Fly Tying Group
( first posted November 10, 2008; last updated August 20, 2010)
   

The Fly Tying Instructor’s Resource Project

The Fly Tying Instructor's Resource is designed to provide fly tying instructors with an online, free source of guidelines and resources for developing, preparing, and presenting quality fly tying courses for their students.

The Resource will include suggestions on:
  1. Content – what to teach and matching content to the target audience, including such factors a region of the country, age range of the students, skill levels of the students, etc
  2. Selecting what flies to teach (ex: Dick Nelson Table- spreadsheet relating patterns and skills learned thru tying the pattern)
  3. Methodology – How you present the content, how to recognize and address different learning styles of students
  4. Choosing a target audience: beginning, intermediate, or advance level
  5. Downloadable handouts for patterns as well as many other topics: hook size and shape, where on the feathers come from on a chicken, how to select quality materials, etc. These would be designed so that the instructor could simply choose the handouts they would like to use, print them out, duplicate, and distribute to the students.
  6. Material Procurement Guide
  7. Catalog resources
  8. Resource people to contact
  9. Links to for special topics, demonstration clips, …
  10. Recommended books
  11. How to get students for the class
  12. Special Topics (a catch-all but would include the materials/ ideas shared by Henry Hoffman at Conclave in his handout)

The project will start with emphasis on the beginning fly tying level and then move to the more advanced levels and hopefully include special topics presented by experts in their field (Advanced thread control – Wayne Luellen if we are lucky)

Special thanks to Bob Bates, David Nelson, Herb Kettler, and Don Van Buren for >sharing information with me on topics relating to this project. If anyone has comments or contributions to make please send them by e-mail to

You can also enter into discussions of teaching tying at the FFF Forum. Go to the FFF website and click on the blue tab "FlyFishing" at the top of the page. When the dropdown box appears (a bit tricky), click on Forum, the Fly Tying. The thread for discussion of teaching is called Improving Fly Tying Teaching.

None of the above areas are set in stone.If you have experience in any of the above sections, please feel free to volunteer to take on that topic. This Resource should be a group effort as well as a never-ending-story.