De-cluttering Fly-fishing and the Tenkara factor

I was poking about in a fly shop the other day when I overheard an interesting and thought-provoking conversation. An angler had arrived for the weekend and was going to hit the local spring creeks for trout. He mentioned that he was going to fly-fish that Friday afternoon and evening, but that for the rest of the weekend, he was going to fish Tenkara style, because as he put it, it was “So much more fun and simpler than traditional fly fishing.”

For those that are not familiar with Tenkara, it is a Japanese style of fishing using a fixed line and a telescoping rod averaging around 10-14 feet in length without a reel of any kind. First developed for Japan’s mountainous and high-gradient streams, it jumped the Pacific and has been adopted in America with an often-evangelical fervor.

My line of questioning (to myself) was why would Tenkara seem so much more essential than fly-fishing? After all, fly-fishing has always prided itself on its inherent simplicity and connection to nature and water. Just a rod, reel, line, leader and a fly… Was it really simply the reel that set the two-styles apart… or was there more to it? An angler with a fly-rod can do anything a Tenkara angler can do, but isn’t limited to casting range by the fixed line. The two systems have more in common than not, just being two similar means to deliver a hook tied with fur and feather to a fool a fish. So why the preference?

The angler answered the question himself shortly as he purchased a bunch of depleted uranium ‘jig fly’ nymphs, and a package of plastic bobbers for his afternoon and evening of ‘Traditional fly-fishing’.

Well, there it was. The answer was right in front of me.

By rigging that heavy fly and a bulky ‘bobber’ strike-indicator on his leader, he had inadvertently destroyed the rhythm and grace of casting a fly rod. Instead of the beautiful loops of line arcing out over the water like a ballet to delicately present a fly, he had turned his fly- fishing outfit into a ‘flop and lob’ rig; effective to be sure, but not graceful. Was that simplicity and grace, that Zen essence of purity missing from his fly-fishing driving his enjoyment and preference of Tenkara? I think it might.

For many hundreds of years, fly-fishing was concerned with casting an un-weighted or lightly weighted fly on the end of a delicate leader. Weight consisted of a few wraps of copper wire or later lead wire on a nymph. That was all the angler needed to get down to the level of the trout. The late Lee Wulff may have put it best when he quipped, “Trout deserve the sanctuary of deep water.”

Time and innovation marches on, and the desire to make the fly-rod do what bait-casters and spinning rods would allow led to changes which would revolutionize the sport. No longer would high-gradient bottom-dwelling trout be safe from the fly-angler. Enter heavily weighted nymphs and the increasingly large, wind-resistant ‘bobbers’ necessary to suspend them at depth. This changed casting as well. High-stick nymphing and the ‘flop and lob’ cast were seen more and more on the streams of the world. Many anglers today know no other way to cast or deliver a fly. They are wedded to the heavily weighted bead-head nymph and the bobber.

So why is this bad? Well, no other form defines fly-fishing more than the art of casting. It is simple, and beautiful to watch and perform. By placing that much weight on the end of the line, and using ‘bobber’ style indicators, the entire dynamic is thrown off. The problem occurs with an interruption of the smooth flow of the unfurling fly-line by hinges and shock-points caused by the clutter attached to the leader. We are making our fly-rod do things that it never was intended to do: thus the lack of grace and the chucking, chunking and lobbing. We cluttered it up. We tried to turn a ballet into a break-dance and ended up with a tangled tango. Then a new thing comes along offering exactly what we had before we adulterated the dance, and we waltz with the Tenkara rod…. back to that ‘Zen’ essence that we miss through our own clutter. How ironic…

Now I don’t have anything against Tenkara. I think it is a fun and simple way to fish. However, I think it may be time to re-examine and de-clutter our fly-fishing if Tenkara is now offering us something which we already had before we goofed it up.

Which leads us to the new fad sweeping the world, the Japanese-inspired ‘Minimalist’ movement of de-cluttering and its popular guru Marie Kondo.

‘Minimalism’ is the concept of removing all the things distracting and non-essential in our lives and possessions to effectively create a modern version of the simplicity of a Japanese room. (Think tatami mat, futon, and a simple table.) Taken to extremes, as everything is these days, it often sees the eager acolyte throwing away all their books and mementos, and leaves them in an empty room seated on an austere wooden Scandinavian design chair in their underwear staring at a blank wall… but I digress. Camus would be proud.

