I’ve spent more money than I care to tote up on fly tying equipment and materials since I restarted fly fishing last year. I now tie all of my own flies. There are still a handful of residual commercially bought flies in my boxes, but they are rarely (/never) used patterns. Pretty much everything James and I use to catch fish these days, I tie myself. I haven’t dealt with a huge number of products and retailers, but my experiences have mostly been extremely positive. J. Stockard is where I buy most of my materials. My only minor complaint is that while they offer free shipping on orders over $100, it’s glacially slow. Like, wait 10 days slow. To get basic UPS ground you have to pay a flat rate of $10, which is more than most outlets charge for small packages with little weight. But I can live with it. They’ve only messed up one order, when they left out a spool of UTC Ultra wire from a large order. They were immediately responsive, but when the spool arrived three days later, it was the wrong sized wire. Again they apologized, explained they’d checked and the wrong size had been put in the bin, and then in another three days the correct spool arrived. Stuff happens, they were nice about it and friendly and responsive. I continue to send most of my materials business their way.
But it’s not always like that. In his book “Simple Flies,” Morgan Lyle recommends Performance Flies. They are a source for competition hooks and materials. Their website looks great. It seems to be updated regularly. I placed an order on March 22 for a Coq de Leon cape listed as in stock. I got an auto-response email acknowledging the order. Then nothing happened. I checked the order status online and it showed “Processing”. Eventually I emailed, asking whassup? Nobody replied. I have since emailed multiple times, and been ignored. Two months later the order shows the same on their page. I got the cape from somewhere else, but their page says the order can’t be cancelled and they ignore my emails. Conclusion: stay the heck away from Performance Flies. [Update 6/22/2016 – Kevin Compton of Performance Flies finally got back to me. He said he hadn’t received my earlier emails, apologized profusely, and refunded my money. He said they’d just opened a retail store in Spruce Creek the week of my order and things were chaotic – they sold their only two of the tailing cape I ordered and hadn’t received another from Whiting. Well, okay, apology accepted. I will give them another try in future. They certainly are a source of a ton of Euro goodness.]
And another gripe on equipment. Mostly the standard stuff lives up to the billing. Dr. Slick stuff is only eh-okay. Their whip finishing tools are really flimsy (the bamboo handled one came completely apart when I dropped it on the floor; okay, I dropped it on the floor, but the thing just exploded and the cheap glue holding the bamboo bit on completely gave way). I went through most of their scissors. The cheaper ones aren’t really worth it, but their Razor Scissors live up to the billing. But anyway, my complaint is about bobbins. I got a couple of the regular Wasatch bobbins sold by TenkaraBum to start with. They work great. Then I got a Rite Bobbin (half-hitch) from somewhere. I fell in love with it. It’s a pain to switch thread, but (seemed like) a great bobbin to leave your go-to thread in with the tension precisely adjusted. So I purchased three more from J. Stockard. Well. It became obvious one of them was a dud immediately. It broke any thread you put in it within 10-20 seconds of wrapping. I assume there’s some burr or rough metal edge just inside the tip of the bobbin, because that’s where it reliably breaks the thread. I had it in mind to put it under a microscope and see if I could identify the problem and fix it. But I haven’t gotten around to it. A second one was a lot more insidious. You could tie two or three flies with no problem. But then, magically, the thread would break. I assumed for a good while the issue was me, that I was catching the hook point or something. Or maybe the 8/0 thread spool I was using. It became clear there was a problem with the bobbin as I’ve started mass tying Frenchies and Beadhead Hotspot Killer Bugs. It dawned on me as the thread would magically break, again right at the tip, when obviously clear of the hook tip and obviously not under undue tension. It can happen twice tying a single fly. It can happen once every three flies. But it happens, again and again, and it’s the bobbin. I switched to the Wasatch regular bobbin using exactly the same thread. A dozen flies later, the thread hasn’t broken a single time.
Well, the Rite Bobbin people seem like nice folks, but all I have are the data in front of me. I bought four of their products, and two of them simply don’t work. (I actually have barely used the third of the ones I bought as a group, and am now leery of it.) Not going to be buying another.