The Fly Box Tying Plan

Turn each hook range into sizes, tie the core sizes deepest, buy hooks in the packs your flies need, price each fly against the shop, and book the evenings before opening day

Uistin's free Fly-Tying Hook Size Guide gives each fly style a hook size range, with the thread and hackle that go with it: #12–#18 for a dry fly. A range is not a shopping list. It is several separate sizes (a higher number is a smaller hook down to #1, then 1/0 and up get larger), each bought in its own pack, and dry-fly hackle is often sold sized to the hook too. The guide cannot say how many flies of each size a season needs, what one fly costs, or how many evenings the box takes. The Fly Box Tying Plan works it out. Twelve trips losing three dries a trip, plus two kept of each size, is 44 dries: 8, 14, 14 and 8 across #12 to #18. With a 10% spoil allowance that is 50 hooks in four packs of 25 ($28.00 in the example), not four bulk packs of 100 ($88.00, seven seasons of spare hooks). A dry costs $0.94 in material against a $2.50 shop fly, but an edge size tied 8 times costs its own hook pack and hackle packet: $2.75 a fly in cash this season. A $120.00 kit pays back at 77 dries, while the first season costs $266.50 in cash against $190.00 to buy the same box. Streamers are tied in the color the site's Lure Color Selector picks for your water, and the box is booked into whole-fly evenings, core sizes first, counted back from opening day. Sizes vary by maker and model, and the pack says so. It recommends no maker, shop or pattern, and it covers the rules: license, seasons and gear rules, barbless where required, bait rules between waters, and eye protection. The worked figures are examples and every one is computed by the site's own tools. Included: 7 steps, 4 printable working pages, a reference table, a quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked out from the choices you make in the tools.

Look inside

Two full pages from the plan, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• The Sizes Not Ranges Rule: every hook range in our guide written out as its separate sizes, largest hook first
• The Core Sizes Rule: a season's lost flies shared across the sizes, middle sizes deepest, plus two kept of each
• The Packs Per Size Rule: hooks plus a spoil allowance in whole packs, size by size, and why bulk is rarely cheaper
• The Per Size Cash Rule: cost per fly for each material, and the cash that sized hackle adds for every size
• The Cost And Cash Rule: the kit measured in flies and the first season measured in cash, against a shop fly
• The Water Picks The Color Rule: streamers split between the waters you fish, in the colors our selector picks
• The Core First Rule: whole-fly evenings, core sizes first, counted back from opening day
• Four printable working pages: box plan sheet, buy list, cost per fly worksheet, tying session log
• A reference table of every fly style's sizes, thread, hackle and example minutes per fly
• A one-page quickstart, the rules and safety lines, and a personalised sheet worked from your choices

The plan picks up where the free Fly-Tying Hook Size Guide and Lure Color Selector leave off. The guide gives each fly style a hook size range with its thread and hackle; the selector picks a color for the water and the light. The plan writes each range out as sizes (a higher number is a smaller hook down to #1, then 1/0 and up get larger, and sizes vary by maker and model), counts the flies per size for your season, buys hooks in the packs those flies need, prices one fly and the first season against the shop, and books the evenings before opening day. It recommends no maker, shop or pattern, and it reminds you to check the license, season, gear and bait rules where you fish. The worked figures are examples; your season is yours to fill in.