My name is Pat Cohen, I design Fly tying materials,
fly tying tools, and manufacture flies and I sell them
around the world to fly anglers and fly shops.
There's three kinds of flies.
There's your raw, basic fish catching flies,
there's artistic flies,
and then there's a blend of those two
where they can be artistic and catch fish.
That's where I try to be.
Creating an artistic, beautiful fly,
these things are not just a lure.
These things can be magnificent.
It's a little bit of painting,
it's a little bit of sculpture,
it's a little bit of carving.
You're creating something that blends
both functionality and art.
So to tie a fly, especially a bass bug,
the most important thing is to have a vice
that will hold your hook
as absolute steady and sturdy as possible.
You're putting an enormous amount of pressure on the hook
so you need a vice that's going to stabilize that hook
so that you don't pop out of the jaws, hurt yourself,
or break something.
The waxed thread goes onto your hook on the tail section.
It helps the material stick to the hook.
What is important about having flies
that look like something.
You're gonna look at food sources in different ways.
I would have never thought in a million years
that bass eat birds.
All these fish are opportunistic
so if it falls in the water it's fair game.
So this understanding of predator prey relationship
is very, very important.
To make an effective fly you need to understand
what each of those materials does
that make it attractive to fool a fish.
Let's say you can use peacock curl.
It does things in the water.
It throws off color and light in a specific way
that makes fish lose their minds.
If you don't have that knowledge
and you don't have attention to those things
your chances of catching a fish go way down
and then it becomes more about luck
than it does about skill.
Then we begin our tailing materials.
In the case of the bird we use Marabou,
which is a duck feather.
It's a soft flowing feather.
We built up layers so that we could make it look
like a feathered tail, and then we used a feather
from a ring neck pheasant.
It's got a specific mottling on the feathers.
Once that's established we tie that thread off,
we put a little bit of glue on there
to really hold everything.
Durability is the key.
The worst thing possible would be to bring it out
catch one fish and have the fly fall apart.
We're switching to belly hair from a deer.
The hair is hardest at a specific time of year.
The cellular structure of the hair changes.
It makes the hair flow and flit
and that is what you want in a bass bug.
You're creating pressure by packing that hair back
and that's what creates that dense body.
And create patterns and dots and lines.
You cannot make a bass bug without a hair packer.
What you'll need is a tool that can grab
the hook shank with and push that hair back
with maximum force.
There's been various packers that have been made.
Were a little bit flimsy.
I got injured using it, putting a flat hook in my thumb.
I said this is ridiculous this can't happen.
My tool, my packer came out of that.
It came out of a necessity.
A lot of people had the same problem that I had.
Pretty much everybody uses these now.
They've become a staple in the industry.
Part of fly tying to me is opening up
and seeing things a little bit differently.
I wasn't always a fly fisherman.
I tried fly fishing one day out of nowhere.
Feeling that water on my legs, something clicked.
It just felt cool.
It forced me to get in touch with my natural surroundings
and with that river, and understand what was happening.
It's all about taking it all in.
I said, wow, there's this whole magnificent,
beautiful world that if you are in front of your TV
you are missing out on.
I became obsessed with it.
I accidentally fell into bass bug making.
What happened was I went to a big box store,
and I saw these things, so I bought a couple of 'em,
but I caught one fish and this thing exploded on me.
And I said, man, there's gotta be a better way.
Did some homework and then I learned from there.
Just honed it into what I wanted them to be.
I wanted people to recognize these things
for what I felt that they were as I was making them.
I want people to pick them up and study them
and say, "Holy cow, I didn't know you could do that
"with deer hair."
After we build the body up it looks like a giant
caterpillar, like something exploded on your hook.
It's unruly, it's uncontrollable,
we have this giant mess.
From that mess we need to create something that looks
like whatever finished fly is that we're creating.
Then you grab razor blades and you literally carve
this block of flared hair into whatever it is
that you need to shape.
You're forming a shape out of nothing.
You're pulling that image out of this mass of hair.
Where you cut things, changes what it does in the water,
so you have a lot of control at this point.
If you want it to be a baby bird that's fluttering along
on the water, you're going to shape it accordingly.
Creativity is the only thing at this point
that will stop you from making this what you want it
to look like.
Right behind the eye of that hook
you attach your weed guards down.
A weed guard is a piece of monofilament
that I put on the sides of the hook and underneath the hook.
It allows me to throw my fly in places
that fish like to hide, lily pads,
weed beds, fallen down trees.
You would build up the head,
just building thread up,
and you create this tapered beak.
You've gotta put your eyes on there,
but making that head swivel and articulate,
we want this fly to move.
We would put the wings on there
and just kinda finish it up.
It's got eyes, it's got wings,
it's got realistic colors.
All those little things to me are important.
It's all about imitating nature,
and having those it makes you go out
and seek areas differently.
You're gonna seek these areas that maybe you would have
overlooked before because you didn't have
that fly in your box.
I love all of this stuff,
and I love making all of this stuff,
and I love being part of this culture and this community.
It becomes part of you.
Creating an artistic, beautiful fly,
it is my livelihood.
I just put my spin on it, do my thing with it.
Getting in touch with what's going on out there,
it's all about diving into your environment
and taking it all in,
and becoming part of the bigger picture.
And that's a magnificent thing to be part of.