Tying terrestrial flies out of foam sheet stock is almost impossible to improve on
By Skip Clement
[dropcap]A [/dropcap]few days ago my subscriber box of blogs and magazine articles had a vid from Orvis-Tim Flagler Tightlines Productions about dealing with foam sheet cut-outs as fly patterns for terrestrials.
For me, foam was always a pain in the arse, but so productive making earthy bugs that float flawlessly… the material can not be passed over.
Cut-outs and crafts do not bring out the artist in me, and the very nature of the beast necessitates I re-enter third-grade art class where I’m, fortunately, trusted with scissors, razors, and intoxicating glues.
What I make in that teacherless third-grade class always sets my confidence back a notch or two. My first ants never look like ants, and I get glue ‘crap’ all over my hands and desk. Every year it was the same thing over and over, and then there’s the sharpies and painting… never mind.
Like the actor Peter Finch who played the news anchor Howard Beale having that famous on-the-air breakdown scene in the 1976 movie Network, “I’m sick and tired of it and not going to take it anymore.”
There’s a better way
Now, I can buy earthy creature cut-out tools and make a season’s ‘supply’ of different sizes of perfectly formed ants, grasshoppers, beetles and so on made out of varying thickness foam and colors of to make thicker “things.”
Don’t you just love easier!
Here’s what I’m talking about . . .
