Three Spiders

[NightWatchman]

They look mighty nice to me Dale !

[redietz]

My hackle is a little bit too long.

If you look at my avatar, it's Pritt's painting of a Dark Partridge (Partridge and Orange) from North Country Flies. Since it's a painting, not a photograph, he could have made the hackle any length he thought was correct. It's considerably longer than on those you tied.

[Fishnkilts]

I have found it helps at times to mark 2mm behind the eye with a Sharpie. Use that mark as a border for your material, as in don't cross that line. Then when your materials are tied at the line you will have room for your head without crowding the eye.

That's a good idea! Sometimes I need to put a thread base down toward the head, and then it gets tapered down to the eye, meaning materials flow down to the head. Especially with Deer and Elk.

Dale

Another thing you can do is start the thread 2mm behind the eye. That seems to work better. Sorry, but I don't know why I didn't mention that earlier.

[Brooktrout52]

Sweet looking spiders.

[letumgo]

These spiders are all beautiful. Tough to pick a favorite.

[Terrestrial12]

Your flies look great. Don't worry too much about hackle length. That's personal preference and as I say...if it looks right to YOU, then its right! As stated above if you look at Pritt's writings that everyone holds as gospel, his length was much longer and much more heavily hackled. He makes no mention of only using pearsalls, strict hackle length, 1 turn or 1.5 or 2 turns to my knowledge. Stripping one side or not...and for God's sake who came up with the idea of using EXACTLY 16 barbuals??? As for your head, the guy who taught me to tie flies taught me to start my thread back one "bodkin width" from the eye as a fast easy reference. Of course bodkin width will vary. Mine is made from 3/32" tungsten rod wich is perfect. If yours is a needle just use 2 "bodkin widths". This keeps you from crowding the eye but is a small enough gap it doesn't look weird if ubdont end up needing the space when finished. And if it bothers you, 2 extra wraps when building your head looks perfect.

[letumgo]

T12 - That is good advice. I need to remember that tip, the next time I am teaching someone to tye. It's little details like that, which make the learning process easier.

Thanks for sharing.

[Oenophileangler]

Thanks for all the replies. As I said in my original post, these flies looked fine to me after tying, but in the photographs, I could see a lot of room for improvement. Macrophotography can be a really nice tool for learning.

I also have to say that I would never have been able to navigate the steep learning curve of tying without youtube. I've been tying less than a year and I'm confident that I can tie a fishable fly of most any trout pattern. You just cannot learn all the little things in a book. Covid prevented in-person learning, which would have really been best.

Dale

[letumgo]

YouTube has been a very useful learning platform for me as well. I’ve learned all kinds of things from there (fly tying, computer upgrades, software tutorials, watercolor painting, car repairs, woodworking, fly casting, fishing knots, etc.). Pretty amazing resource, for the perpetually curious learner/do-it-yourselfer.

[DUBBN]

YouTube has been a very useful learning platform for me as well. I’ve learned all kinds of things from there (fly tying, computer upgrades, software tutorials, watercolor painting, car repairs, woodworking, fly casting, fishing knots, etc.). Pretty amazing resource, for the perpetually curious learner/do-it-yourselfer.

I feel the same about PornHub