Product Description

- Learn to tie 17 popular nymphs, dry flies, and streamers
- Master fundamental tying techniques in a series of practical lessons

Charlie Craven’s Basic Fly Tying is a modern course in fly-tying fundamentals covering the essential tools, materials, and techniques needed to tie a wide range of popular flies. With 1,000 photos, Craven covers cutting-edge techniques for the more tried-and-true classics, such as the Royal Wulff, Adams, and Hare’s Ear, and shares innovative approaches to current patterns such as the Brassie, RS2, and Copper John. With clear, concise text, Craven provides tips and techniques from his over thirty years of tying flies for fly shops on Colorado’s Front Range. This book is built on Craven’s successful fly-tying classes, which start out with simple flies and work toward more complex patterns, all the while teaching techniques and introducing materials by tying popular patterns that catch fish in Eastern and Western streams. This series of lessons show how flies build on one another, enabling readers to tie a wide range of patterns simply by breaking them down into parts. Craven illustrates the progression with his meticulous directions to fingerbusters like Copper Johns, Stimulators, and Humpies. This book, which is sure to become a standard text for basic fly tying, covers 17 flies (including recipes for popular variations), including the Brassie, Black Beauty, RS2, Hare’s Ear, Pheasant Tail, Prince Nymph, Copper John, Woolly Bugger, Elk Hair Caddis, Stimulator, Adams, Rusty Spinner, Parachute Blue-Winged Olive, X Comparadun, Royal Wulff, Humpy, and Goddard Caddis.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61599 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

From the Publisher
1,000 color photos.

About the Author
Charlie Craven is president of Charlie’s Fly Box in Old Towne Arvada, Colorado. He designs flies for Umpqua Feather Merchants and was the fly tier and photographer for Barr Flies (978-0-8117-0236-2).

Customer Reviews

Simply the best
I have tied flies for 43 years. I have tied commercially while in high school and college. I own or have read virtually every book on fly tying, and have taken classes with a slew of great tiers. This is, quite simply, the best basic fly tying book I have ever seen. The organization is great. The selection of basic techniques is spot on, and the photography is superb in it's clarity and explanatory power. This is no surprise coming from Charlie, whose website has set the standard for great patterns and photographs. He says he'll do another book someday. I can't wait.

Outstanding Book for those who tie- Beginner and Experienced
If only this book were around when I started tying 8 years ago I could have avoided the year and a half snails pace of getting up to speed. The book is organized around learning all the essential tying techniques. By the time you complete the book and tying the associated flies you realize that any fly you would want to tie in the abyss of patterns out there is some kind of combination of all the techniques you learned in the book, thus you are equipped to tie just about any fly you want. Equally important is the critical information on material selection. The other extremely unique aspect of this book is that the author took the pain staking time to take very detailed step by step pictures (about 60 pictures per fly) of each and every little step of tying the fly leaving no room for uncertainty to the reader about whether or not he is on track to tying the fly correctly.
On top of all of this the reader gets the huge benefit of endless small tips that come only from someone who has been tying for 30 years like Charlie Craven. If you are a beginner, you will learn the right way to tie with crystal clear instructions. If you are a veteran tyer you will be tying better flies.

Charlie Craven's Basic Fly Tying
This book contains very clear instructions on technique, and outstanding photography. If you only owned one book on fly tying, this should be it.