Christmas Turkey. Words and Pictures Darren Lewis AAPGAI

Transcription

1 Christmas Turkey Words and Pictures Darren Lewis AAPGAI Why not? I'm already a professional fly fisherman, I make my money from the tackle trade, and I'm an APGAI instructor, so why not? The question I was being asked was, do you want to tie 500 tarpon flies? The gentleman in question was a keen saltwater fly fisher, and he was constantly frustrated by the quality of the tarpon flies he has used. Not the pattern you understand, but the hook itself. He was always failing to properly hook into tarpon as the point wasn't sharp enough, or he was losing them as the hook wasn't strong enough. So, did I want to tie 500 tarpon flies for him and his friends on really, really high quality hooks? I've been fly tying for over 25 years, I like to think I'm pretty good, and I quite fancied the kudos of having the label 'professional fly tyer' on my CV. Also, I couldn't afford to go to Cuba or Venezuala thanks to my mortgage, so I thought I could at least play a small part in catching a large Tarpon by tying the fly that captured it. So, again, why not? So stage one, now that I'm treating this as a business venture, what pattern, what hooks, and more importantly, how much was I getting paid? Was it worth the investment of my time? The pattern was straightforward, the cockroach, all the same colour, and all on the same size hook size, 4/0. Couldn't get more straightforward than that. So a rough guesstimate in my head of the cost of the hooks and materials, a bit of wangling, and a price was agreed upon. The real beauty, to my mind anyway, was that the work would be done over the Christmas break, dead time anyway really, yes I had some DIY planned, but it wasn't that urgent, besides, this work would pay for the cost of the DIY, a win win! And, as the girlfriend was away with her family for the break, I could lock myself away without feeling guilty about it.

2 Day 1. Note the undelivered presents bottom left, and the ignored DIY bottom right! Day 1. Boxing Day - Woke up with a thundering headache, must be from the turkey. But, I absolutely had to crack on, I'd just start slowly I thought. I had all the materials prepared in advance. I knew how many hooks I needed, that's obvious, but how many capes and squirrel tails? That was more of a challenge, but I was pretty confident I'd massively over ordered so no problems. I'm a fly tyer, I'd just use the surplus materials in the years to come for other patterns. Now I know a thing or two about professional fly tying, and one of the golden rules, is consistency, the flies should look the same in size, proportion, colour, even head size. So before I did anything, I tied one fly, noting exact reference points at each stage, eg, tying thread to opposite hook point, tie in feathers to two times length of shank etc., and wrote the points down, this was my rulebook. I then texted a photo of the finished cockroach to my customer before I got stuck in and made 500 of the wrong pattern, very important! When I waited for the reply, I set about preparing my work area. Now, I'm a fussy person, I like order in my life, so the first thing I did was to get together all the tools that I needed, and put everything else away, making a relatively clean work area. Secondly, if I was going to be tying flies all day, I'd need good light, so I got my reading light from the front room and set it up over my shoulder. Next, I put a sheet of waste wood down over the table, this meant I didn't have to worry about drips of varnish etc damaging the table so I could work quickly, also, a convenient place to mix epoxy. Lastly, my greatest fly tying tool, and a must for all those fly tyers out there without one, I made sure my mini vacuum cleaner was charged and ready to go. I got the reply I was hoping for, I had the green light, I was a professional fly tyer!

3 Day 2. December 26th. Now only a minor headache, what was in that stuffing? And worse, the realisation that on the previous day I'd achieved pretty much bugger all, 25 partly finished flies. A quick mental calculation, it would take me about 20 days to finish, if I speeded up. Welcome to the professional world of fly tying, it's not just about quality of product, or cost of materials, but a huge factor is also the time taken to tie that many flies, and my God had I gotten that wrong! And to think I was a project planner for 13 years, unforgivable. I consoled myself that it was because of the previous days headache that I was so slow and steeled myself for the day ahead. I hadn't really been thinking much the previous day, but now my attention was focussed on one word, faster, and I found five massive timesavers. The first was cutting the feathers, why was I being so careful cutting out the feathers from the cape, I didn't want the smaller feathers anyway, and so I got more savage. Second, why was I measuring the squirrel tail fibres, just cut the whole shank off and trim the excess off on the fly, so I did that. Thirdly, and this saved me lots of time, why was I cleaning the dubbing needle every time I applied varnish, and why was I screwing the lid back on the varnish every time I used it? So, the dubbing needle now lived in the open bottle of varnish. Fourth was a taboo for me, whip finishing. I always used a whipping tool, I liked the way it felt in the hand, and I loved the clean tidy whip finish it gave. But it takes time, so I bit the bullet and taught myself whip finishing by hand, and boy is that a time saver! Excuse the brass neck folks, but you have to learn to do it by hand! Lastly, the biggest time saver was my pride. I'm a fastidious dresser, a real perfectionist, and I had to change my attitude. These flies weren't for display, they weren't for my pride, they were simple dressings on a high quality hook. That's what I had been commissioned to make. So I toned down the quality from simply breathtaking, in my own humble opinion, to very good.

