Dennis Potter: Greetings everyone, and fellow Pathological Tiers and Fly designers if you are out there, my name is Dennis Potter, and I am glad that you could join me today for a pattern zam techniques class. Few things I would like to cover before we get started.

First thing that I want you to consider and keep in mind is be comfortable; it's hard enough tiring sometimes so when you are comfortable, so it is important that you are -- good chair is important, something that is adjustable to a certain degree, that's where we can spend a little extra money on, and the height of your vice, we see so very often, vices very high and very low. There are about a few studies done that way we show the ergonomics of the whole thing, the ideal angle if you will of your forearms is about 20 or 25 degrees, which is what I have here, so be comfortable.

Use the best materials and tools that you can; good sharp scissors very important and particularly when it comes to feather products, the quality of the feather products that you use, you really want to spend as much money as you can there, and we will cover that a little more here shortly.

This is going to be a techniques and durability class if you will, this is not about speed and numbers, one of the first thing that goes of the window, when we do tie too fast is durability and proportion, so we are going to, we are not going to worry about rushing things. If you are closer to the beginning end of the time scale, don't worry when your fingers don't seem to work, everybody goes through what I call, ten fat worms. It takes a while for your fingers to really get working the way that you, you want them to work.

A pattern is important, yes we are going to tie a specific pattern, but pattern means nothing without technique, everything is technique oriented. I am also going to be somewhat of name dropper, I won't necessarily tell you things that I don't like but when I am using specific materials, tools, that kind of thing if I can give you a Brand name, I certainly will.

So relax, let's have a good time, and we will tie some great flies, so over the next hour or so and I am glad that you are with us.

The first pattern that we are going to work on is what we call the Fat Head Beetle. This is a redesigned fly from several years ago, and this is one of my favorite little terrestrials. Well, we call it a Beetle, but the important thing with this pattern is that it represents literally thousands of species of bugs. There are 3500 species of Beetle approximately in United States, there are thousands of species of flies and they all same to have one thing in common regardless of size, is shape. Some are round, oval and what we are trying to do with this fly is really mimic that. We don't care what the fish is eating, whether it be a Beetle or a Horsefly or Ear fly, we just want them to eat fly. So this was a fly that encompass all these numerous different species.

So we will get started here, the hook that I am using is just your favorite, Dry fly hook of choice. This is a size 12, I tier these from size 10 through 18, if I had one size that I would stick with, it would be 12 or 14, this is 12, thread we are just going to use a basic black thread, and let's get it started here behind the eye, and just put a basic coating of thread on the hook.

And what we are going to do on this fly, that most flies don't particularly dry flies, is we are going to go beyond the shank which this is right here, shank length or body length, and this kind of a fly is typically going to be from over the hook, barb to the eye, we are going to take about 8 or 10 wraps of this thread, down the bend. This is going to help us make this kind of few long baited the beetle like body that we want.