I don’t remember exactly when I tied my first fly, but I know where we lived at the time, so it had to be around 1998 or 1999. The interest had been there, festering in my mind since I bought my first fly rod, around 1996. I finally broke down and bought me a cheap, beginner’s fly tying kit from a fly shop in Louisville. It contained an inexpensive, clamp-on vise, and assorted materials and tools. There were enough feathers and fur to tie six distinct patterns and it came with an instruction book to tie the flies.
The book was an important source but lacked personal hands-on instruction. This was in the days when the internet was just becoming available for every house. Thinking back, it never occurred to me to search online for help, and I didn’t think to buy an instructional VHS tape until a few months later.
My early attempts at fly tying were not the most artistic. I often used proportions too large for the hook and sometimes my flies would unravel when I removed them from the vise. I struggled a lot with the whip finish knot that secures the materials to the hook. Still, I kept tying, getting better in fits and starts, but still I was learning. Even though I was a slow learner, I would sometimes have an “Aha” moment. Something that made me feel like I was a better tyer and gave me confidence to keep going. The first was finally getting the hang of the whip finish knot. I had been having trouble tying it consistently, then one day it just clicked. Tying seemed simpler after that.
Next came wrapping hackle, something I really struggled with. I would have a good wrap going, spacing it perfectly down the body of a Wooly Bugger, when I would lose my grip and watch most of my wrap come undone, and I would have to start over. Or, I would get the wrap done down to the last section, only to look back and notice a loose wrap or a poor, inconsistent spacing between wraps. When this happened, I would step away from the vise, go to the refrigerator and drink a cold beer, tell myself, “Just relax, you idiot, it’s only fly tying, you are not trying to save the world.” When I put it like that, I could see the folly of my actions. It would remind me why I quit playing golf years ago. I was getting angry at my golf shots and I shouldn’t have been. After all, I was not good at golf and really had no reason to get mad about a poor shot.
I do not know how many flies I’ve tied in my lifetime, but it’s safe to say it’s a lot. When I was guiding, I would tie a couple of dozen flies each night. This was all part of my “eight-hour day,” which, with driving to and from the streams guiding all day, driving home, tying flies, and fixing lunches for the next day, was in reality an easy 10 to 12 hour day. Not that I am complaining. There are far worse ways to make a living than taking people into the mountains to fish, but there were still days that it felt like a job.
Fly tying goes hand in hand with fly fishing. I, like most anglers I know, bought a fly rod because it looked like a neat way to catch fish, and it turned out that it is. I progressed through several stages in my personal fly fishing journey. First, I wanted to catch a fish, any fish, on a fly rod. After landing a few fish, I progressed to the next phase, where I wanted to catch trout, and I did that. Then, I wanted to catch trout on a dry fly, and I did. For me, the next logical step was to catch a fish on a fly that I tied myself. That eventually happened, and it was every bit the self-satisfying thrill I had hoped.
Thirty years later, the thrill of catching a fish on a fly that I have tied has not waned. It is especially thrilling to catch a fish on a fly that I have tied, while having an audience. I have learned not to get too cocky about this, because somehow, in someway, you will be humbled.
Once, on a fishing trip to Dale Hollow Lake on the Kentucky/Tennessee border, I hooked a very nice Kentucky spotted bass on a Clouser Minnow that I had tied myself. I tied the flies to look like the predominant forage in the lake. Here it was the alewife. An alewife is a small baitfish that is an invasive species in Kentucky lakes. It is a member of the herring family and bait fishers love to fish with them because of their effectiveness. Since so many smallmouths were being caught on these members of the herring family, I tied a streamer to match the alewife. I ended up using white deer hair for the belly, some silver shad for the middle and a black back, also of deer hair. I tied in a couple of strands of a light blue crystal flash. The fly worked really well for me. I spent four day’s fishing with my friend Captain John Smith (ok, he’s not really a captain, but his name is John Smith and we were fishing from his boat). I caught several 15-18-inch smallmouth on the fly, but the biggest thrill came from the spotted bass.
The Author with a possible IGFA record spotted bass caught on one of his flies.
None of us knew what this fish weighed, but we had a tape and she measured nineteen and one-half inches. This was in April and the old girl was full of eggs, so we snapped a few photos and released her. I was very proud of that fish. A week or two later, I was showing photos from the trip to friends at our local fly fishing club. One of our club members had a fly rod, tippet class world record striped bass that he caught in the Cumberland River. He went to his truck and retrieved the latest copy of the IGFA record book. In the tippet size I was using at the time I caught the fish, we scanned the world record list for spotted bass and mine was definitely close.
Obviously, I hadn’t gone through the steps to qualify the fish for a world record. The only proof that I had was a picture from my friend’s bass boat with me holding the fish, and, of course, the length of the fish. It hadn’t really bothered me that I didn’t get the fish weighed on a certified scale and verified by a biologist, but as I was driving home that evening, I had a little tinge of regret. Someone who has been beaten up on national television in a boxing ring would be expected to have lost any sense of pride, but that wasn’t exactly the case. My ego would have loved the boost from being an IGFA world record holder. After all, I’m human and I have my faults.
A month later, I had the chance to meet Bob Clouser at a fly fishing show in Townsend, TN. I knew in advance that he was going to be there, so I made a point to bring photos of the fish and the actual fly I caught the fish with. Filled with excitement, I caught him alone at his booth. My wife Jennifer took a picture of me with Clouser, then I reached into my shirt pocket, and pulled out the photo of my fish and showed it to him. I am sure this is a common occurrence for him, but he was polite and complimented me, told me “That was a good fish.”
I then pulled out a zip-lock bag and showed him the Clouser Minnow I had tied to catch that fish. He studied it thoroughly, examining it from all angles. Finally, he handed the fly back and said, “you are using too much material, you need to tie them sparse.” Feeling a little deflated, as we walked around the show, I studied the fly more. The amount of bucktail I used was noticeably more than the Clouser Minnows I had seen in fly shops and in magazines. I knew I would tie these flies more sparsely from then on.
Bob Clouser sharing some fly tying tips with the author.
My wife, who has had her husband’s back since day one, was a little upset. She looked at me and said, “How can he say the fly is not right if you caught that big spotted bass on it?”
That’s when I explained to her, “Honey, when it’s the guy that invented the fly, and it has his name on it, he can say what he wants. I obviously didn’t tie it right.”
