Skip Morris's

Trout–Fly Proportion Chart

The first page of Skip Morris's Trout-Fly Proportion Chart

Flies with good proportions not only look handsome,

they convince trout, hook them solidly, and, best of all, bring them to net

Flies with good proportions—wings and tails of proper length, hackle fibers neither overlong nor stubby, a body of suitable length to balance the look of the fly, and much more—not only look handsome, they convince trout, hook them solidly, and, best of all, bring them to net. A fly with bad proportions? A fly like that won’t look like the bug it’s supposed to suggest and therefore won’t fool trout, it won’t sit on the water in the right posture (which also won’t fool trout), won’t hook trout solidly, and consequently too many of the trout it does hook never see the net.

Skip figured all that out by growing up tying flies and fishing the flies he tied—real on–the–water experience. He read many books on tying, experimented to determine where a wing is best mounted on a parachute fly and how long to make the hackle on a soft–hackled fly and much more. After a few decades of measuring the proportions of flies appearing in magazines and books and tied by the experts and of striving to find balance in the materials that go into each type of trout fly, he settled on the proportions presented in this chart.

For twenty years, Skip Morris's Fly Proportion Chart was printed and distributed by Frank Amato Publications. When it went out of print, Skip started seeing the same question in emails and hearing it at the fly clubs and fly–fishing expos where he spoke:

“When is your fly–proportion chart coming back into print?”

So, Skip redid the whole chart, made it bigger and easier to read and to understand, and adjusted the proportions by what he’d learned about tying flies over the two decades since the Amato version had come out.

And, dropped the price, drastically: from $3.95 to . . . free.

Just print one out, no charge. Yours to enjoy.

Fly proportions do matter—poor proportions make flies ugly and ineffective; good proportions make flies elegant and deadly. Follow the chart and the flies you tie will be of the latter kind.

This handy three-page guide will make fly proportions easy to understand.

Are you ready to tie better-looking, more-effective flies?