Minimalizing or de-cluttering our fly-fishing might mean questioning things: “Do I really need everything I carry with me?” “Is all this junk attached to my leader really necessary?” “Do I actually use the dozens of gadgets stuffed into every nook and cranny in my pack or vest?” or even “Is this actually fly-fishing?”

Or is it all about the numbers of fish caught…?

Of course, I am not recommending that fly-anglers go down to the river and make their own fly-rod from a willow branch and weave their line from horse-hair, that might be way too Marie Kondo. However, the more junk-in-the-trunk we eliminate and the more clutter we remove from our line and leader, the more we might get back to the simplicity and grace, the beauty and finesse that led us to take up fly-fishing in the first place. It doesn’t mean we need to give up nymphing… ( I already hear the grumbling). Instead it might just mean toning it down a bit… replacing that bobber with a piece of yarn, using lightly weighted flies, and learning or re-learning to cast.

That might be a very good thing in the long run… especially if it cuts down on those impromptu emergency room trips where your buddy hits himself in the back of the head with his three-fly depleted uranium jig-fly setup and the bobber hangs down off his ear… Sure cuts into the fishing time.

Tenkara anyone? ;)

Some Pheasants

Copyright 2020 Erik Helm

John Phillipson motioned to the waiter at the Fox and Hounds to pour the wine first for his guest. He had chosen the vintage carefully to accompany the lunch he was giving for his young employee Ed, who had been a key team member in the successful conclusion of a major project for his firm. Ed was a software engineer of rare talent. Slim and dark haired with thick glasses, Ed was someone one would pass on the street and not remember seeing, even if the street were otherwise empty. He had worked long hours for the past six months and even took work home with him to his small bachelor’s house. John thought perhaps Ed had worked a bit too hard at times. He needed to get out in the sun more, thus the lunch at his favorite restaurant, and further invitations to participate in activities that would take Ed away from his screen and keyboard.

What made John rather unique, he thought to himself, was that he got to know each and every one of his 92 employees on a personal level. Like a good general, he reasoned, a good manager and CEO should know his assets and how best to keep them active, happy, and even more… know what drove them in life. That last question was one that eluded him with Ed. He couldn’t believe that Ed’s work was his only reward or joy.

“What should I order?” asked Ed, who habitually had a brown bag lunch of a sandwich and a piece of fruit at his desk while he worked.

“I recommend the pheasant’” Phillipson replied. “I have it every time it is on offering, and it is very fresh and well prepared. They serve it with asparagus, wild rice, and a nice herb white-sauce.”

It was agreed, and John toasted Ed’s health, and after the wine was sampled, began to inquire about any hobbies that his valued employee might engage in. After some sundry talk about toy trains and stamps, John asked Ed if he had ever hunted pheasants.

“No, but I do love pheasants,” Ed exclaimed with some passion as the plates arrived with the delicately presented breasts of that most desirable of birds steaming and framed like a work of art with the rice and vegetables.

After the feast was consumed, and the coffee was served, John brought up the subject again.

“I would like to invite you to my home for a little pheasant hunt if you are willing… I have over 60 acres of scrub fields bordered by thin wooded copses that are full of pheasants. A couple of years ago my accountant suggested the idea of reducing our taxes by raising game on our land, so we stocked 25 pheasants and bought several chickens and even a pet goat. The chickens lay a few fresh eggs, and the goat… well, the goat just is a goat, but the pheasants multiplied like rabbits. There must be over a hundred cocks and hens, and I rarely get time to hunt them any more, but now that the project is over and a success, I suggest we take the time this Saturday for a few hours and do some nice upland wing shooting.”

Ed mentioned that back before grad school he was a keen trap shooter, but that his shotgun was back with his parents in Connecticut.

“No worries,” John assured him. “I have a little Spanish side by side 20 bore you can borrow, a spare game bag for you, plenty of shells I got from a little ma and pa sporting goods store that was closing, and anything else you need. Just come as you are, so to speak, and wear some tough pants and a jacket that will stand up to moving through brush, and also a stout pair of hiking boots or something on that order. We will hunt together, and then Ellen, Mrs. Phillipson, who you will meet, will do her magic to the birds. You also will meet my English Cocker Abby, the best bird dog I ever owned.”

“Do you enjoy a fine Scotch, by the way?” John enquired with one raised eyebrow.

Ed agreed he did indeed enjoy a fine malt, and would be delighted to enjoy this adventure offered so kindly to him. The time was fixed at 1 o’clock Saturday the next.