4 Halfway there! Day 3. December 27th. Must deliver those presents. Much better surveying the scene this morning, many more flies completed. By the way, as you can see from the photo's, make sure you have lots of foam to store them in to dry, I had a length of pipe lagging split in two and some old packing material, and boy they looked good stuck in there. Other worries were now crowding in, I was fast running out of materials, I had massively underestimated the material harvesting. I was getting about 7 flies per squirrel tail, and about 12 per cape, on one poor quality cape only 5 flies! So another lesson, get quality materials to get your moneys worth, and to save time hunting for good feathers! My material costs therefore had massively increased, especially with having to drive to buy more capes and tails, so my bottom line had shrunk even more. And worse, I was buying so many materials there wasn't enough available in the right colour to satisfy the demand I had created. I phoned my customer to ask if he wanted a variety of cockroach colours, desperately hoping he'd say yes so I could buy the only materials I had left to choose from, and got the best news of all. Not only was that fine, but he now wanted only 125 flies, not 500. Thank God! I was looking at a huge amount of time to complete the order, much more than I had anticipated taking, and my time in purgatory had just been slashed by 75%! At this point I didn't care about the money, I just wanted to see light at the end of the tunnel. So with hope and cellulose varnish vapours in my heart, I started tying on day three with renewed optimism.

5 Finishing touches Day 4. December 28th. Really must deliver those presents! Another time saver I discovered yesterday, and I could kick myself for this. I was varnishing the flies, and holding and rotating them by hand till they became viscous enough to be safely stored in the foam without beading. There was a rotary fly drier sat on a shelf behind me! Although in my defence it didn't work anyway. After walking 8 feet for the new batteries I started using that, more time saved, belting along now! I was now very worried about material costs and dug around in the bin to recover the bar codes of all the capes and feathers I'd bought, sticking them to a sheet of paper as my expenses sheet, the running total as I added stickers to the sheet during the day was quite simply depressing. But, I felt it was important to establish whether I actually made money from my attempt at tying, would I cut it as a pro? It's also worth noting my best two friends during these tortuous times, a good vice and sharp scissors! I was using a Dyna King voyager II and not once had a hook slipped, and the scissors, Veniards serrated, were absolutely superb. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner, what a tool! Anyway, this was the last day. Just some varnishing to do and I was done, and my God they looked good, a cake of cockroaches, a real sense of job satisfaction.

6 Pretty!! It was over. As you can see, I didn't have an easy four days, and I learnt two major things. If you want to make it in this business you have to be able to access cheap materials of consistent quality, not easy, and accurately estimate the material costs before you agree a price for the work, something which I spectacularly failed to do. In hindsight I needed to double the price I quoted to realistically make any proper money. Secondly, and this is the hardest, time. You have to work so swiftly, so accurately, so consistently, that quite frankly, this is actually a really hard job. All those fly tyers out there who ever thought about doing it professionally, take a really, really, long hard look at yourself. I did four 14 hour days for just 125 flies. Very high quality flies mind, and I wasn't very well, but even so, a lot of time! And for all those existing professional fly tyers out there, I salute you from the bottom of my material box! The gulf between tying flies as a hobby, and as a business, is quite frankly immense. A completely different mind set and attitude, with much more planning than I realised. That was my downfall, not skill, but planning, I made far too many assumptions. I also learnt that if you give Christmas presents a week late, the child assumes it's for next year and refuses to open it, that made me feel really guilty! The good news is that I already know the flies work as Tarpon to 80lb have been caught on them already. And lastly, did I cut it as a pro fly tyer? Well, I'm still in the same job, put it that way. And did I make any money on this whole venture? Well if you're reading this article, then yes, otherwise, no, not really!