Hey Dad, I Did It!
That’s the “wee man,” smiling his little heart out after tying up our Copper Oval Tinsel Chironomid pattern. This time, David did just about everything on his own. He was pretty proud of himself as well he should be. We went over our materials list first and he recalled just about everything we needed. He set up his vice on his own. He put the bead on the hook on his own, and then tightened the hook into the vice. He then started the thread around the shank of the hook.
He tied in the oval tinsel and wound it up to the bead where he had a little problem securing it, but he fixed that up. Then, he tied in his three peacock herl and secured them. The only thing I did was finish it for him with a few half hitches. I didn’t hold anything for him and didn’t have to tell him what to do or how to do it. He’s getting to be an old pro at this! Well.. we still need to do a wee bit of work on a few things:
It will still catch fish, but we need to work on getting some things tightened up a bit with David getting used to using a bit more tension. But this fly is not far off what I tied, all by myself, the very first time, and I was an adult – not a 7 year old kid.
He enjoyed using his new bobbin – a smaller 3″ size that I picked up the other day – a Dr. Slick with ceramic insert. He seemed more comfortable holding and manipulating the smaller size bobbin in his wee hands than the larger one that came in his fly tying kit.
I think I’ll have him tie up a bunch more of these – it will be a good exercise for him to practice his tension while he wraps tinsel around the hook. When he gets it just about right, which I expect he will soon, we’ll move on to tying up some streamers. Then we’ll move back to the woolly bugger and see how well he does completely on his own with that. Of course, David has a say in all of this too – what he wants to tie will be pretty important!
Related: