Don Moroz has the right idea, why not make money doing what you love to do.
Don has taken one of his hobbies, fly tying and turned it into a work from home idea for making money.
Great job Don.
I am a bit of a fly fishing nut and usually tie my own flies. I have never had any desire to make my living tying flies. I much prefer to tie them and then use them myself, although they do make great gifts.
I went to the Moncton Market to see if I could find a couple of friends that usually have a booth there. My friends weren’t setup that day but I was happy to turn around a corner and see Don’s booth setup.
Don Moroz, owner of Don’s Fly Box
I talked with Don for a few minutes before being dragged off by my wife to look at some things I had absolutely no interest in but it was great talking to Don.
Next time you drop into the Moncton Market check out Don’s Fly Box booth.
Maybe you can even buy your wife a set of new earrings.
If you’re looking to maybe start tying your very own flies be sure to checkout Amazon for a few great books on Fly Tying Basics.
Was this winter longer than most? It sure seemed that way to me. Maybe it’s because I bought a treadmill so I could keep walking through the winter. I didn’t get out side much at all. Ahhh maybe that’s cabin fever. Guess I will have to travel south next winter.
I’ve been pretty busy with my online business all winter and even took on a couple of extra web design jobs to help my son get through college this year. It will be good to see him get a trade. He seems to be really enjoying it and is meeting his new temporary boss this afternoon. Very proud of him.
So with all that I have been doing this winter I still haven’t tied a single fly yet, but I have been looking at some I want to tie but I want to tie some that will work for trout, bass and pickerel, maybe even for Atlantic salmon.
One I found this morning on Youtube looks promising and is easy to tie.
It’s a leech pattern streamer, like a woolly bugger, that only uses a few items. Some maribou in what ever colour suites you, depending on the colour of leeches where you live. A little orange yarn to form an egg and some wire to weight the hook and of course some thread and to finish it a some hackle. That’s it.
The itch to get out on the water is getting stronger each passing day and I’m finding it hard to concentrate on working. I’m just sitting here in a dazzle staring out the my office window into our snow covered backyard wishing I was out fishing.
Then I started thinking about tying some flies for the up coming fishing season but instead went looking online for some fly fishing related sites and that’s when I found Hatchesmagazine.comI spent the next few hours reading articles, watched a couple of awesome videos. The first was about brown trout and mayflies, very cool. The second was about musky fishing on the fly, something I have yet to try, maybe this year.
I subscribed to HatchesMagazine’s newsletter so I can keep up with what’s new there.
I didn’t find Hatches Magazine directly. I was on a FlyTyingForum.com checking out flies I might like to try my hand at tying and saw their link and then followed it.
Great kit for beginners All the tools and materials you need to learn how to tie jig flies Comes with high quality tools, vise, hooks, and tying materials Also includes instructional DVD featuring Lefty Kreh Let the experts at White River Fly Shop help you enjoy the satisfaction of catching a fish on a fly of your own creation. The Jig Tying Kit from White River Fly Shop includes everything you need to learn how to tie your favorite jig flies. With all the high quality tools, vise, hooks, and tying materials needed to make your introduction to jig tying simple and enjoyable, this premium kit also includes an instructional DVD featuring Lefty Kreh. Packed with carefully selected supplies, this kit will make your introduction to jig tying enjoyable. Great kit for beginners All the tools and materials you need to learn how to tie jig flies Comes with high quality tools, vise, hooks, and tying materials Also includes instructional DVD featuring Lefty Kreh Let the experts at White River Fly Shop
Catching smallmouth bass on the fly rod is a blast, especially when I’m using some of my bass popper flies.
Bass popper flies are easy to fish, they’re fun and the strikes are quite often very explosive and that’s why I like using poppers.
Here is a video I found on Youtube that shows how to tie a popper.
Crease Fly Bass Popper – PA Fly Tying Lessons
Crease flies were originated by Capt Joe Blados for stripers and blues.
Scaled down, these flies are an effective alternative to loud poppers when largemouth and smallmouth are skittish but still taking surface patterns. Crease flies wiggle and swirl when stripped and this action often drives bass crazy.
Watch this video to see how to tie a very simple, effective, and durable surface pattern for smallmouth and largemouth bass fishing.
I’m always looking for flies I can fish for multiple species on and the Krystowski Minnow looks like it will definitely do the job. I am going to give this fly a try for some smallmouth bass and chain pickerel next year and see what kind of action I get.
