S8, Ep 33: Tying Tradition: Jason Taylor's Journey Through the Art of Fly Tying

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by the incredibly talented fly tier Jason Taylor.Jason's a fixture on Tier's Row in Edison, and a regular contributor on Masters of the Fly. He's also a keeper of Bob Popovics' rich tying tradition. Jason shares his fly fishing journey.We take a deep dive into his Tying philosophy and what drives him his attire. I think you're really going to enjoy this one, but before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcast app of your choice. In the age of AI, it's more important than ever and it really helps us out. And finally, a shout out to our sponsor. Trout Routes.We all know streams and rivers are getting crowded, and chances are you're not the only one at your local access point. Get away from the crowds and busy gravel lots by using Trout Routes Pro.With over 350,000 access points mapped across 50,000 trout streams and much more, TroutRoutes has all the data you need to help you find angling opportunities that others will overlook. Up your game and download the app today. Use code ArtFly20. ArtFly20 all one word for 20% off of your TroutRoutes Pro membership at maps.troutroutes.com.Now on to our interview. Well, Jason, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Thanks for having me, buddy.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And we have a tradition on the Articulate Fly. We like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Man, that's hard. It may be, I guess. I don't know. It's probably fishing with my dad.And there was this one, it was a highfalutin farm pond, but it was kind of this tucked away place in Cumberland County, Virginia that we used to go and someone made it because there was a dam below it. It was a dam thing.And we used to go and catch not a lot of anything but a lot of small, large mouth and sunnies and there was just kind of like a little bit of everything. So somebody had stocked it at some point.But it was this kind of picturesque thing where you'd like once we graduated to a little boat with a trolling motor, we'd go and it'd just be like acres of lily pads and you know, kind of just what you think of as like southern farm pond situation. That's probably my earliest.And then after that, which probably sticks out more, is my uncle had a sort of a party Boat on the Rappahannock river near the Chesapeake Bay, Urbana, Virginia. And bottom fishing for spot and croaker and flounder and, you know, little black bass and bluefish and kind of anything.And that's where I would spend as much time as I possibly could when I was like 11, 12, 13 in there until I got my own little boat around the age of 14, 15.

Very neat. When did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

That was late, man. That was like really, truly impromptu. I was. My wife and I decided to go to Belize on our honeymoon.And I kept seeing things about fly fishing and I was like, I always wanted to try that. And so I decided that's what I was going to do on the Hunter Uni is go fly fishing. Because why not along, probably. I got married in October of 2008.So probably March of 2008, I walked into the local fly shop and said, sell me something that was downhill after that.

Very neat. Yeah, that's kind of amazing. Not dissimilar from my experience.I fished as a kid, but I probably didn't come to fly fishing until I was probably 30 or 31. I was working too much and started buying shotgun and fly rods.

I mean, that's a bad addiction.

Yeah, it was, but it was good. It's all worked out so far. But, you know, who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey?

Well, you know, when I first started out, it was just the guys in the fly shop. It was, you know, our local shop here is tco and you know, I kind of go in, they gave me a couple spots and come back report. Try this, try that.One guy that I actually became my like, of my best friends. I mean, he's my best friend. This guy named Steve Spurgeon, worked at TCO back then. Kind of always pointed me in the right direction.And then he always had something. He's. He's one of those guys officious for everything.Probably one of the best anglers I've ever met and just dialed in anything in the northeast just because he just couldn't leave it alone himself. I'd put that there. And then over the years, you meet people and fly fishing is one of those things where there's very few.Without using four letter words, fly fishermen. And, you know, it seems that when you meet one, everyone already knows that one's the asshole. But anybody kind of met along the way.So, you know, met some guys through seeing them on the creeks or seeing them on the rivers. And, you know, shows and down the beach and here and there and had like a neat little community of guys I've met over the years. It's pretty cool.So I put Steven there. My good buddy Jack Denny lives behind Sandy Hook, who I met, you know, on a online forum.This is before social media was, you know, showing everybody away. He always invited me down and showed me that area when I first started. Really got heavy in the fly fishing.Really got heavy in the saltwater fly fishing. You know, I think, you know, some of the other guys, you know, Bob, top of mix.Dave Nelson's a good friend at this point, but, you know, I had sent him randomly a question. You know, he was an open book. We became great friends. Like, interesting.You know, you call these people mentors, but, you know, you think of them as friends first.

Yeah, very neat. Was that the Boiling Springs tco?

Actually Bryn Mawr right outside. I live in Philadelphia, So that's like 15 minutes from my house. 20 Minutes from my house.

Yeah. You were lucky to have a shop that's that good so close to you to help you kind of get into the sport.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. And so, you know, when did you get the fever to start tying flies?

