When Finishing off a palmer hackle at the eye of the hook, wrap an extra turn of hackle. Back off that turn and strip off the barbs. Then wrap the bare stem back and whip finish. This gives you a "clean" area to tie off and keeps those arrant barbs from sticking out in front of the hook eye. Tony Spezio
When tying a soft hackle or dry fly, tie in the tail then tie in the hackle. Finish the body and thorax. Advance the thread to the eye. Wrap the hackle and tie off with a whip finish. No big lump where you would normally tie in the hackle. It produces a nice small head when finished. Tony Spezio
When wrapping lead on a hook shank, keep the spool of lead wire in your hand. Use your thumbnail to hold the lead wire against the hook shank to start it. Wrap the lead right from the spool. When finished wrapping, give the spool a tug against the wire at the hook shank. The wire will break off tapered against the shank. No wasted wire and no scissors needed to cut it. The tapered end is perfect for starting the next wrap. Tony Spezio
Cut the finger out of an old rubber glove and slip it over the end of your thread bobbin. When finishing a fly and you have materials such as hackle right up to the head, pull the finger up the bobbin and thread and over the hook eye then up to cover the material. This will fold the material back out of the way while you whip finish the head. Before cutting the thread, pull the finger tip back over the hook eye and back down the thread onto the bobbin. The heavier Playtex type kitchen gloves work the best for this Bruce Mathews
Start to learn to dub bodies and blend colors by cutting up pieces of polypro yarn into about 1/4 inch pieces and blending it into usable dubbing by teasing between your fingers to get all the fibers mixed. When you do this you will find that the prepared stuff will be much easier to use than any dubbing you ever worked with. Light and dark colors can be mixed to get nice natural looking blends. It can be rolled onto a single waxed thread or laid out as a mat and made up into a twisted rope. The resulting dubbed body will be very spikey because the crinkled nature of the material will make the fibers interlock. After winding it can be trimmed down to whatever degree of smoothness you need. Just trim the top and you have an instant shrimp. Gills and nymphs are also a snap with this process.
Ray Kunz
Keep some Q-tips (cotton swabs) handy at the bench. If you get a little sloppy with the head cement, just touch the hook eye with the swab and it sucks the cement out and leaves an open eye. Unknown
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