Sometimes fate turns and weaves its lines through the stories of our lives beginning with a little incident. The ‘incident’ in this case was that in un-boxing a fine 12 year old bottle of Speyside Scotch, Mr. Phillipson accidentally dropped it. The tinkling of broken glass and following invective brought Abby to investigate, and the poor dog trod on a bit of glass, cutting her front left paw. There was no other bottle of scotch in the house, and with Ed due to arrive in fifteen minutes, a change of plans was in order. Brandy would follow the hunt, which would now have to be conducted without the dog. More difficult for certain, and lacking in that essential quality of hunting over a champion bird dog who knows more about bird hunting than the hunters ever will, but not impossible he reasoned. The sheer quantity of birds on his land would allow the hunt to continue even without a dog. They would just have to do it ‘old-fashioned style,’ each of them zigzagging and flushing their own birds. He hurried to sweep up the glass as his wife placed a bandage over Abby’s thankfully very slight injury.

Ed was prompt, and Phillipson, upon opening the front door, was greeted by a unique sight. Ed had on a pair of old rubber galoshes complete with metal buckles. For a coat, his guest was sporting a dilapidated khaki barn coat obviously several sizes too big for him, and smelling faintly of mothballs. This outfit was crowned by an eager smile and delivered forward with a warm handshake. John wondered, just a fleeting thought in the back of his mind, if Ed’s hunting attire had come from a short visit to a local thrift store. But then, he recalled, Ed did say he loved his pheasants. Maybe he had no outdoor gear, since Ed seemed to be always working owlishly at his computer, or maybe he had his old hunting kit stored at his parent’s house along with his shotgun. Well, today he would show him a bit of the outdoor life anyway. Perhaps if Ed enjoyed it, Phillipson speculated, he could gift him with some briar pants, a game vest, and even a nice bird gun as an end of year bonus. He was worth it after all… all those long hours…

John ushered his guest into a little sun room located off the foyer that he playfully referred to as his ‘Safari room.’ He seated Ed in a nice leather chair, and took down a canvas gun case from a nook between shelves filled with outdoor books. He unzipped the case, and revealed the soft warmth of a hand-rubbed and oiled walnut stock, and case patterned side plates of the Spanish double. He broke the gun and handed it to Ed.

“This little girl needs to sound off a little. She hits exactly as you point her. You don’t need to lead too far with pheasants, and I think a box each of high-brass number 5s should do us fine today.” Ed was cradling the gun as if it would break or bite him, but Phillipson soon reassured him, and closing the action on empty chambers, executed a few snappy swings. Ed said the drop and length of pull were perfect. John was impressed. His associate knew a few things about guns. This would be a fine hunt, with the slight clouds, little wind, and a half-inch of powdery snow fallen in the pre-dawn darkness.

They began on the edge of a small corn-stand abutting the drive. Each side of the drive was a field, and on the edge of each field were the wood copses.

“Pheasants, like most game are creatures of edges,” John explained to Ed. “Edges and Cover. We will split the sides between us and work the edges of the field and wood. Cover everything in between. Pheasants can be runners instead of flyers, and you want to kick them up into flight. Try not to shoot runners, that can lead to accidents.”

“Good hunting!” he added. “We will meet back here in two hours, so take a look at your watch… I have it half past the hour.”

Ed nodded and smiled, his action broken and cradled expertly in his right arm, and his galoshes clicking and galoshing as he walked.

John turned and strode into the shoulder high grass and weeds, beginning the process of covering ground and every likely lie a bird might favor. After 10 minutes or so, he kicked up his first cock out a sort of snow-covered wigwam of brush. The bird flew straight up and angled right. John swung from behind and touched off the right barrel of his Fox 16 bore. The pheasant dropped in a shower of feathers. It was easy to locate due to the snow cover. It also helped that John had hit it with a headshot, so it never had a chance to run, hide, and slowly die hidden from prying eyes.

Five minutes later John found his second bird. A hen, this crafty gal ran straight away from him and then flew low and flat. He aimed the fowling gun and fired the left barrel, giving the hen a shot-string of full-choke 5s and bringing her down dead. As he retrieved the bird, he wondered at the lack of shooting from Ed’s side of the field. That morning he had spread a large bag of feed around on that side of the drive, and if the past were any experience, the birds would be on the feast pretty quickly. He did want Ed to have a successful and fun day today.

