What a difference a week makes! Having gone from settled sunny weather, we’ve now descended into cooler days with some sweet, sweet rain. The rain dance obviously did the trick, and trust me, the rivers and wildlife will be thankful for this come the summer.

With some time spent indoors this week, I’d like to offer up an introspection on Fly Tying and why I think it’s important.

Now, I appreciate not everyone fly fishes, or for that matter, ties flies, and that’s OK, but casting a lens on tying your own flies does offer a different perspective of looking at the world and especially our rivers.

So, what is Fly Tying?

Fly tying, put simply, is the craft of creating your own artificial flies to use whilst fly fishing - Remember the mention of Wet & Dry Flies a while back? It’s part craft, part chaos, and part existential crisis - especially when you spend an hour meticulously creating a perfect microscopic masterpiece, only to have a fish reject it in favour of something else that you can’t even see on the water! In short, fly tying is equal parts art, science, obsession, and creativity! But once you start, there’s no going back. You’ll never look at a feather or the middle aisle in Lidl the same way again!

Learning to tie flies, to me, goes hand in hand with the actual fishing. It’s one of those slippery undertakings that starts off feeling like an out-of-the-ordinary hobby (like discovering crafting!). You tell yourself you’re doing it to save money (you won’t), or to keep your hands busy during the off-season (they’ll be stuck together and covered in glitter before long!), but what it becomes is a quiet doorway towards a deeper, richer relationship with your local reservoir or river.

And it’s our Dartmoor rivers, notably the Teign, that have shaped and changed how I think about creating new patterns - It’s time to get serious…

The Teign isn’t a loud or boastful river, it’s not the longest or widest in Devon or the Southwest. The moment you meet, it doesn’t shout at you to tell you its secrets, and it’s not particularly showy or especially generous at a first glance. And as a fly fisher, it’s not a place where you stroll up with a box of the latest gaudy flies, cast one out and start hauling in massive stocked fish like some catalogue model!

*That is, unless you happen to be Terry (not-Terry) - Like David Bowie, he’s impossible to take a bad photo of! And before you ask, yes, he’s always pinching my flies!*

The Teign makes you work for it. She makes you see and take notice. And it turns out that learning to tie your own flies is one of the best ways to start seeing things through her eyes!

But, back to the start.

When I first began fly tying (age 9!), I was a bit like a toddler with a box of crayons (I still did enjoy crayons, although I was past eating them at this point in my childhood). I was enthusiastic, quizzical, and soon I had saved up some pocket money to purchase a basic fly-tying vice with some materials dragged out of the dusty recesses of a sea fishing shop near where I lived.

When I realised that a hackle was simply a feather wrapped around a hook, my tiny mind was well and truly blown!

Image - © Orvis fly fishing

I was still in single-digit years, yet able to breathe life into metal and some feathers, something Dr Frankenstein didn’t even achieve until his mid-twenties! At this formative stage, I was convinced I was creating my own personal masterpieces whilst learning some core fly-tying skills. I copied patterns from books and old copies of Trout & Salmon magazines with varying degrees of accuracy, but all unified through a lack of any fish-attracting qualities!

So, how did things improve?

Getting better and making better flies was linked to when I started noticing and paying attention to nature. And this happened without a conscious meaning to - something just shifted in how I looked and watched the things around me whenever I was out fly fishing.

No longer was I just watching for rising fish or looking upstream in the hope that there was an easier casting spot. I was peering down at the surface film of the water, squinting at trapped midges, lifting stones to see what nymphs crawled out, and snatching spinners (adult flies that have hatched from the water) mid air to inspect in my open hand with the kind of intensity usually reserved for rare 50 pence pieces or a suspicious looking mushroom!

Because when you tie your own flies, you start to really care about the small things.

That emerging olive nymph, the way an upwinged fly perches on top of the water to air its wings before flying off. And in this focused introspection, you find yourself wondering if you’ve got the right amount of dubbing* on your fly to match the real insect’s shape and profile.

*Dubbing is a fly-tying technique used to make the body of flies. It involves spinning a fibrous fur (either natural or synthetic) that’s applied to thread (like spinning wool) and wrapped around the hook to form the body of a fly.

Image - © Orvis fly fishing

This trend continues - You’ll have those late evenings out on the river where trout are clearly feeding on something, but have refused every suitable size 14 creation in your fly box! (The size of the fly - In fly fishing, the higher the number, the smaller the hook!)

It’s moments like these that make you go home obsessing over whether a slimmer profile, a smaller hook or a sparser hackle might have made a difference. What once felt like minuscule details suddenly become massive, game-changing revelations.

To me personally, this is where tying flies ceases to be just a craft and starts becoming a form of communion!

Simply put, fly tying brings you closer to the places you fish because it makes you pay attention.

Reflection.

The river begins to unfold in ways you would have never seen before or expected. You start to notice how the hatching of certain insects shifts slightly with the changing light and the time of year. How the same section of river behaves depending on whether it’s in full shade or full sun. One afternoon you’ll see a cloud of olives over a glide where the week before there was nothing, and then the next week, you’ll notice how a fish you’ve spotted earlier in your travels holds that bit deeper and further back when the water has risen just a half-inch after rain.

Within all of this, you begin to understand that the Teign isn’t static - it’s living, breathing and ever-changing.

All of these small observations aren’t dramatic, seismic shifts. They’re quiet shuffles in nature’s game. And tying your own flies teaches you to be someone who notices these movements whilst keeping the overall picture perfectly framed.

Creation.

And then there’s the creative part. Sitting at the fly tying vice with tools, fur and feathers, trying to improve upon, or better replicate what you’ve seen on the river earlier that day. To me, this is a kind of ritual.

Sometimes it can be frustrating getting what’s in your head onto a hook - your thread snaps, the proportions of the fly aren’t quite right, or you’ve somehow realised you’ve had three pints, been chatting to those around you and made absolutely nothing!

But other times, it just flows. You sit back, look at the fly you’ve just tied, and think: That’s it!

*Anywhere is suitable for fly tying with the right gear - Even the Globe Inn, Chagford!*

Appreciation.

And then you get to test it. That’s the best part - you become a true pioneer!

You tie something that no one’s named, based on something only you have noticed. And then, when a fish instinctively rises to the fly as it drifts silently past, you feel something stir deep in your chest. Pride, definitely - That scotch egg from earlier, maybe? - Joy, absolutely - but also a quiet kind of gratitude and thanks. Because it means you’ve taken the time to learn to speak just a little of our river’s language.

When fly fishing, the Teign will never spell things out for you. But if you learn, and if you listen carefully enough, she’ll let you in on a few of her secrets. And tying flies serves as your way of writing back.

*The fly box - 80% of these have been inspired by noticing and incorporating ‘the small stuff! - The rest are the ones I give to Terry!*

See, I did warn you that it would get serious for a bit – sometimes it just has to!

But now, back to something a little more hands-on and relaxing. After writing this, I’m thinking of more regularly taking the fly tying bits up to the Globe Inn in Chagford throughout this season. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, whether you're keen to learn more or just fancy giving it a try, let me know – it'd be great to get a few of us together, share some ideas and for me to open the door to this wonderful facet of fly fishing.

My flies are undone!