Usually, with trout flies, I tie between 6-18 flies of a specific pattern; so, material prep is a key factor in how consistent the flies are and how fast I get them tied. Recently, I was tying a bunch of “prince nymph” style flies for an upcoming trip. As I was preparing my biots for 24 “prince nymph” type flies, I decided to share this little trick I learned 40 plus years ago when I was a member of the California Fly Fishermen Unlimited club.
Managing biots on the quill can be a real pain sometimes. A simple solution is to wrap the biot around some sort of a dowel. You can use anything from a pen/pencil to a small steel rod. I attach the base of the quill to the rod with UV glue and then wrap it around the dowel. At the end of the quill, I use UV glue to attach it to the dowel. (You can attach the quill to the dowel in a number of ways… from using tying thread to o-rings.)
As you can see in the photos, the biots are splayed out. Now it is extremely easy to select the individual biots.
Two methods of attachment, UV glue and o-rings, are shown.