The third bird John flushed required both barrels to bring it down, and as he was searching for it where it fell near the edge of wood, he heard the joyful sound of a distant report followed by a second muffled ‘boom.’ Ed must have found a bird! The day would be a success if Ed could shoot one tenth as well as could write code… but then there were those galoshes… really, what was he thinking? Ed really needed to get out more often.

The next hour saw no more birds located by John, while on Ed’s side of the woods sounded like a slightly excited English shooting party on a driven hunt. No more than ten minutes elapsed between further exclamations from Ed’s shotgun. He must have found the mother-load thought John.

The time came to make his way back to the rendezvous, and as Phillipson approached the little corn stand, a final pheasant flushed and flew left and high. John’s shot was on the mark, and the fourth bird fell fifty yards off as Ed appeared out of the field. John pointed to the bird, and motioned Ed to place it in his game bag, as he was much closer. Ed’s bag, John was very pleased to note, was sagging heavily and very full. The pheasant was added to the bag and the tail feathers stuck jauntily out as Ed smiled.

“Well, how did it go?” John asked with a wink.

“I had the best time ever!” Ed exclaimed with flushed cheeks. “Some of the pheasants flew kind of strange, and one just sat there, and then there was one that perched in a tree, but I only missed a few shots! I even hit a double…”

“Pheasants can be like that sometimes,” John explained as they walked back to the barn to breast-out the birds. “Predictability is not a pheasant’s strong suit.”

Phillipson had a bench at waist-height covered with plastic sheeting and a tin garbage container ready to accept the offal. He reached in his back game pouch and placed his three pheasants on the table. Ed opened the strap and turned out the contents of his bag next to it.

There are moments that time seems to move rather slowly. At this very moment, it crawled in slow motion. The contents of the bag that tumbled out onto the table included in order:

One cock pheasant (The one that Phillipson dispatched)

A large woodpecker.

One pigeon

Two grackles

A starling

One female cardinal

And wearing a rather stupefied expression, as if to say “Now what the hell?” a very dead member of the small Phillipson stock of chickens.

“Well, what do you think?” Ed proudly exclaimed.

The words almost formed in John’s mouth, but both because he caught himself in time, and due to the fact that his jaw was hanging open, only a sort of strangling gurgle made itself heard. He finally closed his mouth, straightened to his full six feet and with his back rigid, and his hand extended, turned to Ed, shook his hand, and exclaimed, “Good shooting!”

As he lined up the birds for dressing and stropped his knife, he reflected that it would not pay to even mention or explain to Ed what he had done, nor to inquire if Ed indeed had ever actually seen a pheasant before, and if he had or had not, what the heck he was thinking…

His knife hovered carefully over the little starling.

Ellen (Mrs. Phillipson) was presented a tray of ‘Pheasant breasts’ in the kitchen with a whisper from John. She arched her eyebrows in reply, and John placed his forefinger to his lips and winked.

Seated in the ‘Safari room’ after being introduced the smiling and lovely Mrs. Phillipson, Ed was offered a large snifter-glass of amber liquid. John proposed a toast, but Ed insisted in presenting a tribute instead. “To my first hunt and your excellent hospitality,” he proclaimed.

“Excellent Scotch,” he added on the subject of the brandy. The best I have ever tasted.”

Both Mr. And Mrs. Phillipson agreed with some shared reflections after dinner was over and Ed had left for home with grateful thanks; these were that the woodpecker was surprisingly delicate and tasty, that Ed had obviously thought of a ‘Pheasant’ as some sort of food he had been served once or twice that formerly had wings and flew a bit now and then, and that above all…. That Ed REALLY needed to get out more…

Dining with Mr. Fario

 

 

I met Mr. S. Fario, noted food critic and epicurean at a charming little restaurant near the Traun River in Austria. He was there to review the cuisine, and I was there to interview him for a book I was writing about fine dining.

 

He shook my hand as we were seated, and smiled through thin lips. He had thick glasses that gave his watery eyes a bit of an ichthyoid appearance, and his skin was strangely spotted. He wore a tyrolean hat with feathers, and a modest gray suit. Altogether Mr. Fario’s appearance didn’t live up to his fearsome reputation as one of Europe’s most discerning reviewers of fine food. Asked what his first name was, he only replied “Sal.”