You know, I didn't put a date on it. It's kind of hard, but know, I, I would put it probably once my daughter got to be a couple years old.So I was probably fly fishing for three or four years and just thought that was the next progression and couldn't fish as much as I, I wanted to. And so that kind of took some of the time and made the anticipation going fishing, you know, all that much greater. I, you know, I. It's kind of funny.Like, I don't care how many flies I have or how many times I go fishing, I'm. It's rare that I'm not tying flies a day before I go fishing just because it amps me up.

Yeah, very neat. What was your, your first vice and the first fly you tied on it?

I think like many people, I had a Renzetti Traveler was my first, my first vice.And there was a great fly tying book that had kind of these cutaways where each pattern had like a little section of the book that would fold over just like a quarter of the page and give you all the steps.And, you know, I must have tied Woolly Bugger after Wooly Bugger after Wooly Bugger after Wooly Bugger until I made it look like the picture of the book.

Very neat. Do you remember the title of the book because that one doesn't ring a bell.Like I think about like Skip Morris's book and I think about like Charlie Craven's book. But that's something that's a format for a tying book I haven't seen before.

I don't remember the name of the book. I bet I could find it in Svencia though I'd have to look for it.I know the book got destroyed when I had a flood in my basement in my tying area and I had gotten everything up off the floor. So I knew it was a hurricane and had been raining for a week before that. So we were like, oh, we might get some more in the basement.And I'd gotten everything off the floor up on cinder blocks and you know, the whole basement was elevated and I left this crate of books on the floor and that was in it.

That's awful.

It was long after I was done with the book, you know.

Yeah. And so it's interesting, right? So you were kind of learning to tie kind of before YouTube was crazy with fly tying.So you know, how did you kind of, you know, go from woolly boogers to kind of, you know, being the guy we see on Masters of the Fly, we see in Edison, we see the Fly Tying Symposium, you know, so.

What you couldn't find in shops and you can find Lily Bugger, you could find every fly in every book which you couldn't find in shops for good saltwater patterns.You know, outside of a lefty deceiver or a clouser, you couldn't find them in the shop and you couldn't find instructions really for things that were really different or you know, innovative. And I discovered a forum that still exists called Stripers Online. New Jersey, New Jersey based fishing forum.And in that form there was a fly fishing section and in that section there was a fly tying section. They covered everything. But you can imagine Stripers online. So it was, you know, heavy stall, water tide.You could go in there and find recipes and talk to guys that fished. And you know, the lineup of tires that was, that were actively involved in that forum, just kind of silly.I mean Jonny King, Andrew Warshower, Bob Popovics, of course David Nelson, I mean there's like as I still just know by their screen names from back then and it was a really neat community of guys that were willing to share, you know, material sources, how they tied do step by steps. And you know, I was having this conversation at, at Ty Fest with there's a brand and their social media manager. You're like, how'd you learn?Ty flies. It was like online forms. And she said, what's that? And I said, you know, I explained what it was and explained.Or to post a picture of something, you had to upload it to a picture server and then embed the length of that picture server and hope you got it right into your post and then forget about arranging photos in order. It was. It was an ordeal.If anybody I was willing to go through that, to share an idea or share something for somebody that actually asked a question, kind of just told you the level of like giving or community that was there.Because today it's like, from my phone, I can take the picture, upload it, you know, from the app, or shoot the video from the app, and, you know, 12 seconds later, without any forethought or editing, it's done. But this was the whole thing.I mean, you had to get a camera, download the pictures to your computer, upload the pictures to the site, so on and so forth, you know, and that's where it all started for me.

Very interesting.Kind of as things evolved, I mean, obviously you developed these kind of personal relationships with, you know, like Jonny and Bob and guys like that and David. You know, how did the, you know, kind of interacting with tires that kind of.You followed or influenced kind of evolve, you know, from, I guess, what, like the early 2000 and tens.

Yeah, that's probably. That's probably. That's probably about right.You know, I would say, yeah, early 2010s, these guys, this, like, everybody's like, hey, like, it would change really quickly from like an online form kind of interaction. So here's my phone number. Just call me. I'm going to be here. Why don't you meet me? This is what's going on now, and go here, you know, and that's how.I mean, that's how any friendship starts, right? You find some mutual bond, you find something you have in common with. You have the same outlook on things. You're not an. And you get along.

Yeah. I always tell people that's the secret right there is the. Is the don't be an asshole rule.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's kind of interesting, right? So, you know, you went from, you know, tying woolly boogers in a book. You know, you kind of found your tribe, right. In these early forums.It's kind of interesting because that's a very consistent refrain when I interview fly tires from like, say the 2000s to the 2010s is basically before, like Facebook groups kind of took all of that away. Right.But you know, how did you know all that kind of goes in and gets distilled down to, you know, kind of view as a tire today, you know, how do you describe your tying philosophy?

