Guide Flies

Being busier than I've ever been with barely enough time to feed myself, 'Guide Flies' are usually those that appeal to me the most.  They need to be quick to tie, sturdy, inexpensive, fish catching flies that won't cause any mental distress if it gets snapped off on a fish or hung up on a rock.  Having a family, a day job, a mortgage, and a brown dog, my main goal at the vise is to pump out as many flies as I can in one sitting.  There's really no telling how long I'll actually be able to twist  before someone has a bad dream or a conference call meeting needs to be accepted, so having materials, hooks, beads, etc pre-loaded is important to keeping the efficiency high each session at the bench.  My good friend Juan Ramirez is always bitching about fact that he never has time to fill his own flybox, go on vacation or even watch TV and a few years back warned me of the evils of commercially tying, I now fully understand what he meant.  Here are a few things I do to insure my time is spent wisely. 

Buy your hooks in 100 packs, it's cheaper and can be organized to where you're not spending time searching through Ziploc bags to find the ones you need.

 Load your tungsten beads while you're waiting for your laundry to dry or on the phone and stick them somewhere you can get to them while at the bench.

Twist up all the bodies of your flies you'll need for a trip and stash them somewhere, that way, you can come back to them and finish the thorax.  This will allow you to get in the groove and not have to deal with too many materials all at once. 

Load the finished flies in your box with enough room to apply your epoxy and start in on another batch.