 

The waiters and staff at the establishment seemed to already be aware of who he was, and there was a scurry of activity at our table as the menus were proffered and the wine chosen. Fario ordered a bottle of Riesling and began to scan the menu. He decided to begin with a fish soup for the first course. When it came, the aroma preceded it. Rich with potatoes, onions and a rich fish stock, after one sip I fell in love with it. Not Fario however. For some reason he sent it back to the kitchen proclaiming that it was a touch too warm. A few minutes later a second bowl arrived, but after sniffing it, Fario sent it back again claiming this time that it was too cold. I ordered another bottle of wine, since this meal seemed to be going into interesting places. Fario was one quirky fellow.

 

He summoned the waiter again before I had even finished half of my soup and changed the order. For some bizarre reason, Fario ordered fresh peas, stipulating over his glasses to the hapless waiter that he receive 36 peas in total. Murmurs and whispers could be heard coming from the kitchen as the staff hurried and improvised to cater to the noted critic’s whims. A plate arrived with the peas, and Fario smiled at their freshness and began counting them: precisely 36. “Excellent!” he proclaimed as he handed the plate untouched, complete with the full complement of peas back to the waiter. “Sir?” the puzzled waiter exclaimed quietly. “May I enquire if there is something wrong?” Fario stuck his nose in the air with a rather casual but haute expression and answered “ These are excellent peas… very fresh and firm… however, I never eat peas that size on a Tuesday, only smaller ones… We shall have a salad instead.”

 

I took a couple of swallows of the wine, and began taking notes in secret on the back of a little matchbook. There would never be enough space, but square in the middle, I wrote the word ‘Enigma’. This was one very odd food critic. I began to feel sorry for the chef and the wait staff: if a review were to be written by Fario, who would know what to expect at this point.

 

The salad arrived, and Fario began to pick at it, studying each piece and flicking it onto the tablecloth as the nervous waiter stood by and sweated. His bowl clean, Fario reached across the table and picking one of the flowers from the centerpiece vase, ate it delicately, making sounds of appreciation the whole time. “Very tasty and aromatic salad!” he stated out loud. “Now we shall have the Frankfurters.” “Sir?” the startled waiter exclaimed. “We don’t serve Frankfurters, they are not part of our menu…”

“Well,” Fario said, rising in his seat to his full height, “I want Frankfurters, you know… Vienna sausages, hot dogs, wieners… that is what I want now, so go make them for me.” “I will just have the roast please,” I said, trying to add some distracting diplomacy to this lunatic scene. The waiter whispered something to a young lad in an apron that was hovering near the door of the kitchen, and the youth ran out the door of the restaurant and around the corner to the local butchers. “Er… h-h-how would you wish us to prepare your sausages Herr Fario’” said the waiter in trepidation. “Gently boiled with currant jam,” was the improbable answer. I was just happy to have my roast, and not to share in this bizarrely selective and downright strange diet that my companion insisted on. He seemed to like the sausages when they arrived, but told the waiter he preferred them boiled in the currant jam, not boiled separately and served with the fruit preserve. I began on the second bottle of wine…

 

He now ordered a small pate de foie gras de hopper to cleanse his palette. He wiped his mouth with his napkin after the first bite, and sniffing the napkin with flared nostrils, sighed in pleasure. He then consumed the napkin slowly chewing it while rolling his eyes upward. He ignored the rest of the foie gras.

 

I excused myself before dessert, claiming a pressing appointment, and thanking him for his time. He dismissed this with a smile and a flick of his hand. On exiting the restaurant, all the eyes of the staff followed me with a pleading and helpless look. The last thing I heard was Mr. Fario asking the now defeated waiter how the sautéed rooster balls over vanilla ice cream was.

 

I would bet my shorts that he sent it back and changed his mind.

 

What a gourmet, a gourmand, a picky fussy particular persnickety creature is Mr. Fario. Never wanting what he likes, never liking what he has, always eating what is not on the menu, a demanding snobbish little fish of a man.

The review written by Mr. Fario regarding the restaurant on the Traun gave it 4 stars… a rave review indeed. He noted that the salad had an almost floral quality and the napkins were particularly fresh.

Next week I will dine with Ms. Fontinalis, she likes everything…

Author’s note:

For those that are wandering but not completely lost, Fario is the name of the common German Brown Trout… Salmo Fario to be complete, or Mr. Salmo Fario to those of us brotherhood of the angle who ply the waters offering this epicure our whole fly-box of patterns in utter defeat, only to have him swim over and begin chewing on the shoelaces of our wading boots.

Tales from a Flyshop part two.

