I made my usual Wednesday night Beer and Cigarettes visit to my good buddy Warwicks last night… Warrels as he’s known to many ( and 1st Lady to a select group of others ) has recently returned to the Fly tying obsession after a long hiatus of throwing lures and stupid shit like that.. granted I was along for a lot of that lure throwing tom foolery, but I’m writing the story here so claim no responsibility…

But I digress… Anyway, Warwick is an engineer, and a smart fucker with some bloody good ideas… one which he showed me last night whilst sitting in his tackle room and at his tying desk… I recently was forced to move house, so all my tying shit is kinda packed away, so I’m always grateful for the chance to jump onto a vice to spin a feather…

Back to Warwick’s Fly Hack trick.. We’d planned to tie a few over size Crabby type things.. And anyone who has ever tied Merkin style bodies on Merkins, or Toads or whatever, will be familiar with the annoying finicky bit when you first lay down a new strip of material to figure 8 into place and you end up catching bit of the previous one whilst you trying to bind in the new one… its kak…

So this nifty little hack removes all that kak… Head to your wife’s Vainty Chest/Case/Drawer/Handbag or whatever, or if you scared of her go to the chemist and pick yourself up one or two of these little hair clips:

Now the way you wanna use these is pretty self explanatory from the images below… super simple to clip over the shank and push the fibres back, and hold them in place while you tie in the next piece… and repeat as you go along..

Great thing is these little clips can be used to hold all sorts of fibres/materials out the way, not just when tying crab bodies..

So man up, go steal your wife’s hair clip, and save yourself a shit ton of frustration… you’ll speed up your tying immensely, which will give you more time to drink beer… win win scenario in my book…

Thanks to Warwick for the nifty trick… and the beers…

The results of last nights manly Hair Clip efforts.. a couple big crabby things that hopefully get eaten somewhere along the line..