Bug Fisher At the Vise

Tip #1: The next time you get ready to throw out an old electrical appliance, AC adaptor, extension cord, or lamp, cut the powercord off of it. This is a ready source of copper wire for Brassies, Copper Johns, or other flies requiring copper wire ribbing. Different cords, and other scrap pieces of wire, will have various wire sizing. As an added bonus, you may find that some wires are silver.

Tip #2: If you use a lot of lead-eyes and paint them, here's a neat and inexpensive jig, so you can do many at one time. All you need are a couple of screws, a block of wood, and a volumizing comb. The latter can be purchased for about a dollar at your local Wally World (Wal-Mart). Just drill a couple of holes in the comb and mount to the block of wood with the screws and you're done!

Drop the lead-eyes in the teeth of the comb and paint away. If you want to speed the process up, when you pick up the comb, stop by paint section and pick up a can of enamel spray paint in the correct color. Now you can spray all the eyes at once (a few of light coats work better than one heavy one).

Tip #3: You can really make those painted lead-eyes "pop" by adding a thin coat of epoxy over them. After mounting the eyes on the hook, use a cheap brush and 30-minute epoxy (a.k.a., Devcon 2-Ton Epoxy) and lightly cover the eyes and thread wraps. Don't worry about brush strokes, as these will even out as the epoxy sets. I can't stress enough that you only need a light coat -- light enough so the epoxy won't run or drip. The 30-minute epoxy will allow you to do quite a few (about 10-12) sets of eyes, before needing another batch.

Not only will the epoxy make your eyes look great, it will protect the paint longer from bumps on rocks and the thread wraps will be extremely secure. (The last brushes I got came from the dollar store and the package had 30 brushes for a buck.)

Tip #4: To mix epoxy, I use toothpicks, which can be purchased for very little at the dollar store. While I've read that wood will cause epoxy to yellow, I've not had any trouble. Also, I mix the epoxy on the cards that come on, or in, the fly tying materials and hooks. This not only saves a little cash on buying Post-It notes, it gets double-duty out of that paper (cereal boxes, snack cake boxes, and other dry, clean cardboard works well, too.)

Bug Fisher Guide Service