Tales from a flyshop part 2



X marks the Spot

Everyone likes an inside tip on where to go. After all, there are places to fish that are better than others. However, in our time-saving and time-starved technology shackled and over-busy world there seem to be more and more anglers that want to fish like it is an appointment in an electronic calendar. 7:00 am, Get coffee and bagel. 7:20 am catch steelhead, etc.

 

To this end, those of us in flyshops take an unending series of calls when anadromous fish enter our rivers. “Where do I go?” I usually try to give some vague but potentially strong advice like “Between this and that is a great stretch of water a mile long. Look for water between 2 and 6 feet deep moving at a walking pace, and have confidence in your fly. Put it in the water and fish.” If somebody had told me this 20 years ago, it might have saved me a lot of trouble and fussing. Once in awhile, somebody actually listens to this and I get to play the mystic hero-wizard who led the customer to a great day on the water, but nine times out of ten it is not enough. See, they want to know exactly where to stand, exactly where the fish will be, and exactly which one single fly will work. Reading water and the thousands of variables that make this sport more adventure than catching be damned, they just want to press a button, catch a fish, repeat. So I came up with an idea. I would find a rock in the water somewhere, paint a big red ‘X’ on the top, mark its GPS coordinates, and then give this map to those customers that wanted instant gratification. We could even place a bench on shore near the rock, and others could wait there turn to get to fish from ‘The Spot.’ For obvious reasons, this never made it to fruition, even if it would provide a barrel of laughs.

Measuring

We are all guilty at one time or another of the minor sin of over-estimating the size and weight of fish we just caught. These errors can be separated into two categories: Excited but honest mistakes soon corrected with the aid of a simple tape-measure, and those obstinate and multiplying miss-measurements that just keep on getting bigger every time the yarn is told.

It amazes me how many times I under or over estimate a fish. Weight and length seem sometimes always bigger in the water and lesser in hand. This may be why the great Don Zahner said that if God intended us to measure our catch, he would have given the fish bigger scales! That comes to mind when listening to the tales of anglers gesticulating with histrionics to the great demi-gods of fish they have landed, fish so epic they are as likely to exist as Santa Claus or Hercules. Apparently in this land of epic tales fish fall into two size categories: small and BIG! Thus if an angler lands a nice brown trout on a tiny spring creek, the fish will always be over 14” if it is deemed enough of a fish to tell the buddies about down at the corner bar. If it is a bigger western river or the fish is to be caught on streamers, it will never be under 20 inches. Fish smaller than that are all a lot smaller. Indeed no ‘tweeners exist. In this world of purple skies and fishing gods, fish miraculously metamorphose from a dinky 10 inches to over twenty pounds in a split second. The ten inchers only exist to provide meals for those epic fish and a prelude to the moment the excited angler wipes his brow, gulps down his beer, and lets rip a whopper of a tale.

I know this because I have to be the listener like the buddies at the bar, except that I am entirely a captive audience and without needed lubrication of the spirit kind. Then when it comes time for that 50 lb steelhead caught from ‘Stocker Creek’ to appear as a photo, one must politely smile and nod at the 10 pound fish in the photo. Only once did I venture a glib remark or try to suggest a new portable tape measure. A bloke was telling of epic angling in a creek so full of fish that those of us in the know call it ‘Retard Creek.’ It gets a run of small lake-run steelhead or rainbows so out of proportion to its size that anyone can catch ten or even thirty a day. Pools no longer than fifty feet might hold fifty fish. The weight of the fish he seemed to have caught would make them all world records, beating out the great fish of British Columbia on the Thompson, Washington’s Skagit, or the B-run fish of Idaho’s Clearwater. I asked for his autograph after a bit, and told him he had caught all ten of the world record steelhead. He never batted an eyelid at my attempt to bring a little reality to Oz.

Big Box Misadventures

Why pay good money for quality equipment set up by experts at a fly shop when you can just go down to the Hunters and Anglers Mega-Warehouse and get the same stuff for half the price?

This is why:

A customer came into the shop with a reel, line and backing he had purchased from one of these Big Box Stores (after this referred to as BBS). He wanted me to check the backing. I looked at it and it seemed to fill the large arbor reel to the correct point, allowing the line to fill the reel and leaving a small gap between the line-guard of the reel. “Looks fine to me” I said, handing the reel back to the guy. “Can you make sure?” He pleaded. “I am going down to Florida salt-water fishing and I want to make sure it is O.K.” I humored him by stripping off the flyline and examining the backing. What the hell was this? Thick and sticky line lay in my hand. ‘What is this crap?” I asked.
He brought out a spool now empty from his pocket “Fly Line Backing” it read.

