When handling small flies on the stream, it can be a pain to handle the small fly and get it threaded and tied on the line. I use a circuit tester from radio shack, they run about $3 for a two pack and will easily hold a size 26 while your tying it on the line.

Small creek fly fishing, with a fly using materials that you hunted for, and a rod that was given to you...

I like these tips. As a poor student that already spends too much money on fly fishing products, cheap tricks help. My cheap trick? When learning to tie flies, if a fly comes out crappy, take a razor to it and cut off all the materials. You'll save the hook, waste a little money on materials, and learn how to tie really good flies fast. The loss of materials still amounts to less than tying lessons, and seeing a razor cut through a misproportioned parachute adams you spent 30 minutes on gives you a strong incentive to not mess up again.

The product (well, in reality there are a few) I won't skimp on? Fly boxes - I'll drop over $40 for a nice CF box over some cheap plastic or foam variety any day.

I still have to figure out if fly tying is more economical than just buying flies.

Vince.........not even close on the "tying vs. buying" front. When you look at what you have in the way of a vise, hooks, feathers, fur, thread.......you could easily buy all the flies you would ever need. Now, that being said, the satisfaction of landing a fish on a flie you tied is impossible to assign a price to.

My cheap trick....get a ShamWow. Great for wiping hands or sweat, and, can be soaked and used like a cooler around the neck, plus, cut a good square chunk out of the corner and keep it in the vest. Before adding your floatant, give the fly a light squeeze. It soaks up all the water and (hopefully) fish slime. Now add your floatant and it will float like a cork.

Vince, you're not shopping in the right stores for your hooks, I get good hooks for 7 cents a piece(100 packs), look for Saber hooks. The price is phenominal, then when you look at the quality, they rank up there with the rest of them easily.

I look at any purchasing decision through the lens of, "Is this the last (fill in the blank) I'll ever buy?" If, as in the case of sunglasses, the answer is no, I'm less inclined to spend a lot of coin on something I'll be replacing anyway. Sometimes I can put off an expense indefinitely by deciding to spend the big bucks on my next (whatever)instead of the current one. Often, I find that the cheaper substitute, or a series of them, serves my purpose.

Deeter-
You're lookin' fly in the CHUCKS!

Ditto,on the Chuck Taylor,CONVERSE ALL STAR!
I'm wearin' the same pair as I type. I do have to admit, that I wore the white canvass style, CHUCKS, during basketball season way-back-when.

I "borrowed" the black pair I have on now from my son,Bo, and they are as comfortable as I remembered!

i dub with various types of body hair...

-Cats are an endless source of dubbing, in gray, black, and light cahill.

Chucks? Rock snot!!

The last time I wore Chuck Taylors I was searching for the dimmer switch on the floor board.

Its about time everybody started coming around to cheap...funny how trendy it is now... wonder if it has anything to do with the economy?
This weekend I saw a couple of guys putting a "boat" in a local lake that was made of six plastic barrels, lashed together under a 1x6" pine decked raft. It was the most clever, yet rediculous, thing I have ever seen on the water. They had a bracket for an outboard on it, a carcoal grill, all of their gear... it was a hoot, like something Pat McManus would have cooked up with Rancid Crabtree or Crazy Eddie Muldoon. I am half tempted to build one just to improve on the design. I wish I had taken a picture to post!

My first stripping basket was mom's plastic container in which she kept windex, floor polish and various small household cleaning items...5" tall x 14" long x 8" wide. I drilled one hole in each end for a bungi chord which I fastened to my belt. COST...FREE, until I caught hell for it. If I needed yarn for streamers or thread for dries, well, into mom's sewing basket. COST...FREE and you know the end to that story as well.
Now what do you do when the sticky paper line wt. indicator that comes on the fly line box, which you've stuck on your reel, becomes wet and shredded? Try the garage sale price labels...they're round, about the size of a nickle and very sticky. COST...$1.09 for 306 labels. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I love to go to any garage sale and purchase old fur or feather boa, fur/feather hats...all that old stuff for a .25. I also go to home purchase Peacock or feather dusters for tying. It is so cheap! And beads! I live near down town Los Angeles and hunt for my beads in the garment district. You can't believe the stuff I've used for tying.

Wet wading shoes are purchased the same way. Sears/ Sierra Traders/ Goodwill, I don't care as long as its cheap.

I use a 48" 3/4" wide dog leash with the snap end on it to tether my Wading pole, which is one of a set of two adjustable hiking poles from Walmart. I use a 2 piece clothes pin with the metal spring and a drywall screw as a vise when I am in the woods (you'll be surprised how many stumps there are out there that you can screw into)

I drilled 2 holes the end of my wooden 5 foot wading staff, curled a piece of Aluminum tubing in a 14" circle with the 2 ends pointed away from the circle, and inserted the ends into the wood, secured it, then got one of the zip on nets, making the staff a long handled net if needed.

Instead of buying a Tippet Post, I just took a piece of thin parachute cord, made it into a loop, and fed one end of the loop through the tippet rolls, send the other end of the loop through the end pushed through the centers, and hook it to my vest, waders, or pack with a small carabiner.

One last thing I did was buy a bunch of the 3" Snap Link carabiners and place them in strategic locations around my wading pack and wader belt, they give me an excellent place to tether some piece of equipment (net, dog leash, rope loop, etc)

use urethane as head cement. it is readily available at hardware stores and a quart is about 8 bucks around here.