In my attempts to become a more efficient tier I have accumulated quite a bit of tying materials. There are so many that I get a little over whelmed and I'm not sure what exactly to tie. The really annoying thing is when I want to tie something and I'm missing one or two of the materials. I have an idea for a great app. How cool would it be to have an app where you plug in the materials you want to tie with and a list is displayed. The list consists of all the different flies you can tie using those materials. Then if you click on one it would show a tutorial of how to tie that fly. I think this app would do very well. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or know how to create such a thing. I did some hunting on the Internet and found some programs. These programs aren't as nifty as what I thought up. They were made quite a few years ago and are mainly databases. If you put in the work to enter all the patterns you'd use or like to tie these programs would become a nice reference. Here are a couple I've found.
Superfly
Description:
- Tying Bench (Fly Patterns & Materials Inventory)
- Critters (Bugs, Fish & Folks)
- Water (Fishin' Holes & Fishing Logs)
- Library (Notebook, Gallery & Book Inventory)
- Charts & Tables (Leader Formulae, Fish Scale & Hook Charts)
- Utility Belt (Import / Export)
FlyFree
Description
•Track materials and instructions.
•Cross link insects.
•Provide for importing and exporting fly database files.
•Track for hooks and their design and effectiveness.
Both of the programs are fun to play around with. They run fine on Windows 7. There's another app I found that looks like it's based on the same design although they include a bunch of data already entered. There's over 2000 patterns in a program called
Fly Assistant. It costs $35. If you check out the free apps or know of some others please let me know. I'm just getting back into tying and I need all the help I can get. I'm looking for ideas for all these odd ball materials I have.
There use to be one called Fly Source. Unfortunately, it's no longer available. I like the fact that you could print a book of fly patterns, their materials and recipes. I finally gave up on finding exactly what I wanted and carefully chose books that I keep on my bench.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteInteresting idea and already available. If interested, contact me at bobrph2001@yahoo.com, Quick background. I used Superfly for years until W7 ko'd the Access v2 program. I decided to rewrite the database (sorry but to maintain the large array of data only a database will suffice). I later added a material listing that interacts with each pattern. A tyer can easily look up what materials are available. I also added an "alternative" material listing which allows a tyer to assign alternative materials. I do not charge for this product and have given away a large number of copies over the last several years. Does take a little while to setup your materials and pattern (though almost 100 patterns are in the distributed database.) If interested, let me know by email and I will send additional information. It runs as a separate loading application or within Access 2010 if you have this software on your system. Finally, I am slow but surely developing an Libre Office version of the application. It will run on several OS platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac and later Android).
ReplyDelete