Dan,
After reading your post I went through Don's again, and I never found any negative comments on beginning tiers in Don's post. Don just offered his opinion - which after all is the purpose of a discussion list - and I don't think there's any need to become defensive.
I love tying, and I like swapping flies. Not because I would need flies, but because I like to share with and learn from other tiers, whether they are beginners or masters. IMO anyone who enters a swap should try and give it his best shot in order to share the best that he or she can. Nobody should be expected to do more. But nobody who takes himself or his fellow swappers seriously should want to do less, either. So if I never tied a crease fly I would not enter a crease fly swap
That being said - anyone in for a parachute/paraloop swap? 15 tiers of any level who want to give this theme their best shot, flies in by 1 Feb (Holland)? I'll meister it if there's any interest.
Martin
---
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Harriman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 11:40 PM
Subject: Re: [VFB] Perpetual Swap / to All Swappers
Excuse me?? This is what the folks on this list think of beginners?
DonO; You sure tie great looking flies. I am glad that you can even get more than 300 dollars for them. I think that is great! I wish that I were half as good as you. Maybe even a quarter as good. Damn, I just wish that I was a hair on your ass as good.
I am a beginning fly tier. I thought that doing the occassional swap would help me to get better. But if this is the consensus of this group, I can see that my unworthy attempts are not welcome here. It is great that some folks have a fly shop within walking distance of their house. The nearest one to me is a 250 mile round trip. I just can't see the justification in making that drive just to be in a swap.
You can rest assured that from now on, I will not enter any more swaps. Yes, I entered the crease fly swap. I was pretty proud of the one I tied, even though it didn't measure up to the standards of this elite group. It was only the second fly I ever tied for a swap.
I will send your fly back to you and I will do so for anyone else that thinks they got shafted from my unworthy fly in the crease fly swap.
I think that I will start to hang out at FOAL. At least they don't come out and blatantly belittle beginners like you just did.
Bye Dan Harriman Orange, Texas
At 04:25 PM 11/20/2004, you wrote:
As for the quality of flies, the same goes for the regular swaps. There are
tiers that put out a worthy effort in the swaps, and there are tiers who
don't. Is it fair for one tier to put in the effort to trim wings, add eyes
and legs and feelers- and another to submit a fly with 3 wraps of chenille
and a hackle-tip wing? I personally feel that if someone is such a beginner
that the flies they submit will become throw-always, it would only be fair
to go down to the local shop and buy the flies required for the swap, and
just let the meister know. This is not unfair, and the step-up in quality
would serve everyone, and the swapper would still get nice different
patterns in return. They would thus still progress in their skills until
they felt confident in submitting their own. Plus, better tiers would sign
up for swaps if the reciprocation was better.
If we all exhibited the conscientiousness that Nick and Rodney do in their
approach, the step-up in the swap flies would be drastic. It's not that all
swap flies are poor now, as a whole, actually it's the opposite. It's just
that a certain % of flies of each swap could use some more effort.
Flame me if you wish, but I think that it would be fair for swap-meisters to
ask for submissions of photographs of swap flies from participants. This
would serve two purposes. 1st it would weed out the throw-away quality
flies. 2nd, and even better, the meister could offer constructive criticism
for the tier to improve his entry for the swap. Now how cool is that?
Now I'm not advocating that all flies for fishing have to be exotic artwork
flies. Far from it. Simple flies catch fish. But there should be an
equality of effort to make things fair for the tiers who put forth great
efforts in their entries. An hour's effort per fly (or more for some)
should not be traded for 2 minute's effort on the parts of others.
I'll respect everyone's opinion in this. I've had comments made to me in the past about the quality of the flies in swaps, and maybe now's the time to address it, with the comments on the perp box.
Sine the vfb is the forum for swapping flies, I'll give the floor (screen) to Byard and let him comment on my thoughts and give his.
DonO
If at first you don't succeed, maybe you shouldn't try sky diving!
dit dit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.796 / Virus Database: 540 - Release Date: 11/13/2004
