Lee Ties a Fly

Ideas to Try

A. Make a Scrapbook
Gather ideas for fly-making designs and paste them into a scrapbook. You could put in photos of insects from newspapers and magazines, tracings of insects from information books, or your own drawings of fishing flies. If you can, study the insect you want to make in the wild. Draw pictures or take photographs. You can also print information from a CD-ROM or download it from the internet. To get started, follow the links from this site.

It's also a good idea to add scraps of coloured thread, foil and other materials that you could use for fly-making. This helps you to build up a bank of ideas you can use when trying to tie your own flies.

B. Make a Wire Fly
Safety
Before you start, think about how to use the different equipment safely. Will you need to wear safety gear? Check with your teacher if you are not sure.
Even if you are not going fishing, you can still practise tying flies, by making them on pieces of wire instead of hooks.

You will need:
Materials
reel of thin garden wire
pencil
Plasticine
yoghurt pot
reels of thread and embroidery silks
brown and black wool
small feathers
shiny sweet wrappers and clear Cellophane
foil
PVA glue

Tools
small scissors (such as nail scissors)
ruler
tweezers
pliers or wire cutters

Instructions

1.	Begin by looking closely at pictures of the insect you want to copy. Choose materials that match the colours and textures of your insect.
2.	One of the biggest difficulties in fly-making is keeping things still while you work on them. Try winding a long piece of wire tightly around a pencil. Stick the pencil upright in a yoghurt pot using Plasticine. Unwind a small amount of wire from the tip of the pencil, so that you can work on it comfortably without it moving around.
3.	Measure the length of wire you are going to work on. Make sure it is the same length as the insect you are copying.
4.	Twist the wire into a hook shape. Bend the free end of the wire over to form the head.
5.	Cut wing shapes from feather or Cellophane and tie them into place.
6.	Tie a piece of thread to the wire. Then wrap it round and round to form the body of the insect. Use more thread to thicken the body in the right places.
7.	Tie in other colours of thread, wool and foil to make the different parts of the insect's body.
8.	PVA glue can be used to give a shiny look to parts of your insect. When the glue dries it becomes hard and shiny.
9.	When your fly is finished, cut it off from the long wire.
10.	Now you can unwind another length of wire from the pencil and try making another fly.

C. Make a Mobile
When you have made several wire flies you are happy with, turn them into a mobile.

You will need:
Materials
wire flies (see activity above)
thin white thread
reel of thin garden wire
3 lengths of thin wooden dowelling rods, about 30cm long

Tools
small hacksaw
wire cutters
scissors
sandpaper

Instructions

1.	Saw the first dowelling rod into two lengths of about 15cm.
2.	Make a cross with these two pieces and tie them tightly together with garden wire.
3.	Make a loop of garden wire and attach it to the centre of the cross. The mobile will hang from this loop.
4.	Cut the other dowelling rods into 10cm lengths.
5.	With the hacksaw, make a two small grooves or notches in each small rod, about 1cm away from either end.
6.	Sandpaper all the ends of the rods and the wooden cross.
7.	Tie a length of thread around the middle of one of your wire flies.
8.	Wind the other end of the thread around one of the grooves in a rod. Then tie it off.
9.	Repeat until all your wire flies are attached to a rod.
10.	Tie the rods to the cross with different lengths of thread so that they hang at different heights.
11.	Hang up the finished mobile from the wire loop.