You know, I think there's a couple things to think about. Something that, you know, Bobby always features, always have a purpose in what you're tying. You know, I like, I like nice things.I like a pretty fly, but there's always purpose, you know, um, and then from there, you know, after you can achieve your purpose, what's the most efficient way you can do it then? And then what's the most efficient way you can use the materials? That's it. That's still what I do.No matter if I'm tying, you know, dry flies or beach flies and everything in between, it's like, like, how can I make three less thread wraps? You know, how can I use less material? How can I get the fly to move better? How could I get the fly to float higher?What do I want this fly to do and why do I want it to do it? Yeah.

Interesting too. I also would notice, I watched several of your tying videos on YouTube. You have a very relaxed tying style.

Right.

Like very methodical, very precise, but very relaxed.

Right.

I think, I think particularly the one that jumps out at me as I was watching you tie with the, the Foxtrich and just very interesting just to watch you, like placement, the way you cut, the way you prep the materials, just something different. I guess I noticed about you that I don't see in a lot of other tires that I watch.

Oh, you know, I. It's like, you know, I grew up in the south but live in the northeast. And I remember I moved here, you know, a couple months in.You know, my mother asked me how things were going and I said good. I'm like, either things are slowing down or I'm speeding up. And she says it's probably you that's speeding up.But with that, you know, I still get people that'll look at me funny because I. And so just like now I. I try to think about what comes out of my mouth before I say it.It doesn't always work, especially when I'm dealing with my 13 year old stuff or in the heat of the moment. But I do the same thing in time. I try to like, have an idea of how do I get to the last step? Not how do I get from first step one to step two is.It's seven and then backwards. So in my head, when I'm Tying. It's relaxed for me because that's step five. I'm thinking about step eight. That makes sense.

Yeah. It's also funny you say that.So I, in my legal career worked with a fair number of New Yorkers and they got very impatient with me that I wasn't fast enough for them.

Yeah. But you know what? Anytime you make someone else slow down, you've done the right thing. Yeah. You brought him, brought him into your world.

Yeah. So kind of a funny thing the, you know, and it's interesting.So, you know, you, you met, I guess, did you meet Popovics originally on the forums or did you meet him in a different way?

So I met him on the forums and you know, he was an open book as he was with most everybody.And I remember the first Somerset show, after I had kind of joined the forums, I went to the show and I found him and introduced myself and immediately grabbed me and pulled me behind the table and just like, you know, unloaded just ideas and this. And I've seen what you've been doing here and there. And you know, what do you think of that?Right away we had a lot of common ground because I was in a restaurant door for a lot of years, just came up in restaurants, was a professional waiter for a lot of years, owned a restaurant or two. And you know, so that was pretty immediate bond that we had.And you know, that day he gave me his phone number and said, just call me if you're near my house and your pushing, just call me. And that's how our friendship started. Yeah.

And were you, did you meet him kind of early enough that he was still doing those big gatherings at his house up in his tying room?

No. So I think that the, the club had had outgrown that, you know, some years before.But no, I, I, any of those meetings I went to were always at a restaurant or another meeting place.

Yeah. Interesting. And so, you know, I kind of think of like, you know, people that tie a lot of Bob style's flies.I think of you, I think of kind of, you know, Ben Whalley is another person that kind of jumps out.You know, one of the kind of the interesting things is, you know, we know he was, to your point, we were talking about earlier, he was trying to solve the kind of the size and castability problem with the hollowfly design. But, you know, that, that, that fly design has been around for a very long time.And I'm kind of curious your thoughts on, you know, what's made it such a durable kind of system and platform. For tying, you know, larger profile flies.

