Jay Aylward

Jay Aylward is a fly fishing guide and fly tier in Massachusetts. Jay’s love for fly fishing and fly tying blew up when he was in his early 20’s and moved out west and started tying and fishing everyday. He’s worked at fly shops, guided for years, and has been tying flies since the age of 9. 

Jay believes that once you start tying, the only limitations you have are your materials on hand and your imagination. Jay has designed many flies for trout and bass, including specialty bass flies to fish deep cover.

Fly tying has been around for a while. When were your interests peaked?

Gosh, good question. Fly fishing and tying have been part of my family for a few generations. My grandfather gave me my first tying vise at 9 years old, along with a bunch of materials. Most of my early tying creations were the musing of a young kid and were really clunky. I drew inspiration from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dinosaurs, and the colored glossy’s featured in Fly Fisherman Magazine. As you could imagine, I was just having fun and exploring the tools, materials, and methods.

My grandfather did not live close by so I didn’t have any formal tying  instruction as a kid. My dad is a fly angler, so he showed me a couple of things, but tying wasn’t really his bag. We would make regular trips to our local sporting goods store, who had a good selection of fly fishing tackle and some materials. They did have fly fishing videos for rent. I think I rented a VHS by Gary Borger or maybe Whitlock twice a month for a year. After which time I could tie a pretty rough Caddis Pupa, a decent Bugger, and an alright Adams. I lacked many of the materials used in these videos, so I was constantly improvising. 

I tied flies off and on until I turned 25 and moved west. At which time my love for fly fishing blew up and I started tying and fishing everyday. About this time, access to good materials was easier which helps a lot with the quality of the flies produced. I lived in Utah for a couple of years, and then headed to Missoula, where I worked and then managed a fly shop. Once there, I had almost unfettered access to the entire fly tying catalogs of all of the major distributors and started tying and fishing with fantastic anglers and it really dialed my fly tying skills.

What are some of the fish species you tie flies for?

I tie mostly for trout and bass, directly for my guiding business. I also tie for pike, and in-shore saltwater species.

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What was your first fishing experience/When did you begin fly fishing?

My grandfather gave me and my sister fly rod set-ups when I was 8, along with a British intro to flyfishing VHS. I have vivid memories of watching that video with my sister followed by hitting the yard for some casting practice. These sessions mostly degenerated into us sword fighting with the butt sections. 

That same year, my dad took me to the Westfield River for some Saturday adventures. I caught a series of panfish, smallies, and one trout that first year. Mostly, under my dad’s supervision. I was a pretty hyper-active kid, so my attention would wane if the fishing was slow and I would end up crashing through the water and chasing frogs on the banks. 

My father and uncle started taking me up to Pittsburg NH to fish the upper Connecticut River when I was 12 and I remember my first solo Brookie from that trip. It was day two and my dad said I could fish on my own, I had to stay in a certain beat and had to be at the rendezvous spot at a designated time. I agreed to these terms and was super excited to have some unsupervised time on the river. 

I was having a tough day; I had hooked a nice fish earlier, it had wrapped around a couple of rocks and it broke off, that being my third bug to snap off in a row, my coffer of flies was dwindling.

In resignation I sat down to take a little break and tied on a black stonefly, I took a lazy man approach and sat on a rock and cast my stonefly across a riffle and swung it across. On my second cast I hooked a fish and brought it in quickly. I remember picking the 6” fish out of the water and being blown away by the intricate beauty of the animal. It unhooked easily and leaped out of my hand and disappeared into the water.

What is currently on your vise?

Currently, I am using a HMH TRV, with an extended stem.

Tell us about any flies that you’ve designed yourself.

Trout flies

Sculpin Ayl 
This is a double bunny variation, in which I tie the two rabbit strips off the sides of the back of the hook. This way the rabbit has a tendency to swim side-to-side, instead of up and down. I only do the tail segment with bunny, and tie in shingled stacks of marabou for the head. 

Loop Wing Emergers
These are quigley cripple inspired. I dress them in Hendrickson, Light Cahill, and Sulphur colorations. The CDC wing lets the back end sit in the film just right for some of our selective rising trout on the Deerfield and Westifeld Rivers. I use antron as a shuck and wrap the abdomen with Pheasant, tie in two CDC feathers facing forward and fold them back onto themselves to make two loop wings facing the front of the hook. I then tie in the hackle feather, add a small dubbing ball behind the wing and wrap the hackle and finish the fly.

Pop Top Spinner
I came up with this to be able to fish spinner falls in riffles. Basically a spinner pattern tied with a foam post tied in Para-loop style.

Pop Top Nymph
This pattern I use to catch selectively feeding trout that are eating just in the surface film. It is a pretty easy pattern that incorporates a strip of foam tied in para-loop style, with a sparse soft hackle collar, that I will thin with a pair of scissors if it is too thick.

