Musings

I have found in fly-fishing a peace, a challenge to oneself and a pure way to connect to nature, it cleanses the soul and makes one whole again.

I thought this sitting behind the vise, staring at a bare hook. It’s as if each turn of the thread is a line in a poem, a statement of what is. This seems a bit preachy now but it applies. Sitting here, vise empty, bobbin loaded with a random thread and a pile of materials, I feel like a painter staring at a blank canvas. As I began to turn the thread, adding materials, drawing from this pattern or that, using this technique or special turn, something materialized on the once bare hook that had never seen the light of day, a fly purely from my imagination.

Now in the fly-fishing and tying community there’s a pattern of tying flies following a ‘recipe’. I get it; there are patterns that work and I’ve followed them. But personally, I believe in variations on a theme. I’m only speaking for myself, I tie my flies as close to realistic as possible, but sometimes you have to tie something that will just piss the fish off into biting.

LR