They can be metal fitted with springs to hold the flies or plastic boxes, some with foam or simple compartments. They can be a fancy leather wallet lined with lamb wool. Some are only a simple tin thing. The fly boxes we carry are organized, depending on how organized we are. Some by color, or season, or wet, or dry. Some by species – trout, salmon and steelhead, bass, perch or muskie. Even saltwater flies for bonefish or tarpon.
The fly boxes tell a lot about the fisherman, what he likes, where he goes, how he fishes. For most they are a compendium of a fisherman’s life. If the fisherman ties his own flies, they will be a record of the development of his skill, from a bulky Humpy to a finely wrought Mosquito. Somewhere in the fly collection will be a second or third example of feathers and thread that was the beginning of the learning process. Clumsy and out of proportion, yet sentimental.
But most of all, in all our fly boxes, there are stories. Rivers and creeks, canyons and flats, trophies lost, battles won, sunlight on riffles and shadows on silver water. Tales of experiences that keep us going back. Stories of perfect days, the perfect cast, the memory of an airborne fish that will remain suspended in a shining moment. An afternoon hatch so thick it looked like a mist rising from the surface and the tiny bug from the fly box that was the only one that matched it.
When I first saw Silver Creek in Idaho it was midday and had stopped the car on an old railroad flatcar which was used as a bridge to span the water. Just downstream I saw what I thought were leaves on the surface. But I was mistaken. They were the dorsal fins of large trout feeding just below the surface. Feverishly searching my fly box, I found just the right offering – a tiny mayfly. I still have that fly, hooked in my hat, a reminder of the largest hatch I ever fished.
In the goldrush country, above a town from that time, a freestone stream tumbles out of the mountains and eventually enters the North Fork of the Yuba. One summer day, wet wading down the center of it, I hooked and released over fifty trout from’ pan size’ to 12 inchers. Since then, every time I tie on an Adams fly, I remember Lavezola Creek.
The black Wooly Bugger that resides in my wet fly wallet recalls lessons in dead drifting on Alaska’s Tularik River and how the hefty rainbows it held were picky about how they fed. I was fishing a sink tip line on a seven -weight rod, throwing a big upstream loop and mend, mend, mend. It took me a couple of days to really get it right. But, boy, when I did, I felt the tug of my first truly big fish! It was the year after my dad died and although he was gone, I felt he had been standing beside me.
Ten years after the Vietnam War ended a close friend and I were fishing a wide stretch of the Upper American. The fly of the day was the October Caddis. They were big flies to match the hatch, a number 8 as I recall. Taking a break off the water I happened to glance upstream to see an orange cloud moving toward us. It was a swarm of ladybugs, covering everything, willows, pines, and rocks in the river. My friend dove behind a log, yelling “Get down! Cover up!” The ladybugs triggered a PTSD episode recalling when his platoon was sprayed with Agent Orange. He didn’t fish again until I asked him to join me on my fiftieth birthday.
Next to the Wooly Bugger is a sparkling creation of three inch long purple and silver tinsel tied on a number 4 hook. I had guessed that it would work for steelhead even though I had never fished for them before. As it turned out, on a wide swing, the hefty ‘steelies’ of the Babine hit them hard. Fishing up and down that river four years in a row, the ‘Babine Dancer’ produced over and over.
Among all the flies I have in my fly box I always keep a gray hackle, yellow body, red tail fly. It resembles no specific bug but seems to work when there’s nothing on the water. It’s the first fly I learned to fish with on the Upper Truckee, standing at my dad’s elbow. I was eight and I was hooked.
So many rivers and streams and creeks. So many stories of people, events, and relationships. Someday, when my body is too tired and worn and I get too old to fish anymore I’ll have a lifetime on the water to recall, all stored in my fly box.