You know, it's the, it's again Bob, it's the whole Christmas tree thing. You know, you can, it's Christmas, you have to go get a tree. You know, without a tree you don't have anything.With that kind of baseline shape of a tree. As long as you have the tree, you can do whatever you want with it.You can trim it, you can dress it, you can do whatever you want with it, you know, so in my eyes, and you know, maybe I'm sharing some of his sentiments as well and all of his patterns were again probably started way more difficulty, way more difficult to tie than what it got distilled down to.But that final distillation left so much room for adaptation that in its simplest form, the hollow fly with like three collars is a five minute time fish, you know, for anything. But you can expand upon it, you know, both the fly itself but also just the technique, you know, translates to a variety of materials.The function of the hollow in itself does a lot more than just profile.You know, it's probably the best, you know, steelhead or salmon guys, we call them props, you know, where you want to bail another material over something but you need something underneath it to give it the illusion or give it support. Something hollow underneath is probably the best way to do it.So again, I think just the simplicity and functionality and this kind of opens it up after that, you know, it'll, it'll.I always said it's a future classic, you know, 20 years from now, guys, if you're still struggle to tie them at first and then break through and then expound upon them like infinitely. And that's what he always wanted. What he always wanted was for someone to take something he had done in his baseline and then make it their own.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting.You know, I'm kind of working on this kind of streamer project and I mean I kind of see that progression right from like clausers and deceivers and you got, you know, people starting to work on that kind of size and castability problem.And you know, you've got the hollow fly designs, you've got kind of the slammer design, but it's kind of interesting and then you see how that kind of moves into like the t bone into the game changer. I mean it's, I don't know, you know, I'm a bit of a fly fishing nerd. So I think that's super interesting.

Right? No, as well as well.

Yeah.And so, you know, you talk about kind of the, the longevity of the platform and, you know, how it lends itself to kind of modification, improvisation. You know, tell me a little bit about kind of how you've evolved some of Bob's more popular patterns in your own way.

Man, that's hard to answer without sounding vain.It's all pretty stream of consciousness, you know, Like, I took a lot of things that David Nelson kind of played with and showed me he got from a guy named Paul Miller who was using a lot of, like, feathers, whether it be ostrich or peacock, and making large patterns using the same techniques you'd find in salmon flies. We're just using larger, larger animals. Right. So for me, I was always enamored with anything classic. You know, I'm still that way.And I like old things, and I think anything that's old will be new again at some point. So, you know, in the hollows or the beast fly, you know, I took where Bob would take the mono and obviously do hollows down the, down the mono.I wanted to work ostrich, and I was tying ostrich as I went. And then one day to kind of hit me, the pull me ostrich down the mono. And it worked like a charm.Literally, the first time I did it, it was like one of those stream of consciousness things that I saw it. I, I knew it would work before I sat down to tie it and I, I did. It came out exactly like it was in my head.And I don't, I don't preach that pattern a lot because it's not the easiest thing in the world at the T, but I knew it would work and it did.And Bob had a great appreciation for that because of, you know, the techniques were sound and it didn't stray away from the Christmas tree so much that the shape was still intact, the idea was still intact. And the whole idea of having materials tied perpendicular versus parallel with a shank is basically what I was doing there.That's how that, that one translated.Another thing I really started doing early on the semper fly, which took, you know, a group of saddles in the back of the fly, which is the easiest part. And then there was, you know, both time consuming and material dependent from the flies. Palmer Webby feathers.And you can, you can plumber, you know, five or you could Palmer 15, depending on what the feathers were and how consistent they were in size. And this. I started getting to that pattern right about the time all these fly tying brushes kind of came to light.All these commercially available brushes were, were available.So I started replacing the front of those flies with, with brushes because, you know, one, it would take infinitely less time and two, I could reach in a package and, and, and grab it and knew exactly how it was going to turn out. So this, a brush front or the super fly was another one that I, I mean, as far as I know, I was the first person to kind of do that.Surf candy, probably another one that I, I've played with. I had this theory about, you know, guys talk about albies getting finicky. It's probably the first time I really said this out loud publicly.But my theory was not that the fish were finicky because it always coincided with like calm water or glassy conditions. My thought was bait wasn't getting pushed.

Around.

Until when bait's not getting pushed around, it's neutral and buoyancy. The fish can't tell that when it's ripping through a current. But like in slick column condition, the fish can tell that.So I started playing with Bob's flex fly, which is kind of hung in the water column only because the fibers of tapping air in this kind of hollow body and they would eventually sink and you know, you false cast and the air would come out of them. And those seem to be more effective when those fish were kind of finicky. And then from there I started tying. Like, how can I get this consistent?Like, how can I make this fly hover the whole time, not just for the first couple strips or, you know, the first couple casts? So I played and played.So I found the right amount of foam to put underneath the hard body, make the fly kind of either float or sit a little bit below the surface. And then when you pair that with an intermediate line, you know, the bait seems like it's being dragged down and struggling to get up.Looks just naturally, you know, neutrally buoyant. Naturally, neutrally buoyant. And those flies destroy this.I mean, that's really one of the most effective patterns when those fish get, you know, interesting.

And so, you know, but it's interesting too because, you know, even though, you know, you, you put, you got turned on by kind of the pre made brushes, which is kind of amazing because I saw David making brushes in Edison a few years ago and I was blown away.But you seem to have a real affinity for the natural materials and it seems like you generally maybe have a preference to tie with natural stuff as opposed to kind of chasing the synthetics.