I will start by tying it as it is in the video and then I also want to change a couple of colours to red and white as I have a great amount of luck using flies and lures with those colours.
Tying The Krystowski Minnow
Tying The Krystowski Minnow
The Story Behind The Krystowski Minnow
“The Krystowski Minnow is one of my early original fly designs. I began tying this fly long before I was part of the fly fishing industry and a contract fly designer. It was at a point in my life when I had very limited time to spend behind a vise and, more influentially, when I had very little money to spend on tying material. I needed an all-purpose baitfish streamer that I could use for every occasion. I could not afford to have multiple fly boxes for every species of fish, but I was fishing everywhere and often. I needed a fly for river smallmouth, farm pond largemouth, Spring steelhead, Fall browns, wiper, walleye and northern pike. If I had a handful of Krystowski Minnows in my box I was all set. The fly needed to be cheap to tie, fast to tie and never fall apart…even after being chewed on by northern pike. I have old fishing buddies back in my home town who fish this fly over everything else. The fly is named after a family in northern Ohio who owned a small bass pond and would let me fish and invite me in for dinner. The earliest prototypes of this fly were fished in their pond” — Jay Zimmerman (Colorado Fly Fishing Reports )
Krystowski Minnow Tying Instructions
Hook: Gamakatsu B10S #2
Thread: Black 6/0 UNI-Thread
Wing: (Bottom) White Icelandic Sheep Hair, (Middle) Chartreuse Icelandic Sheep Hair, (Top) Black Icelandic Sheep Hair.
Eye: Extra Small White Painted Lead Eyes
Step 1 : Begin with Gamakatsu B10S #2 hook. Create a ¼ inch thread base of black 6/0 UNI-Thread behind the hook eye.
Step 2 : Tie in a clump of white Icelandic Sheep to “bottom” of hook shank.
Step 3 : Tie in a clump of chartreuse Icelandic Sheep on “top” side of hook shank.
Step 4 : Securely mount ex-small white painted lead dumbbell eyes to “bottom” of hook shank. It is important that you wait until this point to tie in the lead eyes. Because the eyes are ex-small (this fly fishes best as a light-weight streamer) it is crucial there be distance between the arbor of the lead eyes and the hook shank. This ensures the fly swims hook point up.
Step 5 : Tie in a clump of black Icelandic Sheep on top. Be sure to leave several inches of the black sheep hair extending out past the hook eye.
Step 6 : Take the black sheep hair clump that you left extending past the hook eye and part it evenly. Be sure to leave the thread at the rear of the fly head.
Step 7 : Wrap each piece of the black sheep hair back separately (being sure to cross between the lead eyes) and tie off and trim.
Step 8 : Wrap black tying thread thoroughly over entire head of fly, being sure to secure any loose sheep hair and give the entire head an overall tightening. Then whip finish twice for durability and trim thread.
Step 9 : Cut fly down to 2 ½ inches long (trim up the end nice and tapered). Then apply multiple coats of head cement over entire head, to include the painted lead eyes. I prefer at least five coats of Hard-as-Hull.
The Adams dry fly is meant to sit on the water’s surface so it’s important to get the wing, hackle and tail proportions just right.
The tail should be the length of the hook shank and the hackle should be one and half times the gap of the hook. Also the wing should be about 20% longer than the hackle. Get this right and it should sit pretty for the fish.
It’s always advisable to use stiff hackle when making a dry fly like the Adams as it will help to keep it floating higher on the water’s surface.
?I enjoy using the Adams on most of the trout streams and brooks here in New Brunswick. I find that I have great luck with dry flies that are made using brown hackles like the colour in this fly.
David is an old style guy who has been tying flies longer than most. I enjoy watching him and thought it would be good to use David’s videos as I get quite camera shy for some reason I have never figured out. Watch David tie a chironomidae or as David calls them, ‘Buzzers’.
You won’t need much for materials:
Hook Buzzer 10, 12, 14.
Body Black tying thread.
Thorax Black tying thread.
Rib Silver wire.
Take your time and do a good job. Your Buzzer should produce for a long time now, have fun on the water.
Are you amazed at how well a good artificial trout fly holds up and attracts trout? It is pretty cool and I was certainly impressed the first time I did any fly fishing for trout.
Have you ever tied a trout fly or any fly for that matter? If you haven’t you are missing out on an awesome hobby to go right along with your fishing hobby.