The stuff was the same cord that I use to sew leather when making rod-tubes. It is commercially called ‘Simulated Sinew.’ It is strong as heck but heavily waxed for tight purchase on the leather. This BBS actually sold, marketed, and used it for backing, quickly filling up the customer’s spool with a grand thirty feet. The first fish he caught in the salt would have stripped his line and carried it to the horizon…. Especially since the knot used to attach the backing to the fly line was a common granny knot, and the backing was not secured to the reel in any way. I rigged up his reel properly, charged him nothing, but made him promise that he would never go back there to save a few bucks.

Erik’s old equipment broker and free appraisal services

Mention fly-fishing to any twenty people at random, and ten of them will have some ‘fly rods’ and stuff that belonged to their uncle Zachary or Grandpa now ‘somewhere’ and worth a lot of money.
All of these people end up in my flyshop sooner or later I swear.
The most common are the guys with crooked and bent old production dime-store cane rods that the hopeful antique owner intends to allow him to put in the new swimming pool and deck on his house. They never actually ask me to appraise the rods, but just want me to “Look at them.” Now I love all antique tackle, but I also am running a business selling new tackle… or trying to. Convinced that the treasure discovered in the attic is the Mona Lisa of fly rods, they are usually disappointed when I tell them to hang it on the wall.

Many rod outfits brought in are in curious states. I have had fly rods with spinning reels on them loaded with fly-line, 8 wt rods with 5 wt lines and vice-versa, rods with old rubber and bakelite handles that melted to my hands when I picked them up, rods with repairs obviously conducted under the influence of alcohol and inappropriate tools, entire rods assembled from incongruous rod sections belonging to separate rods, rods that when assembled, fell apart in my hands, elderly widows with their dead husband’s entire collection of tackle, and my favorite of all: Automatic Reels.
What were we thinking when these were made?

Most of these are in a sad state of rust and dust when they are brought in to have new line placed on them. Always trying to be accommodating, I have literally had several of these explode on me while stringing on new line, and have had to pick bits of broken springs out of my beard and hair.
That reminds me of a guy who came into one of the shops on Christmas Eve at 4:30 pm. We closed at 5, and he wanted to use his coupon, which would expire that day. He produced an old cardboard box with a rusty reel full of dead spiders and spider eggs, and wanted new line. What the hell was he thinking? It was Christmas Eve for Santa’s sake, and we wanted to go home already. “What is the weight of the rod?” He didn’t know and hadn’t brought it along. I sold him a six-weight line and loaded it onto the reel afterwards thoroughly washing my hands of dirt and dead spider parts. Merry Christmas!

Odd Rodkins!

One couple came in to show me their new rods a custom rod builder had made for them. I had taught them a beginning fly-fishing class, and they wanted equipment. Instead of purchasing entry-level gear from me, they “Knew Someone” who built custom rods, and would have him build them each a rod. ‘Custom’ was fitting in an ironic sense. They unwrapped the rods for me to see, and I was overwhelmed by the powerful smell of varnish. Lovely wood reel seat spacers accompanied a plastic bait casting handle and multi-colored wrappings worthy of a toddler with a new box of crayons. The rods themselves were 6 feet long and seemed to be spinning rod blanks. Here was a true ‘Custom’ rod indeed. One third spinning rod, one third bait caster, and one third fly rod, and entirely covered from tip to butt in varnish.

I need a few flies…

This is a curious phenomenon…. Customers often come in and tell me they are planning a trip to a dream destination and river in Montana, Wyoming, The Bahamas, etc. They need a few flies for the trip. I make suggestions after asking the necessary questions, and they come to the counter with… 4 flies.
No, not a dozen of 4 patterns, but 4 flies…. For their trip… for their trip to that great dream destination… filled with epic fish… for a week…. In the wilderness…
4 flies.
4 bloody flies.
One fly to get dropped in the river, one to get lost before they get there, one to stick in the tree behind them, and the last one… the magic fly… to break off on their first fish.
Despite my attempts at good-natured advice as to the proper equipped angler, they often leave the shop with only those 4 flies.

Broken rods!

The true bane of existence for anyone working in a fly-shop are broken rods. I like to say there are two kinds of anglers; those who have broken a rod or two, and those that soon will. It is just a fact of life with brittle long skinny sticks like this. I rather think I could amend saying to more fully represent reality… “There are two kinds of anglers; those that having broken their rod, will gladly pay a small warranty fee and get a new rod in return, and the kind that blame me for breaking their rod.

