Hareline Fly Tying Kits – Quality for Beginner or Aspiring Tyer

Hareline materials only fly tying kit has all first rate products and step-by-step instructions to tie 20 great fly patterns.

Hareline materials-only fly tying kit has all first rate products and step-by-step instructions to tie 20 great fly patterns.

Our friends at Hareline Dubbin in Monroe Oregon have recently introduced three new options in fly tying kits that I have had the opportunity to examine recently. Nicely done. Following I’ll note some of my observations on these three kits. They are all in stock and available as gifts or for the beginner who is about to venture into the world of fly tying for the first time.

First, the fly tying instruction booklet is very good, providing clear instructions regarding how to tie 20 of the best trout flies that are fish catchers in most waters around the world. In addition, the skills you will exercise while tying these patterns will provide a foundation for tying flies for salmon & steelhead,  bass, pike musky and bonefish at the least. Sorry, got carried away.

The instructions are good, the materials are first rate too, from threads to dry fly hackle to dubbing and hooks and so forth. All of the materials contained in this kit are the same as I select to tie flies myself, and that is my test for quality. This is not to say that there are not other high quality fly tying kits out there, only to say that I have personally inspected these kits and believe that they represent excellent value and price, with far more and diverse selection of materials than anyone could possibly purchase for a similar investment in normal packaging sizes.

Except for the spooled materials, all of these packaged materials generally represent a smaller quantity than normal packaging that you would find in fly shops. Downsizing on the materials makes perfect sense in fly tying kits because a person would not normally want to get larger quantities of many of these materials until deciding which patterns they want to tie most often.

What is in the Hareline materials-only kit? Briefly, you get two sizes of beads, six sizes of hooks, six spools of veevus thread, copper wire, gold wire, silver gold mylar tinsel, yellow floss, pearl krystal flash, sparkle emerger yarn, parapost wing, Mcfly foam, three colors of chenille, a half Hare’s mask, five colors of dubbing, rubber legs, elk hair, comparadun hair, rabbit strips, crosscut rabbit strips, marabou feathers turkey tail feathers, keough sadddle feathers and grizzly saddle feathers, tailing feathers for dry flies, saddle feathers, ringneck pheasant feathers, partridge soft hackle feathers, a half grizzly cape suitable for tying wings and all sizes of wet fly collar hackles, peacock herl, two colors of bulcktail hair, Loon water based cement, and a Hareline drink coaster, all contained in a useful plastic box.

What flies will the instruction booklet cover? San Juan Worm. Brassie. Bead Head Caddis. Prtridge & Yellow soft hackle. Girdle Bug. Woolly Worm. Woolly Bugger. Hare’s Ear Nymph. Pheasant Tail Nymph. Darian’s Kool Kat Soft Hackle. TP’s Little Nymph Thing.  Buck Tail Streamer. Bead Head Bunny Leech. Comparadun. Elk Hair Caddis. Adams. Light Cahill Parachute. Black Ant. Griffith’s Gnat. Black Gnat Dry Fly.

Hareline also offers two complete kits, the first includes an economy vise and economy tools. This vise and tools are perfectly fine for the beginner who is not sure how dedicated they will be to the adventure of fly tying. This is the Hareline Economy Kit.

The superior full fly tying kit offered by Hareline is the one I am most impressed with and includes a premium vise and premium tools.  The Hareline Premium Fly Tying Kit includes mostly USA tools and this is the best choice for the beginning tyer who is likely to continue tying – because the tools are more durable and in my opinion perform at a higher level than the imported economy tools.

Tools include a vise, a bobbin, scissors bodkin, hackle pliers, hair stacker, and a whip finish tool.

The instruction booklet also shows the proper way to secure a hook in your vise, , dub material on thread, start your thread on a bare hook, thread a bobbin, and as previously noted, tie 20 great trout flies.

Jay Nicholas, November 2016

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