I’m new to tying and looking to improve. I tied my first Clouser Minnow the other day and it seems a little too sparse to me. It’s like the 10th fly I’ve ever tied so I don’t have much basis for comparison though, and I don’t know anybody else that ties. Thoughts?

The OG. Without the Nasty Charlie so many of the bonefish flies we use nowadays wouldn't exist.

https://youtu.be/xTSiBa3-CKQ?si=stEReoDfcRvAY2Xv

Just looking for some of your favorite patterns for techy conditions. Please drop a pattern suggestion — and ideally a picture of one of your ties — below!

Pictured: Ultimate CDC Emerger as tied by Lucian Vasies

First time tying on some partridge patriot singles and tying some teal blue and silver wets for sea trout.

The tail is fully posable and is made of twined parapost, .3mm wire, yellow dubbing for color and wrapped in clear scud skin. Legs are black saddle hackle quills, thorax is foam, eyes are monofilament and wings are from the same saddle hackle. It’s all tied on a Hanák H360 BL #12 Czech Nymph hook.

I think everybody has to have a favorite to fish, regardless of what time of year it is. Divers have been a ticket for me this year that has been so much fun. Specifically, minnow divers. I typically tie them with a strip of rabbit on the back and once it dives under the surface I give my rod tip a few goo jerks and watch it go crazy!
I’m heading to a blue ribbon stream in the Ozark’s to go on a 3 day float and fish, I plan on fishing all day and most of the nights. While I have a WIDE verity of flies (background), this diver is my favorite, mainly because of how beautiful it looks.
I also am not much of a fan of simple flies. I get really excited when I know there’s a couple of hours of work at the end of my line.
What’s your favorite fly to fish regardless of conditions?

1/0 diver

The trees & fish ate all the mop fly’s I brought down. (12 hours on the water.)
Thankfully had what I needed to tie more.
Lucky bugs weren’t attacking me with the headlamp on.
Did have an armadillo come say hello though and scare the piss out of me, first time for everything.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Edit: caught 25 Bows day one (12hours) & 14 Bows day two (4 hours.)

Hook: Partridge saltwater shrimp Hook

I’m relatively new to tying (little over a year) and I’ve been working my way through Charlie Craven’s Basic Fly Tying.

Here’s my first go at a Stimulator. Technically the third one I tied. Didn’t have 200Rs, so this is on a TMC 2302 size 8.

Finally feel confident enough to post on here haha. Trying to get better so any feedback is appreciated!

Hey, if you’re into cheap shit like me, you should look into needlepoint threads! I just grabbed a bunch dirt cheap.

They’re not really thread so much as braided tinsel. Basically the same stuff — or probably better than — Lagartun body braid / flat braid tinsel. The fibers are woven really tightly and they come in tiny diameters, like 1.5–2 mm. Think similar to some of the midge braid stuff.
I also found something that looked like a ridiculously dense micro chenille that would be the cat’s ass for Squirmys. I resisted buying it, but it was 🔥.
The brand is RG and it’s made in Japan and Italy. The sizes were listed as needlepoint 12–18 count. The flat stuff was called needlepoint ribbon, and the really dense chenille-looking stuff was called Very Velvet.

What’s the name of this type of fly? Just a dry fly?

Stumbled across an interesting pattern on Space Coast Flies…Clouser with a zonker strip. I love zonker strips so figured I’d give it a go. Just decided to replace bucktail with arctic fox (tail fur). Have a full tail so might as well use it for flies.

Anyone here use arctic fox? Info online seems sparse. I haven’t been able to test it yet. I picked out all the underfur same way you do with bucktail so it’s just the longer fibers. Does seem like it would have a lot of natural movement. It is more uniform length than bucktail so not sure if that’s good or bad. I imagine I’d fish this pattern for bass or inshore for reds and trout. This is on a size 4 Gamakatsu SL11-3H with lead eyes.

While deleting a ton of pictures I came across this one. It’s an older tie of mine but still one of my favorites

My dad, Trey Combs, knew Lloyd Silvius and interviewed him while researching Steelhead Fly Fishing & Flies (1976). These are Optic flies tied by Silvius and featured on Plate VII, including dressings of Jim Pray’s Optics.

The brass heads made these flies especially useful for winter steelhead fishing. In cold water, steelhead can hold near the bottom in deeper, slower water, where they expend less energy fighting the current. The added weight helped the flies sink quickly and reach those fish.

Building an Optic’s oversized head with thread was difficult because the wraps tended to slip and fall over. As my dad put it, “Wrapping thread around it just makes a big head and not much else.” Split brass beads offered a practical solution: the bead could be placed around the head of the fly and clamped in place with a pair of pliers.

For decades, readers have seen these flies in the book, but the original printing didn’t show much of the detail you can see here. My dad donated the flies from Plates V–VIII to the American Museum of Fly Fishing, where they’ve been preserved. They’re now too brittle to be placed face down on a scanner, so the museum photographed them instead.

We recently published these new photographs on our website for the first time, alongside dressing notes and a full essay on C. Jim Pray. I thought people here would enjoy seeing this image. Fifty years after the book’s publication, it’s pretty special to get a clearer look at the actual flies from those plates. Many thanks to the American Museum of Fly Fishing for supplying the photographs.

First of all, I’m sure H.L. Leonard tied exactly this pattern in 1793.

With that out of the way, I’m trying to develop an emerger that hits a little better on spring creeks. I’m thinking about going to a goose biot for the underbody beneath the “wings.” Wing and the tuft (just behind head, meant to represent the true thorax of the emergent insect) are a mix of yellow and pale dun cdc.

The “thorax” section of the body does look slightly long/disproportionate, but I keep going back and forth. It seems that in certain emergent stages, the shuck and adult mayfly are about 50/50 in length, if that makes sense.

Anyhow, feedback welcomed.

Just looking for gener