Reason 4 - Personalization
If you want to start tying flies to “save money” let me just hit you with some cold water. It won’t save you any appreciable amount. Don’t get me wrong, you can do the math with hook and bead prices, thread and dubbing, and it will all look great on paper. But let me assure you, as soon as you walk into that fly shop that you just wanted to “check out”, you’ll see all those colors, body wraps, fluorescent threads, UV resins, tools, vises, etc., and you’ll forget all about that excel spreadsheet. Soon you’ll find yourself grinning ear to ear, and wondering where your paycheck went. I personally tie custom assortments commercially, and tie flies in a quantity that is high enough to consistently save money in my personal fishing endeavors, as well as provide me with work. For tyers operating on a smaller scale, it is not the same. However, money isn’t the reason that the proficient and complete angler should tie flies. If mass produced commercially available flies provided exactly what I wanted to see in my bugs, I wouldn’t have much of a reason to tie. Mass produced commercially available flies simply don’t do this. I tie flies because I want them a certain way. I want specific proportions, weights, styles, and durability that cannot be found outside of my own tying. This differs from person to person. Many other tyers would want my flies to be tweaked differently for their fishing, and likewise, their flies wouldn’t satisfy my fishing needs. This is why the complete angler needs to tie flies. Each angler is going to have a slightly different style of tying, to suit their slightly different style of fishing.
Long story short, you need to tie.