I attended the tweed and ascot ASFI - Atlantic Salmon Fly International - symposium gig in Renton yesterday. Fly tiers from 13 or so countries, folks who take fly tying seriously. Learned a few things, for instance, I am way too impatient in tying flies, and my results show it. And I'm a slow tier at that.
And because regular manufactured store-bought hooks are of insufficient quality for the art quality flies these folks tie, a few of them have taken to making their own hooks, one at a time, more or less. So I happened upon the table where hook-maker Byron Bjerke, of Snohomish, WA was demonstrating the process and invited me to give it a try.
The process begins with straight pieces of piano wire, lots of them. Piano wire comes already tempered and has to be annealed, or have the temper removed in order to work with it. Byron and the others pool their wire to have this process done commercially, since their mass of wire amounts to a minimum batch for the commercial outfit.
Byron has made a jig to slice the barb on individual pieces of steel wire, but I think in "production" mode he can barb up to 6 or 8 pieces at a time. Then I put the wire in a standard fly tying vise and with small files shaped the hook point and barb until I thought it looked "right." Then Byron helped by finishing it off, because "right" to me and "right" to these upscale fly tiers are separated by a noticeable gap. After filing, then the steel is finished by hand sanding with little strips of fine sandpaper.
The next step is bending the hook, using one of the many jigs Byron has, depending on the hook size and style of bend. There are several that are common to the classic salmon flies.
So now I have a not finished hook that I brought home because the next step involves re-heating the steel to red hot and then immersing it in oil, which results in a too-brittle temper. Then it needs to be re-heated again, this time to 600 degrees F and allowed to air cool, producing the amount of temper that is desirable in a fishing hook.
All this for a "hook." If you, like me, think some of the commercial fly tying hooks are kinda' spendy at around $1.00 each, then these show fly hooks are really steep. They run about $9.00 or $10.00 per hook, or $5.00 for "seconds." Ouch! I guess I'll stop complaining that decent hooks are no longer available at $1.38 per hundred, like I used to buy them from Herter's in the early 1970s.
The show, or symposium, or whatever it is, appeared to be very successful, but it's clearly focused on an obscure niche segment of the fly fishing and fly tying community. Nowhere else will you find such a quantity of jungle cock, blue and scarlet macaw, blue chatterer, Indian crow, and other uncommon fly tying material.
Sg
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