Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Kevin Onsrud learned fly tying by refusing to move on: he would tie the same mallard flank wing over and over, cut it off, and repeat until that one step was reliable. He collected roughly 75 tying books because three different written explanations of the same step often make it finally click.
Kevin Onsrud is a middle school social studies teacher, self-taught fly tier and artist whose hand-drawn fly fishing designs have been produced as stickers for hook companies and conservation fundraisers.
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What is the fastest way to get better at fly tying?
Kevin Onsrud's method is to isolate a single step and repeat it in isolation. He would tie a mallard flank wing onto a bare hook, cut it off with a razor blade, and tie it again - no body, no tail, no hackle - until that one operation was reliable. His conclusion is that you cannot master a fly until you have mastered its steps, and that once you own the steps you can tie essentially any pattern. Proportion and measurement were the hardest part to learn patience for.
How many fly tying books does it take to learn one technique?
Onsrud keeps roughly 75 fly tying books, old and new, and the reason is not completeness - it is redundancy. Different authors explain the same step differently, and he often needed to read three or four interpretations of a single technique before it clicked. He treats internet video the same way: read a bit, watch someone, watch someone else, and eventually a version lands that matches how you learn.
How did a fly tier turn his patterns into hand-drawn sticker art?
Onsrud wanted stickers of his own flies and asked an Alaska-based artist to draw one. What came back was stylized rather than literal - not what he had in mind - and instead of a transaction they built a trade: she taught him the sticker process, he taught her to tie flies. The workflow starts with a sketch on watercolor paper, moves to paint, gets photographed, and goes out to a printing company. He prints in runs as small as a dozen. He later moved from watercolor to colored pencil.
What is the "Only Flies" sticker and what does it support?
Onsrud saw a boat with an "only fins" sticker on it and adapted the idea into "Only Flies" - a deliberate inversion of the pay-for-photos model, meant to recognize women anglers' skills rather than their appearance. He contacted Casting for Recovery, asked permission to tag them, and donates 100 percent of the proceeds. Two of the buyers on his shop turned out to be regional board members for the organization who had found the sticker by searching for fly fishing stickers, which opened up local connections he did not have.
Why does he study master tiers instead of popular ones?
Onsrud deliberately separates popularity from mastery. He picked out the tiers he judged to be the best in the craft rather than the ones with the largest followings, then studied them repeatedly - reading the books, watching the videos, going back again. His view of Instagram is that it can intimidate and motivate at the same time, and that the useful part is having a visible record of your own progress to look back on.
What is the difference between being product-oriented and process-oriented?
Onsrud describes himself as product-oriented by nature: he wants the finished fly and the finished drawing immediately. A colored-pencil artist in his group told him a single realistic fish drawing takes a month or more if it is done properly, and that he would have to commit to the wait. Onsrud's read on this is that real artists set a finished piece aside and start the next one, because the improvement lives in the process, not in admiring the product.
What is the hardest fly style to master?
For Onsrud it is Catskill-style dry flies. They demand exact proportion work, technique that takes a long time to develop, and materials that are increasingly hard to source - he singles out tail material as the scarcest. He hoards wood duck flank feathers because a botched wing is nearly impossible to salvage. He knows most of these flies will never be fished, since a single trout ruins a duck quill wing, but the look of a properly built wing is what keeps him working on it.
Key takeaways
- Practice a single fly tying step in isolation - tie it, cut it off, tie it again - before attempting a whole pattern.
- Read three or four different authors' explanations of the same technique; the one that makes it click is often not the first.
- Keep an archive of your own work, whether on Instagram or elsewhere, so you can see progress you cannot feel day to day.
- Choose your models by mastery of the craft rather than by follower count.
- Shift focus from the finished object to the process - realistic colored-pencil work can take a month per piece and rushes badly.
- Small-run art and stickers can fund conservation groups directly; donating proceeds also builds real connections with those organizations.