Seeing Stone
This is a stonefly nymph that I fish around us during the spring feeding fest. With the onset of spring these fish start to see more anglers and more stonefly imitations. The seeing-stone’s glass bead gives this fly a reflective magnified color at the head and sets it apart from many of the factory stonefly nymphs that get fished heavily in Western Mass

Bass Flies

Kermit Kusher
This is an early season frog pattern. I tie it on an 8089 hook and is tied as a diver. I tie the tail as I would a bass popper. Instead of a deer hair collar, I use 3mm foam, then add the stacked deer hair head. I trim the deer hair to be the front end of the diver shorter than the foam collar. This fly does a good job of imitating a frog in bass water. The foam reduces the wind resistance and is lighter and easier to cast than the deer hair counterparts. 

Pad Racer
As any largemouth angler will tell you, fishing the salad is tough and big fish have a tendency to hang in the deep cover. As a fly angler, weed guards can only get you so far, and the deep salad has been off limits to us. I came up with the pad racer to tackle this problem. It’s basically a counter weighted gurgler. And I can throw this on top of the weed beds and retrieve it over the top of these beds.

Stanko Wurm
Another salad fly. It is my response to the senko-worm. I put a weed guard and a rabbit strip on a g-lock hook. On the front I attach a shank and dress it with a dubbing loop of craft fur and translucent flash.

Dragon Whelp
Our Largemouths crush dragonflies, especially in the morning when the sun is starting to warm things up. I have had mornings where you couldn’t buy a fish on a popper, because these Larry’s are keyed in on the Dragons. This is a smaller fly, I tie it on a size 4 light wire, wide gap hook. I use the Cohen Creatures dragon tails. I color them to what I see on the water, typical colors are: red, brown, green, and black.

Mr. Whiskers
When the summer draws on and the largemouth gets finicky about picking flies off the surface, I tie on a Mr. Whiskers on either an intermediate fly line to a sink tip and fish it around sunken structures to get Mr Larry to the net. It also works as a Smallmouth fly and I typically fish it on the surface for smallies, the subtleness of the fly while fished on the surface can produce some incredible females. Check out my Bass Blog for fishing instructions and fly recipes. Jays Bass Blog

DFS Slurpee
This fly is for pre-spawn smallies and was developed with the Brian Comfort the owner of the Deerfield Flyshop. It is tied on a jig style streamer hook and is designed to drop hard when it hits the water. Fish this around sunken wooden structure and rocky outcroppings when the water is high and the spawn has not yet started. The combination of Craft Fir, Kreelex FLash, and Cohen Carp dub make this fly irresistible, to early season smallies.

Icelandic Changer
I needed a medium sized changer to represent the smaller bass and suckers in my systems. I really like Icelandic sheep hair because it holds its color really well in the water, because of this I can blend colors together to get a good representation of natural foods and not have to worry that the colors will bleed once wet. The downside to ICelandic sheep wool is that it can shrink when drying, so running a comb through it before it dries out can be a good step in keeping this fly functional for many seasons.

Hawg Goblin
This is a classic diver shaped deer hair bug. I tie it using stacked deer belly hair, Various hackle feathers, flash and rubber legs for the tail. I tie this relatively dense and fish it slower than most. My best Largemouth to date have come from fishing this fly at low light near the structure.

Deerhair Deceivers
I tie these on lighter gauge wide gap hooks like the Ahrex NS 122 in a size 4. I have found that these are best fished on an intermediate line or sink tip for both smallies and largemouth. They tend to pick up good fish fished off of weed beds and rocky structures where juvenile fish hang out. If you really load up the head of this fly with deer hair it also can be reverse jigged.

What is it that draws you to fly fishing and fly tying?

I love fly fishing and tying and I think the biggest draw for me as a fly tyer and fly fisher, is it is the perfect intersection of art and science. More specifically, taking your observations and translating that into creations at the vise.

Who is your biggest inspiration/mentor?

I really enjoy the writing of Ernest Schwiebert and draw a lot of inspiration from his writing.

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What is your favorite book about fly tying?

I think my favorite book about fly tying is the Benchside Reference by Leeson and Schollmeyer.

What are some favorite fly tying resources that you direct others to?

It’s hard to beat the resources that are available on Youtube. I really enjoy the videos produced by Tight Line Productions.

What was the first fly pattern you tied?

Wooly Bugger.

Is there a fly style that you are still interested in learning about?

I am really interested in getting more serious with my para-loop patterns.

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What advice would you give to someone thinking about beginning fly tying?

Just start. Once you learn the basics, remember that the only limitations in tying are materials on hand and your imagination.

What’s the first fly you typically recommend a beginner to learn to tie?

