Fly Tying Class Part #1: Hook Mounting, Attaching Thread & Whip Finishing

Producer: Fly Fish Food

This is the first in a series of fly tying classes for beginners. It includes the basics of Hook Mounting, Attaching Thread & Whip Finishing.

“Okay the first thing you’ll have to do is you’ve got to put your hook into the vise.  So I’ve got my vise here and I’ve got my hook. Here are a couple of ways not to do it.  If you do it like that that’s gonna embed too much of the hook and cover it with the point of your vise.  So you don’t want to do that. There’s another way that I see people doing it and if you put it in there at the hook point that’s gonna tend to make your vise have to hold extra hard and it’s going to possibly bend out anyways because you’ve created a little lever arm there.

But the best way is to split the difference as you go into the bend like so, and it will depend on various hooks as to kind of that placement but it is okay to have the hook point extended.  And you want to give yourself enough room to come down and tie into the the bend here.

So once you have gotten the hook tied in or the hook secured I’m gonna go ahead and put some thread onto the hook. So that’s the next thing that you’ll have to do. I’m gonna go ahead and use some fluorescent orange thread just for visibility purposes. There’s several different ways to
approach this. The way I usually teach people when I’m teaching classes is to take your thread and your bobbin–so here’s our bobbin–and the way you want to hold the bobbin is at that juncture point. So we’ve got our bobbin the way I’m holding it here: you don’t want to hold it down here and you don’t typically want to hold it all the way at the tip….”