As a new guy, you get excited and assume you need everything that is sold. Here are two items that you can live without.
The first one is a tool to stretch your leader to heat it up just a bit and take the curls out. According to the LL Bean book, it is easy to overheat the leader using this tool. Instead, they recommend that you just stretch it by hand.
I’ve been doing that and have found that it works just fine. No need for this thing to hang off your vest and get in the way.
The item on the right is a tool to assist with the threading of the tippet through the eye of the hook. I found that this thing is more trouble than it is worth. It’s faster to just take a few jabs at the eye. You will get it through faster than pulling this thing out, putting the fly on it just so and then working the line through the slot and the eye.
Save your money and skip these two items.
Unless stated otherwise, this article was authored by Steve Moore