Buggers, and p-tails. I think these two patterns give a good base to build your tying foundation.

Favorite and least favorite thing about tying flies?

My favorite thing about fly tying is two fold. As a developer of flies, I really like to try and figure out fly solutions to fishing problems. For example, the salad problem while fishing for largemouth. 

From a professional tier perspective, I feel a part of people’s success when they use my flies. For example, when I send a shipment of flies down to Chile and I see pictures of clients with my flies hanging out of fish’s mouths. A part of me feels involved in their day, even though I am not there.

What fly tying technique took you the longest to learn?

Ha ha, this is a funny question! Probably hackling flies to get the hackle feathers to lay-right. This took me a long-time since I started pretty young. In my opinion, fly tying can be quick to learn and takes a lifetime to master. My skills are always waxing and waning depending on how much time I spend at the vise in a given week.

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Let’s talk about fly tying equipment and materials:

Tell us about your scissors. Do you use a generic brand or specific style, and why? 

I am not particular when it comes to my scissors for general use, I look for scissors that have half circles at the base of the blade, these half circles are really good for cutting wire, without having to take the scissors off of your fingers. 

For my deerhar work, I like really good quality razor scissors for removing hair from the hide. Both Loon and Dr. Slick make good Razor scissors. I really like the curved scissors for some of the shaping work and Dr. Slick and Cohen make good ones. These scissors hold a special place in my tying tool caddy and I only use them for deer hair work and only for their intended use.

 What about bobbins: tension or no tension?

I like the tension adjusting bobbins, but I like to be able to switch out threads quickly, so I keep  my staple thread on my tension bobbins and have some ceramic insert bobbins that I also have for specialty thread.

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Your tying vise is practically sacred. What is your go-to, and why? How many did you try before deciding this was your favorite?

Right now I tie on an HMH TRV and I really like it. I still have my original cast iron vise from when I was a kid and I tied on the Montana Mongoose by Griffin for years. 

I am a full rotary style tier and I need a rotary vise that has a bobbin cradle, in order to be efficient at the vise. I am a fan of Dyna-king and Renzetti also.

Where do you source your fly-tying supplies? Why do you choose these resources over others?

For natural materials, there is no better place to get them, than in person. Since there is so much variation in natural materials, I like to look at what I am buying. That way I can assure myself that I got the best of what was available. I have ordered natural materials online too many times, and have ended up with what was obviously a really bad pack of feathers. 

Do you have a particular type of hackle that you prefer over others?

I am a huge fan of Whiting feathers. For both my dry flies and my soft hackle flies. Their quality and consistency is really hard to beat

Do you prefer synthetic or natural materials when you use it? (dubbing, hackle, bucktail, etc.)

I am a bit stuck in the natural material world. Partly, because I am a little traditional, also it’s what I have been using forever. I think if you can do it with a natural material you are likely to get better action in the water. Although, I do really like to use anton in my dubbing and for shucks and other things, because it goes translucent when wet.

What brand of hooks do you prefer to tie on?

Hooks…. I tie on a lot of my trout flies on Montana Fly Company hooks. Most of my bass and pike ties are done on AHREX and GAMAKATSU.

What is your preference in head cement and resin?

My favorite fly tying glue is called liquid fusion. It is a water based adhesive that can be thinned with water and dries very strong. I use this for almost all of my bass, pike, and trout streamers. 

For my dry flies, I use the Loon head cement.

Let’s talk about thread… How should a tier approach choosing the right thread for their fly?

I use a lot of the UTC 70 and 140 denier threads. I really like these for most of my tying. If I am tying smaller flies, I like the Veevus threads in 8/0 or smaller.

What’s the one fly tying material you can’t live without? What’s so special about it?

I am not sure which ONE material I can’t live without, I guess it would be Marabou, since it is so versatile and you can get a lot of movement out of it. 

The tool that I can’t live without and I am serious is my dubbing loop spinner. I tie so many dubbing loops, that I would be at a loss without it.

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Do you tie for personal use, or do you sell your flies?

Most of what I tie is used for my guiding business, I do tie some commercially for individuals and shops.

What is your favorite fly pattern to tie? What is the intended species for the fly?

I think my favorite fly to tie is the one I can’t tie today. It seems when I am at the vise working on a tying project I really want to tie something else. I guess if I had to pick one it would be deer hair poppers and divers for bass, oh wait, I mean crippled emerges for trout, oh wait, I mean…..

Where can people find your work?

Instagram –  @handmade_angler 
Website – www.handmadeangler.com 

Those are two good resources to see what I have been working on. I do flies for sale periodically at the Deerfield Fly Shop in South Deerfield.

Any parting thoughts you’d like us to add?

This is the best sport ever!!!

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