Yeah, I mean, that's probably you, you, you said it pretty nicely. You Know, I always tease Johnny King is like, I don't like plastic flies. And listen, there's nothing wrong with synthetics.So then there's enough plastic in here. So that's. That's. You're supposed to laugh there, Marvin.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You know, it's what I started with and I gave take. It's probably, probably in part or from tying trout flies. I. There's something about having natural material in your hand.I'm sitting on my fly tie winch right now with the feather just kind of twisting it and not.The difficulty is not the right word, but it makes you again, slow down a little bit because you have to have a little more purpose with natural materials than you do with synthetics. And synthetics have their place.I mean, I have some very, very few, but for me, it was just always with what felt right, you know, and you kind of look at the sheen of something, you know, like, think about what that looks like to a fish or like how something moves. There's some, some synthetics out there that have better movement than others that I. I think are more useful than others.But for me, it's just always been natural. And maybe that's growing up as a farm kid, like hunting and fishing, you know, as a youngster. It could just be my affinity for everything and old.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting too, because I always think about like, and I talked to Blaine about this sometimes because he was lucky enough to be, you know, with Lefty and Bobby and a lot of these other guys kind of like you were. But, you know, it wasn't like you just got your J. Stockard catalog or your Feathercraft catalog, and you just ordered whatever you needed.

Right, right.

And so, you know, and also too, you know, there are a lot of guys tying what I would call more traditional patterns and they're like, dude, they work, right? Just because it's 40 years old, it still works.But I think there's an interesting thing about back to kind of what you were talking about, kind of how you internalize some of the stuff from Popovic and other people in the form about functionality and, you know, because it makes me think about the first time I met Bob in Edison and he was, you know, he had his tube of like GE silicone. Right. And he was basically doing the lips with the rams wool. And it's just, you know, super fascinating.Just reminds me also of kind of being a kid growing up like in the. In the 70s, you know, you just couldn't go buy every little piece that you wanted. You had to kind of figure stuff out and make stuff that worked.So I kind of. Maybe I see a little bit of that in that kind of process as well.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's. It's. That's. That's true. I mean, if I'm tying something, it's an idea in my head.I'm, you know, and I may take something off the hook after I've tied it all to go looking for a different material because I don't like how it laid down or just was. Didn't feel right or it felt like it was gonna get too bulky. So I'll switch to something different.You know, I always say, like, if I have something new, my first one always turns out better than the second one. And the third one is usually where it comes together because I've tried to change it too much the second time.And usually the third one goes way back, closer to the first one than the second one even. Was very neat.

And so we can't talk about hollow fly style without talking about bucktail. And that's kind of. You kind of go down a path. Right. And so I was kind of curious.Everyone has a little bit of a different take, but can share kind of your secrets for selecting in handling bucktail. And I would say too, like, I, you know, talk about different bucktails and different parts of the bucktail for different kind of usages on a fly.

So, you know, it's. It's. It's hard to. To. It's hard to verbalize. But I'll. I'll try. You know, I. I taught a class. The last major class I taught was in Rhode Island.And, you know, in that class, you know, the first half hour is me passing around different bucktails and kind of like talking about the different qualities of them. So when it comes to hollow flies, you're looking for something that. That's when you first start tying them.I should say especially you're looking for something that's soft and really soft to the touch. And that's because it's just more pliable like anything. And then as you master technique, you can, you know, you'll find that some.There's such thing as too soft, you know, because the collars will want to collapse on you a little too fast, so they have less predictability. So I always look for. For softer bucktail. I don't particularly careful in straight bucktail, unfortunately. Some.Most of the longer stuff is like in straight. And I find that's really useful for back Supplies.I like that kind of wavy bucktail because I feel like it's like you know, again not to dorkow too much of a, you know, a wave pattern.So if you know, you were to iron it straight, like if you have curly hair versus straight hair, you know, if you're straightening curly hair, you'll realize how much longer it is.So that longer buck, that curvier kinky bucktail will look like more on the hook than it truly is because of all those kinks take up more visual space.So that's really what I like for hollow flies because the illusion of bulk or the illusion of size with less material really gets, really gets magnified in those situations. And there's some, some of this is not good for, for hollow ties. It's, it's just not.I mean I, I, I, I still going to fly shop and or show and I will sit in the floor and open every package of bucktail and fan it up and feel it. I mean and as I've been doing this for a while, you know, I can look at or feel or go through 20 or 30 bucktails probably and 10 minutes.And out of those, let's call 50, I consider myself be fortunate if there's two that I want out of there. And most materials are the same way. Same thing with ostrich, you know, you'll, you'll look at 50 and find two.And again, not that you can't do something with all of them, but when it comes to the hollowflies especially, I look for stuff that's not too hollow, but also still hollow enough to react at thread pressure. I look for kinky bucktail, soft bucktail and not pin straight. And from there once you find the tail that works. I mean I say stick with it, you know.

