "wet" (this I learned later what it means) fly: the Partridge and Orange Spider or simply the Partridge and Orange Fly , a fly which is over 300 years old, does not imitate an actual insect, it's rather an "impressionistic" pattern because it imitates subwater insects - hence the definion "wet" fly - because of its crawling and at the bottom of a river. And this is what I learned. That fish eat insects which are born in the water, grow, raise to the surface, put wings and fly away. All these stages are fish food. A wet fly is thus an insect in the early stages of his life, a dry fly is instead at the last stage. In between all is possible, so an emerging fly is the insect which has jus reached the surface of the water but has not yet wings which it has to form and dry before taking its first flight in the air - a very vulnerable stage of the insect's life which dangerously put itself at the mercy of predators -. Flytying books are today very well made. I found two which help me a lot. Especially, here is my note taken from one of them and which starts form the very beginning of flytying: explaining the hook and how to hold it in the vise.
The flytying books I like are: The Fly Tier's Benchside Reference (Hardcover), by Ted Leeson and Jim Schollmeyer, 1998 A MUST! It's a totally different flytying book in the sense that it is not a how-to make a fly pattern from start to finish, but a reference for techniques, materials and tools. For instance, it can show you how to WEAVE a fly. 
"Flytying Techniques: a full colour guide" by Jacqueline Wakeford, 1981
I like the "old style", no-rush, quiet, careful writing. Mrs Wakefield goes to the essential of the art of - professional! -fly-tying, since the very beginning: understanding a hooks's parts, how to discard badly shaped hooks and how to hold it in the vise properly. Great book!
The Fly-Tying Bible: 100 Deadly Trout and Salmon Flies in Step-by-Step Photographs by Peter Gathercole, 2003.
An excellent, superbly illustrated reference book, 5 stars rating at Amazon. It covers basic techniques, tools, Materials. There are 5 main chapters and each one deals with a main fly type for a total of 100 flies - all with excellent pictures -: dry flies, nymphs and bugs, wet flies, streamers pand hairwings and to round the book off three short final chapters on fish identifying (excellent idea!), a glossary and finally a list of (North America, UK, Australlian and New Zealand) suppliers.
Tying Nymphs, by Randall Kaufmann, 2003 (3rd edition) I like fishing with nymphs. 90% of a trout food is underwater and nymphs imitate that food. The author is an established flytier and you can notice it in every page you read. Beautiful and clear pictures as well. CHECK!Now, I think that there is a quite interesting topic (flytying with "non-traditional" systems) which deserves more attention and if you would like to explore "vertical hook systems" and "wowen-" and "crochet-work" flies you can perhaps go here. Flytying at the Flyangling Club Milano (traditional system)
Instructor Antonio Rinaldin showing the making of a Hare's ear Nymph. 
Dubbing! That means that we use some hare's hair or any other kind of hairy stuff to wrap around the cotton thread in order to make the body of the insect. This is achieved by simply wrapping the - now "hairy" thread - around the hook. When you flytie, you can decide weather to make the dubbing more thight or "fluffy". The latter can be done by using a proper tool in the shape of a "V" (see drawing below, by Stonfo Company) or sometimes as "double T" shape.
Later on, the same evening, we learned how flytie a March Brown Spider, another nymph, or insect leaving underwater... From flytie to the homepage
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