West Virginia Wildlife from Eyewitness News

Learn How To Tie Flies

Trout season is in full swing and we have a fun way for you to enjoy catching the state's number one game fish.

March 4, 2009
Reporter: Patrick McMurtry
Videographer: Brad Rice

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There really is nothing quite like having the cranberry to yourself, just you, your fly rod and a stream full of trout. The only thing better would be if you tied those flies yourself. That's what Charles krepps does and he says it's not that hard.

Charles Krepps ties flies all the time and says, "It's really easy to do, some basic things to do is to know what kind of flies you're going to tie, be it for trout, bass or blue gill. Then gather some flies and one way to do that is to use a siene, you can collect different flies from the stream bottom."

Once you figure out what the fish are eating, the next step is to decide what you need to make a fly look like food, and just as important, what life cycle that bug is in.

Charlie says,"Some of these bugs have a life-span of more than a year."

Nymph or adult, it's time to start picking out the right stuff to make the flies look real.

Charlie says, "Some materials float well, some sink well. Typically, deer and elk hair float well where as musk rat would sink. We use a lot of rabbit fur and some squirell tail, we use some syhthetic material."

I'll mount this fly hook in the device, I normally put some glue on the hook shank, I put thread on, etc."

And just that easy, Charlie has a flie any trout would love to hit....except when I'm using it. For West Virginia Wildlife, I'm Patrick McMurtry, Eyewitness News.