Cap That Bottle

Cap that head cement bottle after each use. You'll be glad you did!

A simple fix.

Magnets

Keep some sort of telescoping magnet tool around your tying area to pick up those stray hooks that land on the floor. Trust me, you will drop hooks or your vise will spit one out.

You can also use business card sized magnetic sheet to stick on your tying bench or pedestal. Its a great place to hold hooks for the flies you are tying at the moment.

Even magnetic tape will work as pointed out in the comment below by Johnny Utah

Thanks for looking!

Simple Dropper Loop

Some folks aren't too comfortable tying a dropper directly to the bend of the hook. Adding one in before tying you fly might be the way to go. Just tie in a simple mono loop to the top of the hook as shown below and then complete the fly per the recipe.

As always, thanks for looking.

Olive Nymph

i have been tying up these Olive Nymphs for a fly swap. Here is a simple step by step on how to tie them.

Install a bead and attach olive tying thread.

Tie on a few coq de leon feather barbs for the tail and return the tying thread to behind the bead.

Take a piece of brassie sized black ultra wire and a piece of midge size chartreuse tubing and inert the ends of both into the open end of the bead. By inserting both ends into the open end of the bead, this will ensure that the body will be smooth and not show any bumps which would have occurred if I tied these material in at the bend of the hook.

While stretching the tubing and holing the wire, wrap these materials back to the bend of the hook and maintain a smooth under body.

Grasp both materials and wrap a neat body forward to behind the bead. it will be required to stretch the tubing while wrapping forward. Trim the materials as shown.

At this point its time to decide if you want to coat the body with one of many brands of UV cured goos. The one above was covered with Diamond Hard Resin.

Now its time to dub a thorax with your favorite dubbing. On this one I used some brown olive Free Range wet fly dubbing from Kieth Barton at Singlebarbed.com.

Whip finish or half hitch the tying thread and clip it off. With a dubbing picker/brush, tease out some fibers in the thorax for a buggy look.

Recipe

Hook: your favorite style in your favorite sizes

Thread: color to match

Tail: Coq de Leon Feather fibers (grizzly will work just fine)

Body: brassie size wire and midge size stretch tubing (v-rib, d-rib, body glass etc will also work)

Thorax: your favorite dubbing (natural or synthetic)

Tying Note

The above method of tying is simply a guide and if you don't have the exact materials I used, please feel free to substitute any one of them to tie the nymph above. There are so many tying materials the could have been used, I just pick out some I Had on hand at the moment. Experiment. I dont want you tying how I tie. Try out different materials. Be creative.

Dubbing reference: http://www.singlebarbed.biz/NYMPH-DUBBING_c4.htm

As always, thanks for looking!

CDC Feathers: What You Need to Know

Here is a great web page for identifying, understanding and tying with CDC feathers.

http://globalflyfisher.com/tiebetter/tying-with-cdc/

Here is another great web page on the CDC & Elk and a family of flies,

http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/cdcelk/

Tandem Streamer Fly Tutorial

Remember, this is ONE way of tying a tandem hook. There are other ways but this is a very good tutorial to get started with.

Ultra Wire Diameters

I don't know if it is of great importance, but I like to know the sizes of things so I  decided to measure Ultra Wire. I measured with a pair of digital calipers for the following sizes "XSMALL", "SMALL", "BRASSIE" & "MEDIUM". See the chart below.

The chart below has the weight of  each wire gauge and from what I see, copper wire simply does NOT add significant weight to flies.