And so what's the, what's your kind of grading preference when you're looking at ostrich hurl?

I like finer ostrich. Personally. I don't like the really big fluffy stuff. I think 6 inch ostrich is probably as rare as 6 inch bucktail. People laugh at me when I say that.But like I'm ostrich with taper that's that long is really hard to find. So that's what I like. Density of barbs like any feather but it has more barbs per inch, more fibers per inch. That's what I'm looking for.So length, paper and density.

Is it harder to find good ostrich just because it's not as common a tying material as bucktail?

I think it's harder to find good ostrich because ostrich is used for so many more things like fashion and weddings and hats. And there's so many things that ostrich is used for so many other industries where I can't really say that about bucktail.

Yeah, I haven't seen that in any wedding magazines recently.

Right.

So, you know, I always, when I get really gifted tires on the podcast, always also want to ask them for, you know, other tips that they have that they can share with us, mere mortal tires to make our lives happier and more productive at the vice. You have a couple more you could share with folks.

Brushable Crazy Glue. Put it on your thread, not on your materials or your hook, before you make those final wraps.I think is people have been dumbfounded every time I've shown that taking wraps, if you're cutting something, I, I, I will say this. Cut your bucktail square before you introduce it to the hook. Don't cut it when it's on the hook.There's situations where it does call for you to have to cut it on the hook. If you do, take a couple wraps underneath those buttons before you cut it to hold it in place, and then undo those wraps and rewrap over again.Save yourself some thread wraps. Get yourself tying in a smaller, smaller space.Don't be afraid to, like, crowd the eye of a hook and like, like, warm up your bobbin and burn those excess fibers off if it means you achieve what you're trying to do. You know, again, function over aesthetic.Not that there's anything wrong with having gorgeous flies, but make sure the fly does what you want to do first and use less than you think you need to always. If you think you have the right amount of material in your hand, take some away. I still do it.I still look at the cloak of material I have in my hand. I still, whether it be bucktail or fox or ostrich, I'll look at it. I'm like, oh, that's the perfect amount. And I'll just take a couple fibers off.I know it's too much because you'd be surprised what you could get away with or how little you can get away with. I always say.

Yeah, I was going to say, you know, it's always interesting to see, like, super sparsely tied hollowflies and you're just like, wow, it's incredible. And you see it in the water. You're like, oh, my goodness. And you kind of get religion on the, on the sparseness of the material thing.

Yeah, real quick, real quick. Because you know, what happens is metal isn't easy to cast, but it moves better.

Yeah, it's interesting. And where did you learn the crazy glue trick? Because I think the first time I ever heard about it was kind of via Dave Whitlock.

I wish he had told me because I had to figure it out on my own.

Oh, well, there you go. It's a Jason Taylor original.

I listen, I don't, I, I, I remember, I remember the first time I tied this, I tied this hollow fly and I was leaving, I was using very little material, but I was leaving the butts long in the back.Instead of tying the butts down fly, I was like, oh, I can just get the density I want in front of the fly by leaving the butts long, not cutting this bucktail short, just like really cranking down and flaring those buttons before I got control again and pushed the hollow cone back and formed it. And I thought I was hot shit. I mean, I showed it to a couple guys. They're like, why'd you even take a nap? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.And I would, had been doing it for like six, probably six months. And then I saw, I saw some flies from Dave Stoke that were years old and they were tied the same way.

Yeah. Always funny how that works out, isn't it?

Yeah.I would say the other thing I would tell people is when you're, you know, if you look at, you know, I hate to reference myself in YouTube videos, but if you look at.Watch me handle Bucktail and YouTube videos, you'll see how I'll lay the bucktail flat on the table and pick up the length of fibers I need from the end and then prenot all the short hairs before you cut it away from the hide. And you end up saving a lot of bucktail that way. Yeah.

On the bucktail front, any preference for kind of where on the tail you like to, to harvest the. The bucktail for the hollow flies?

Again, depends on what your which where you're using it on the fly. The know the structure of a bucktail, right. So things at the bottom will flare more.They're more hollow hairs because that's on the tail themselves is where it's starting to transfer. Transfer or transition to deer body hair. So everything in the base of the bucktail is going to be more hollow in nature.And as you move to the tip of the bucktail, those fibers will be less hollow and typically a little bit finer. So I want something not to flare.It'll be from higher up the bucktail If I want some hints of flare, probably closer to the front of the fly to get more shape, I would pull it from the bottom of a bucktail.I think that sweet spot for hollow flies is probably between half and two thirds of the way up because you have the real predictability of like what the hair is going to do when you put the right pressure on.

