Beginning Fly Tying

A while back, I stopped by the local fly shop and bought myself some materials so that I could experiment with tying my own flies.  It's something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, but haven't gotten around to it.  My father-in-law had a spare vise and some tools that he is letting me use, so I figured it was time to get down to business.  For my first flies, I decided to do a "Wooly Bugger", since I had heard that they were very simple to tie.  I bought some Black Marabou, and some black feathers.  They weren't the nicest feathers for tying this particular fly, but they were much cheaper, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to learn on some cheaper materials.  I also got some hooks and several different colors of chenille.  One thing that I found interesting is how many variations you could tie of the same fly with very small changes in the materials.  With the few materials I got, I was able to tie several of the variations that they had at the fly shop, and also create a few of my own.  Even though my flies didn't look nearly as neat as some of the ones in the store, I think they looked acceptable, especially for a first time.  It was very satisfying to spend some time creating something.  It was nice to be able to have something to show for a little bit of work.  I'm very excited to take some of these flies out to a reservoir or stream, and at least show the trout what I've been up to, and hopefully they're interested in a bite. 

JS Fiddle

I found a pretty neat site a while ago, and I thought I would write to share it.  It's called JS Fiddle.  http://jsfiddle.net/  Part of my job for the last several years has involved a lot of web programming, and web programming has gradually grown to include more and more javascript.  If you have ever programmed in javascript, you know it can be a frustrating and time consuming proposition.  I'm always looking for things that can make me more productive and less frustrated when I have to write JavaScript.
JS Fiddle doesn't necessarily make it easier to code in JavaScript, but it does make it very convenient to test small examples and figure out what you really want to do before you do it on a larger scale.  It has a portion of the screen dedicated to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and one to output.  You can make all the changes that you want to the source sections, and then render it in the output section.  It's wonderful!  On top of that, it allows you to pick certain JavaScript libraries like jQuery and some others.  You can even choose certain versions of your JavaScript libraries.  This is wonderful for testing and learning.  I strongly encourage you to take a look and give it a try.