>>1424124>Tying is too expensive/time-consuming.A cheap wooly bugger tied by some African is gonna run me a dollar per online. Good ones are about $2, after shipping.
Using good hooks, good chenille, and good hackles I can tie one for about 40 cents. Using decent hooks and whichever close-enough feathers and yarn I could get from my local hobby store I can tie one for a quarter, sometimes less (I got a hank of scrubby-sparkle yarn and a bunch of clearance feather boas from a Jo-Ann's a year ago so I'm looking at the hook plus about 5 cents' worth of feathers and yarn to tie a damn nice crystal bugger).
Good fly vises are not cheap. Good bobbins aren't cheap. I acknowledge this. But you don't need the good ones to start tying, and you can make most of the other tools from household scrap. Plus the tools will last a lifetime of use, so their cost is amortized across all the flies you tie. If you're serious about tying, that will be thousands of flies.
>muh time investmentI can knock out a foam panfish ant in 45 seconds including getting the hook in the vise. Assuming you're comparing to the absolute cheapest fly on the market at around 60 cents, I'm saving about 38 cents a fly
>20 cents for a Mustad dry fly hook in any size between 18-10>less than 1 cent in thread>less than 1 cent in foam (perforated foam shelf liner/carpet gripper (40 square feet for $13 on amazon yields about 3000 flies at 2 bumps per fly)>less than 1 cent in head cementSo if I need 100 foam ants per season, I could:
>spend $60 and 15 minutes shopping onlineor
>spend $22 and 75 minutes making them myselfIs $38 worth an hour of your time, spread out however you want?
>inb4 opportunity cost, second job, etc etc etcIf you gave a shit about that you would not be on 4chan. You have an assload of free time.
There's about 20 different patterns I've tied enough I can do in around a minute.
