If you fish for pike, bass, and sunfish with deer hair bugs like I do, this cautery is certainly the best tool for easily and precisely burning eye sockets into spun deer hair bodies. I recently bought this and was rather skeptical and wary of using it, worrying that it would burn up the fly I just spent 20 minutes tying and trimming, but my very first attempt at creating eye sockets with the fine, red-hot point of the cautery was completely successful. Clean out the ash with a toothpick, apply a droplet of good adhesive in the socket and thin layer on the back of a doll eye, drop the eye into the socket, and you’ve got a great deer hair bug with googly eyes that really brings on the strikes. I know because I just returned from a very successful fishing trip to Canada. I use this cautery all the time, and, to cite a recent example, I have found that a Marabou Muddler with eyes got more strikes that one without eyes. This tool is a necessity for completing deer hair flies and catching more fish, and it will be a permanent part of my fly tying equipment.
