beagle_fan thanks for chiming in! I live in the middle of IL, so no trout in the area. I'm generally catching largemouth, smallmouth, and rock bass; bluegill/sunnies; and small/medium carp. I have also managed to catch a few striped bass in one spot and on warm days I'll target the big carp, but so far no success.beagle_fan wrote:As for starting materials, you can't go wrong with a few basic. Here are the materials I would start with:Now I need to start compiling materials... hate to buy a kit with a ton of stuff I'll not use, but I'm having a hard time wading through all the vocabulary and such.
a few different colors of dubbing. Soft dubbing is good for dries. Works well for caddis larvae in various colors.
pheasant tails. These are vital. I can get lots of pheasant tails if you guys want them. I will send them out if you guys want any. Just let me know.
turkey tail feathers. I can also get these for free from birds we take hunting. Not as often as pheasants though.
a few different colors of uni-thread
Do you fish nymphs or dries? My favorite patterns for nymphs are bead head hare's ears and bead head pheasant tails. I also like to tie caddis larvae both with and without a bead head. Don't discount a good yarn egg pattern either; they will absolutely slay any stocked trout and work pretty well for native brook trout / wild browns as well depending where you are. For dries, most everything I tie is on a parachute. The trout absolutely love parachute style dries. My other dries I usually buy if I need them.
The most important thing is to decide what kind of flies you want to tie, then get the materials from there. I don't have a bunch of fancy equipment, but I tie flies that take fish. I tie what I like and what I know the trout I target like. I love to talk flies, and if you guys are interested we can even get a fly swap started. Those are a ton of fun! Anyway...
Almost all my flies have been tied by a certain member of this forum so far, typically nymphs and streamers with a few caddis flies for catching bluegill and carp on a summer evening. I've also been dabbling with some terrestrials this fall.
So to start off I would love to learn to tie a decent clauser minnow, pheasant tail nymph, wooly bugger, and caddis fly. Obviously the sky is the limit after that. I have been setting feathers aside for a while. I have a lot of pheasant tails from my own hunting, chicken feathers from our chickens, some peacock tail feathers from a farm we used to do business with and a half dozen rabbit pelts in the freezer that I need to get around to finishing... so... I've started gathering but have a ways to go.