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I was reading last night night and I came across this short essay from Rich Tosches.
Tying It All Together
If you become an avid fly angler, you go through a lot of flies. You lose them in all the typical ways.
Snagged in a bush.
Snagged on a log in the river.
Snagged in the side of that guy's neck after he tried foolishly to move into the pool you were fishing.
At about a buck and a half each, losing flies can get expensive. Eventually, most fly anglers tire of shelling out their hard-earned cash. The exception would be attorneys, who simply pad the billable hours sheet and buy more flies–which they display proudly on a patch of wool they keep on their dorsal fins and go on catching fish in their usual way: in their three rows of razor-sharp teeth.
And so now we venture into one of the oldest, most traditional and enjoyable aspects of fly-fishing, a much more enjoyable way to fill our fly boxes. That's right, during a streamside lunch we take a handful of flies out of our friends fly box while he's off in the bushes taking a leak.
No, actually we begin the art of fly-tying.
And instead of buying flies , we create our own flies–right after we buy a $200 stainless-steel vises, delicate feathers plucked from the groin area of Peruvian mountain sparrows, fur yanked from a cheetah's rump by a swift African tribesman, hooks hand-made in Sweden by a man made Sven, who can, in a good week, make two of them, and fly-tying desks made of a certain type of birch that only grows on one hill in a very-hard-to-get-to part of Newfoundland.
By doing that, we will, if we live to the age of 214 and tie flies six days a week, have saved forty-five cents.
Tying It All Together
If you become an avid fly angler, you go through a lot of flies. You lose them in all the typical ways.
Snagged in a bush.
Snagged on a log in the river.
Snagged in the side of that guy's neck after he tried foolishly to move into the pool you were fishing.
At about a buck and a half each, losing flies can get expensive. Eventually, most fly anglers tire of shelling out their hard-earned cash. The exception would be attorneys, who simply pad the billable hours sheet and buy more flies–which they display proudly on a patch of wool they keep on their dorsal fins and go on catching fish in their usual way: in their three rows of razor-sharp teeth.
And so now we venture into one of the oldest, most traditional and enjoyable aspects of fly-fishing, a much more enjoyable way to fill our fly boxes. That's right, during a streamside lunch we take a handful of flies out of our friends fly box while he's off in the bushes taking a leak.
No, actually we begin the art of fly-tying.
And instead of buying flies , we create our own flies–right after we buy a $200 stainless-steel vises, delicate feathers plucked from the groin area of Peruvian mountain sparrows, fur yanked from a cheetah's rump by a swift African tribesman, hooks hand-made in Sweden by a man made Sven, who can, in a good week, make two of them, and fly-tying desks made of a certain type of birch that only grows on one hill in a very-hard-to-get-to part of Newfoundland.
By doing that, we will, if we live to the age of 214 and tie flies six days a week, have saved forty-five cents.
. too many patterns a lot of which need different mats. never ends. but its not about saving but instead adding one more element to greatest sport in the world.
