Not My Forte

I am a very, very poor fly tier.  I am not sure when it all went to hell because I learned the basics relatively quickly, and enjoyed it to the point that I became relatively adept and my flies looked like what you could buy in a shop (for the most part) but somewhere along the line I realized that you don't need "shop" flies to catch fish.  A down and dirty dubbed brown nymphy looking cat puke fly fished just as well as a perfect pheasant tail with the correct number of tail filaments.  It got worse when I started carp fishing.  My personal theory is that carp don't see worth a crap when the moment is nigh.  The second they are faced with a close encounter with your fly they are as like to miss it as they are to eat it...and I have come to believe those instances are less refusal and more "where in the hell did that bug go?" So I simplified further, and my skills (meager to begin with) melted away.  

But I tied today.  One fly. Inspired by Jay at Colorado Fishing Reports I grabbed a sculpin head that I had bought a while back but not used.  These heads are sweet.

As I look at those beady eyes (glued on with zap a gap, and my fingers are still stuck together) I am envisioning the flats of lake MI.  Big, meat eating carp are prowling for gobies and I am chucking monstrous, rabbit strip flies and cackling gleefully as the beastly carp chase them down like smallmouth bass.  Throw this sucker at a Columbia River fish and everything within a mile will spook...so Lake MI is on my mind when I finish off my one fly for the day.

Not pretty, but it will fish.  Good material (beads, hooks, etc) make a difference in my opinion, but if you want to see what a really good tier can do with really good materials, head on over and check out Jay's work.  Absolutely outstanding stuff Jay.