Ha, after I tied my first trout fly and actually catch trout with it I started tying my own trout flies. I also put away my spinning rod for a couple of years.
Tying flies for your fly fishing trips is pretty easy, if you start with simple but effective trout flies. I started with a couple of dry flies that only had a few items and that we of course simple to tie.
It’s been so long ago I don’t actually remember what the name of that trout fly was but I do remember what I tied it using.
a mustad hook about size 12.
black thread, right from my wife’s sowing kit.
a couple of brown hen hackle, very common colour for dry flies.
brown fur or yarn
a few fibres from the brown hackle for the tail of the trout fly
That was it, a very simple fly to tie and it stayed on the top of the water where I wanted it to and it caught lots of brook trout.
I have been fly fishing salmon and other big species of fish for 30 years or more and I always tend to start with a big goofy looking top water fly but the truth is I have caught far more large fish on smaller flies, like I use on small streams and brooks for brook trout. I guess I always think big flies catch big fish so I always give them the first shot.
Heck I remember a particular day that I was the only one hooking Atlantic salmon, on almost every cast I made. The guys around the pool started asking me what I was using after the third or fourth hook up. Of course I played the guessing game for a while. Then I gave in and shared two of my flies with my fly fishing buddies.
I lost a couple of those flies, one landed way up a tree I wasn’t ready to climb, another I broke the hook on a big rock that kept getting in the way of my back cast and a couple, well the salmon liked them so much they kept them when they got away.
Before long I was down to my last fly, maybe I should have kept them secret. Anyways we decided to drive back to the closest town that had a fly shop, as I didn’t bother bringing my fly tying kit with me on that day. DUH!!
We got back to town, a 30 mile trip, and I purchased a handful as did my two fishing buddies and we headed back up to our camp site for lunch and then back to the salmon pool. That’s a weekend I will not soon forget.
My point is that small flies will some times catch fish that aren’t looking at big flies. And sharing with friends is a good thing. I would much rather have everyone having a good time as long as I am catching fish.
It looked like a green machine, made of brown deer hair and tied on a hook between #12 and #16, so it’s not very big at all. It had no hackle, just the brown deer hair but it worked like I have never seen a fly work on Atlantic salmon.
Note: The day we fished with this little deer hair bug fly it was hot and had been hot for a week or so. The water level was extremely low and the water temperature was much higher than normal for that time of year.
Fly fishing for trout and salmon is great fun and I have been doing that for 30 years or so but I don’t like to stop there when it comes to fly fishing. Chain pickerel and smallmouth bass love to smash big bugs too. If you haven’t tried fly fishing for pickerel, pike and bass then you are missing out on an awesome experience. Once that you will want to have over and over just like I do.
This year my fishing buddy Jamie is going to experience fly fishing for New Brunswick’s chain pickerel and smallmouth bass and I guarantee you that he will be dreaming about how much fun it is. Jamie and I been fishing together for a couple of years now and he’s never given it a try. He does fly fish for trout but has yet to experience what a pickerel or a big bass can do for one’s fly fishing experience.
The video above is an example of how you can create a big bug that these pickerel and bass love to annihilate. It’s a very basic video but really it’s all you need to know. Once you have the deer hair bug all tied up you can then shape it into whatever you want to throw. I love through mice a bass and pickerel and I don’t even need to put those little eyes and ears to get the job done. The fish don’t seem to mind a bare bug at all.
You don’t need much for fly tying materials to tie up a bass bug. Just need a hook, thread, deer or elk hair, a hair stacker and some head cement to secure the thread and make the head shiny.
Hooks: Bass Bug Hook in what ever size you want. I usually go big or stay home.
Thread: I keep a dozen or so colours and use the colour that matches the fly.
Deer Hair: I use deer hair that has been died various colours so that I can tie my flies in the colours I prefer. But I do like the nature colour of deer hair.
Hair Stacker: A hair stacker will help you to get the butt ends of the hairs to all line up for easier spinning on the hook.
Head Cement: This is what you use to secure the thread to your fly. Usually used on the head of the fly.
Go ahead, give fly fishing for bass and pickerel a try and I am sure you will be tying a lot more flies and having an entirely new fly fishing experience. Enjoy
Don Moroz has the right idea, why not make money doing what you love to do.
The itch to get out on the water is getting stronger each passing day and I’m finding it hard to concentrate on working. I’m just sitting here in a dazzle staring out the my office window into our snow covered backyard wishing I was out fishing.
