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Several of my friends, Ernie included, warned me about how addicting fly fishing can be. I bought my first rod in June with the intent of doing some trout fishing and I was quickly hooked and also enjoying catching blue gills and bass in the local ponds. For those following my posts in the Fishing Expeditions section, I’ve now caught trout every month of the year since starting. In addition, I’ve now caught trout in MT, PA, MD, TN, WV, NY, CO & UT. I already own 2 rods and will be getting 2 more in the coming months. I’m genuinely enjoying the journey of learning a new art.
Last night I took the next step to full on addiction. I had been talking about possibly trying to tie a few basic flies and my wife got me a kit from Orvis this past Christmas. I finally set up a tying station and set out to play around a bit with the kit.
Tying flies was not completely foreign to me since I tied teasers for striped bass many, many years ago, but that didn’t help me when it comes to dealing with small flies and very fine threads and materials. I have a nicer vise than the Orvis kit but the rest of the tools in the kit were better than what I had. The Orvis kit also does a nice job of giving basic patterns and all of the supplies nicely labeled to tie each fly, along with a DVD to walk you through step by step instructions for each fly.
I started out with a simple zebra midge, one of the patterns I use a lot and what lead me to want to try tying to begin with. After one or two mistakes, I learned quickly and was able to produce a midge that would be fishable for sure, although not in a size I would normally fish. Orvis teaches the midge on a size 14 hook and I fish 18’s and 20’s. I doubt I’ll be able to do those without a magnifier, which should arrive here on Thursday. Here’s a couple of my creations. The top 2 are right from the Orvis kit and the bottom one is a midge that I added a collar to
I’ve enjoyed the past two nights so much that I’ve already ordered $300 worth of supplies to do a bunch more patterns that I use regularly. Yup, I’m addicted.
Last edited by Paul Naj (Feb-11-20 11:31PM)
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Nice. Same thing happened to me this past summer/fall with fish taxidermy. Several hundred dollars into a old hobby that is also an art..............currently working on a NSH.
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Nice set up!
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I told you so....
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Curly wrote:
Nice. Same thing happened to me this past summer/fall with fish taxidermy. Several hundred dollars into a old hobby that is also an art..............currently working on a NSH.
Cool! Please don’t tell me it’s easy to learn. I want to continue to believe it’s something you need years of training and special equipment to do. The last thing I need is another hobby. :p
Can’t wait to see the snakehead.
Ernie wrote:
I told you so....
Yes you did.
drxfish wrote:
Nice set up!
Thanks. There’s a definite possibility this obsession morphs over to a rod for SMB and flies for the upper Potomac.
Last edited by Paul Naj (Feb-12-20 7:26AM)
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Paul Naj wrote:
Thanks. There’s a definite possibility this obsession morphs over to a rod for SMB and flies for the upper Potomac.
You know you are obsessed when you built the rod for the SMB
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I saw him in action today at the Rapidan TU show...he's more than hooked!
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Ernie wrote:
I saw him in action today at the Rapidan TU show...he's more than hooked!
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
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Next pix of the rod you built ....
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hookup wrote:
Next pix of the rod you built ....
I suppose the phase never say never applies here, but for now, no plans to do any rod building. I used to build all of my saltwater rods because there was simply lack of good quality rods around except for custom made. Today, there are so many great production rods on the market at various price points that I no longer feel the need to build.
Case in point. I went to the Orvis store today to buy socks. I left with this.
That’s a true story. The new Recon rods came in today and I was looking for a 7 to 7.5 ft 3 WT for brook trout in small streams. 5 minutes in the parking lot casting this rod and my decision was made.
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Nice rod. Ouch.
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bwahahaha
you got it bad
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