Got it. And so I also always like to ask hardcore tires, what's the most unusual tool you have on your bench?

See, it's funny because I don't know that any. I don't really know. I don't consider anything unusual anymore. I'm looking at my bench right now. The two things stick out to me.I'm a metal comb, which I think a lot of people have for combing out fur. But it's like, it's probably like, it's like a beauty supply store metal comb. It's like really nice metal comb.The other thing I keep is really nice pair of hackle pliers. Can you guess why?

Oh, probably for your ostrich, right?

Nope, it's for when I break thread. Ah, so it will. If you break thread and you can grab it with a pair of hackle pliers and hold it while you restart your thread.

Yeah, got it. I gosh, I would say I have like a love hate relationship. I probably have eight different kinds of hackle pliers over on my desk to my left.Just because I can't, you know, you've. I found some that work really, really well, but it took me a long time.

Yeah, I like the teardrop ones, personally.

Yeah, that's the one. Particularly for like holding thread. Worked really well.I think the, the ones I got when I first started tying that were basically metal with like a little bit of like a, like a little like rubber sleeve on the tip were really pretty lousy.

So I have a pair of those on my, on my table right now too. They're good. Those are good for holding mono.

Yeah, I'm, I don't, I'm not a. Gosh, I might have one spool of mono in my, in my thread rack. Yeah, it's funny. And so, you know, also too, I always like to ask tires.You know, you may not be tinkering with any new tools or adhesives or materials, but if you are, I'd love to hear what you're kind of playing around with.

No, you know, I, I don't mess with a lot of like new stuff, you know, I, unless I'm tying, unless I'm tying dry flies I tie everything with monofilament. There's a couple exceptions there. Like I, I like to use gel spun to mount clouds or eyes just because I can get a lot of pressure.But unless I'm tying dry flies, it's just monofilament. Not by the case or case of 12.

Yeah. And are, are you still using Tuffleye?

I. I do. You know I happen to have still a. A good stash of it for the.You know I tie a lot of Albie flies primarily because I'm usually fishing for them from a jetty and lose a lot of flies that way. Nothing to like not catch an Albion, go through a half a dozen flies. Fishetti. Oh yeah. I still use.I still use tough fly but that was the first thing I, that's the first light beard that I ever used. I have a. Actually have a personal peeve the. But I think the term is light cured adhesive. It's not an adhesive.Like I've never been able to get something dreary to stick to. Great. To cover things with or protect things with. But I've never really conformed to the fact that it was an adhesive. But yes, I still use tough.

Yeah, I've got some in one of my time boxes too.And all the, you know, I guess fingernail polish garnishes to cover that stuff up so that it doesn't turn yellow and all that kind of good stuff if you, you know, don't lose six of them trying to catch something on a jetty.

I've never had tough fly yellow. I've have, I've have tough life flies that are 10 years old. I know that are, that are 10 years old.I'm looking at one right now and I've never had a yellow. I don't know what UV stuff does. I mean toughly for people that don't even know what it is. Cause I'm sure a lot of people don't.Tough fly is based on the. The same things that dental dentists use. It's blue light. It's not a UV light that cures it. Um, so I can't speak to how UV stuff yellows are not.I have some epoxy from back in the day that definitely yellows but I've never had Tuffleye yellow.

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't even know can you still get it. I know there were some production problems a few years ago and maybe it was sold because it's kind of.It's a different like it's so good for Candies. Right, because it's soft. Right. It's, you know, it's usable in a soft, it's not like old school two part epoxy.And to me, like most UV resins, cure pretty hard.

Yeah, well, there's different. So there was a flexible one. They were the first to have like a flexible one. Um, but the regular stuff, core and thin, they, they're pretty hard.I mean, I've definitely, I've definitely dinged some stuff with it. Um, I like the flexible stuff for different applications, but they're, they're, they're, they're pretty hard.Um, as long as you get a good, again, a good, a good cure on them. Yeah.

So no, no exotic materials, no crazy bird feathers. We haven't heard about nothing like that floating around on your desk.

Oh yeah, plenty of that stuff.

What have you, what have you got that you're playing around with that that folks might be interested in hearing about?

