When it comes to fly tying materials, particularly in the world of salmon and steelhead flies, its safe to say there’s no feather more prized than jungle cock. Due to their stunning contrast of color and natural durable enamel-like coating, jungle cock eyes (or ‘nails’) have been sought after by fly tyers for over a hundred…
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Search Results for: fly tying
Loon Outdoors UV Infiniti Light
The introduction of UV curable adhesives has allowed anglers to accomplish tasks in seconds that once took hours. From fly tying cements and head finishes, to wader and gear repair, to knot and tackle coatings, there has been a massive introduction of UV curable adhesives over the past several years. However, despite the variety of UV adhesives…
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Custom Dyed Arctic Fox from Waters West
If you’ve ever tuned in for some of our step by step fly tying posts, odds are you’ve noticed we love tying with Arctic fox. Arctic fox (particularly the tail) is an incredible material. It’s easy to handle, extremely durable, and offers incredible movement in the water. Plus, unlike many natural materials, it also holds color…
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Timeless Tips: How to Tie Better Flies Faster
Winter is here, and for many of us that means it’s fly tying season. If you’re looking to restock your boxes for next season, try a few of these tips to fill them up faster! Take Your Time on the First Pattern. Before you hit production mode, take your time on your first fly pattern. Experiment…
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Stacking Tubes
A while back, fly tying great, Stuart Foxall, shared a great step by step with us on one of our all-time favorite patterns for salmon and steelhead, the Hoh Bo Spey. He didn’t stop there however, he also gave us a great post on how to tie the Hoh Bo Spey on a tube as…
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OPST Shank Chuck Tool – Why We Like It
We a tie a lot of trailer-hook style flies on both tubes and shanks at our lodges in Alaska and British Columbia. That’s mostly because salmon, steelhead, and even trout in our neck of the woods typically prefer big flies, and a trailer hook allows us to fish large profile flies with fish-friendly sized hooks….
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Our New Year’s Resolution
That’s right, we’re hopping on the New Years Resolution bandwagon.. Our resolution? Simple. Keep providing you with a daily dose of the most engaging, informative, and/or interesting fly fishing content we can. To do that, we like to check in from time to time in order to get a feel for how we’re doing, and…
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‘Ed Ward Style’ Intruders with Stuart Foxall
We’re in the heat of our king salmon season at Alaska West, which means we’re tying on a lot of intruder-style flies these days. Why? Because by its very nature, the intruder was designed to incorporate minimal materials (for ease of casting) while still presenting a large profile in the water (something that tends to…
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What Vise Do You Tie On?
We love tying flies, and we know many of you do too. However, as much as we love telling you about our favorite fly patterns, tools, and materials in the world of fly tying, sometimes we like to hear from you! Today is one of those days. That’s right, it’s poll time again on the…
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UTC Ultra Thread – One Thread to Rule Them All
There are a staggering number of different fly tying threads available these days. Like anything, each has its advantages, disadvantages, and is subject to a great deal of personal preference. However, when it comes to tying threads, we’ve long been fans of UTC’s Ultra Thread for its versatility and massive color selection – something we find…
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