I found a new love for, not that it was exotic, but found a new love for badger recently. I love all the guard hairs and the soft underfur. I, I love herring. I think it's really cool material.Happen to have a lot of old, old heron that came from, that came from hat pieces from like the 30s and 40s.And then what they would do is they would take these feathers of ostrich or rhea or these big oak feathers and they would steam them and then wrap them and then once they, they dried, they would kind of hold their shape. So I love to take those hat pieces and steam them again and, and let the, the feathers unfurl.And you're always kind of surprised at what you get from that stuff. Um, really enjoy that. I love all the flightless birds. Um, you know, people have seen the albino peacock.I actually have a whole one, a whole skin, which is pretty cool. Um, my kids make fun of me. Um, I mean, if it's natural material, if I don't have it, I, I, I did at one point, but I probably have it.You know, outside of the really rare pheasants for salmon flies and stuff like that, I still, I even have some of those, but I mean, I got some. I wouldn't even know where to start. I mean, I've got way too much stuff.

No, I, I totally get it. I've got more stuff to tie with for three lifetimes, I think over here on my tying bench. Well, super interesting.Well, before I let you go this evening, are you working on kind of any projects you want to share with our listeners or Anything kind of coming up you want to let folks know about?

No, nothing, you know, nothing, Nothing new, nothing out of this, out of the sorts, you know, Morton from a Rex comes to town every once in a while. I'll try to shoot a video or two with him. Great hooks, great company, great people. It's like those are companies I try to try to support.You know, I think anyone in the flight time community or even outside the flight time community that meets those guys would have the same sentiment, same thing, you know, Regal Vice, great group of guys, you know, obviously based in the Northeast. Great vice, but no projects, you know, but I get questions and pictures sent to me on Instagram through, you know, private message daily.I try to help as many of those people as I can. You know, I, between work and coaching a lot of soccer, don't see as much see me as, as active on social media as I once was.And I don't know that if I have something new, I put it out there, but I don't know what there is new. I can show people. Not that I'm not happy to help answer old questions, you know, if they're new to you.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah.And so are you going to be, you know, so obviously kids are getting ready to get out of school, which is a whole different level of like, you know, entertainment and coaching. Can folks expect to see you, you know, at the Fly Tying symposium in November?I would imagine a definite yes to see you in Edison in 2027, right, Addison?

Yes. Symposium is, is always a game time decision. That's usually like when I'm wrapping up my soccer season and fishing.They're strikers, so kind of hard to coordinate that weekend. At least it has the last couple years.

And do you, and obviously I know you were at Tie Fest this past year, but like, do you do Marlboro or any of the other regional shows in the Northeast?

I don't do Marlboro. I don't do any other regional shows in Northeast. I've done Lancaster a couple times and again, kind of schedule dependent, you know, Edison.I love going to Edison. We'll always have my heart. It's, it's, it's as social as it is anything else for me.Well, see all the guys that I see on the beach or on, on the rivers in the spring, summer and fall. I get to see them mid winter catching with friends from across the country. That's always great.And then, you know, it's, it's always nice to sit and tie something for someone and kind of on, on the spot request because they've been having a problem or have a question. That's. That's the biggest reason I do that show.

Yeah, very cool. Yeah, it's always interesting.I always tell people that, like, if you're into saltwater, you definitely have to go to Edison because it's, you know, that's such a huge component of that show. Just like that kind of traditional Pennsylvania, you know, fly fishing culture for trout is in Lancaster.

Yeah, very much so. Yeah, very much so.

So if folks want to follow your ventures at the vice or on the water, where should they go?

You find, you know, me on Instagram is probably the best place to find me or reach me at Flyo by is my Instagram handle, because that's what life tends to do. Marvin. Just flies on by.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Well, I will drop that in the show notes. Jason and I really appreciate you carving some time out for me this evening.

My pleasure, man. My pleasure. Finally gets to sit down and have a chat with you.

Yeah, absolutely. And hopefully, I think I maybe got to talk to you for 45 seconds in Edison, I guess this year with David Blinken.You were super busy, I think, were you over in the Bears Den booth?

I was. You know, that's a great group of guys, a great, great shop. Hopefully try to put together a class up there next year.I've been trying to get together for a couple years and have, you know, line the stars up.But, yeah, you know, ironically, I was tied to a post that Friday at work, and we were supposed to get that giant snow on Sunday, so I had resigned myself to just going as a spectator and Scott from Bears. Then it called me to see if I was willing to tie on Saturday, and I think he called me on Thursday. I was like, yeah, sure.

So, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, well, hopefully we'll get to spend a little bit more time talking to each other in 2027 at Edison. Or maybe I'll see you right before Thanksgiving and at the fly tying symposium.But again, I really appreciate it, and I hope you have a great evening.

Yeah, you too, buddy. Take care.

Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Don't forget to check out the links to all this episode sponsors in the show notes. Tight lines, everybody.