Well, not always me specifically… often it is the manufacturer that gets blamed as well. So how did I get to be the blame fall-guy? I was there to receive the anger and frustration of the customer…therefore my fault. It always mystifies me how people seem to destroy their rods. I have broken a few, and with only one exception, it was my fault. I fell on two of them, one while tumbling on wet clay and the other when loose rocks slid out from under me. Never did I blame the person who sold me the rod. These guys crack me up. Most of the breakage happens when neophyte fly-fishermen foul hook salmon that are making their spawning run up great lakes tributaries. Big fish hooked in the fins, long brittle rods, and anglers that don’t understand how to let the fish run and wear itself out results in lines waiting at the door at opening times with sad or angry looks and a rod tube in hand.
I asked one guy whose rod had broken on landing a king salmon what tippet and leader combination he was using. “Huh?” he answered. It turns out he was tying straight 20 lb. Mono on his line as a leader. No wonder his rod broke.

I get guys coming in with 5 wt rods shattered on salmon. What were they thinking? The poor fish hooked in the ass and jumping down the river followed by a tangle of line and the tip section of a five-weight fly rod was heard by one piscatorial-eared passerby to exclaim “I was just trying to have sex!”
and on it goes…

Fishing Reports

Want an accurate fishing report? Good luck. See us at fly-shops have to be part fiction writer and part social-psychiatrist to put together a report.
Here are several examples and translations:
Fishing: Great
Someone caught a fish yesterday, there are fish in the river, the river is not completely blown out, that rumor about the escaped alligator is only partly true, the truck filled with gasoline crashed and exploded downstream from the last hundred yards of river, so there are still fish to be had, The river has not completely dried up, although it is 100 degrees out, fish can still be had at dawn and dusk, etc.
Fishing: Good
That fire you read about wasn’t near the river, it WAS the river. Don’t go. Stay home. Be very afraid.
See, these are for profit operations, and they profit from you going fishing and visiting their shops. They are not going to tell you that you have a better chance of taking a trophy trout from the river Styx with a dry fly in the pitch darkness while being rowed to Hades by the devil himself, then catching a fish in their river! If they say the fishing is just So-so, you might want to consider a game of ping-pong instead.
Then come all the inherent problems with rating the fishing. What is “Good” after all? To one angry angler complaining about our fishing reports “Good” was not good enough. He caught two wild brown trout @ 10 - 11 inches each on a dry-fly from a local creek. See, I would consider that “Good” fishing… apparently he didn’t. He wanted to catch numbers. That numbers problem is why tributary fishing reports for salmon and steelhead are often very relative. “Good” refers to when an angler has a near 100% chance to catch dozens of fish. “Great” refers to when while gearing up at the car, a errant salmon trying to jump the water falls accidentally lands in you car, upsets a grocery sack of spices onto itself, guts itself, and then flips onto the hot manifold and begins baking nicely.
“Just O.K.” is when you have a decent chance of landing a fish if you actually have some skills. That way when somebody who can only cast 10 feet and is more than half-drunk enters the river, they won’t come in your shop afterwards bearing firearms and complaining about your misleading reports.
Its all about setting and managing expectations, and the setting of those expectations is often beyond one’s control.

Beginners and experts

I maintain that there are only two kinds of fly fishers: Beginners and experts. Beginners have never caught a fish. Experts have caught at least one fish. Give me the beginners every time.
Think that is a Tongue In Cheek observation….
Meet the cast of the “Experts Club,” all experts in their own minds…
One guy didn’t know a Blue wing olive was a mayfly. He thought it was a midge. He was ‘guiding’ several other anglers at the time.
Another guy didn’t know the difference between a salmon and a steelhead, although by his own accounts, he had “Caught thousands of ‘em.”
One gentleman seemed to correlate 5X tippet and leader with 5 lb and 5 wt. He thought you could only use 5 lb. Test tippet with a 5X leader because his rod was a five weight.
Another guy complained that his new rod he bought from us ‘sucked’. He said that it didn’t cast right. He told us he used the same line on his other rod and it worked fine. This rod was a 9 wt.. His other rod? A 4 wt. “Nobody told me,” he complained. He told us that he had been fly-fishing for over 20 years.
One old codger thought that the WF designation on a fly line stood for “Wrinkle-Free” He was planning on ironing his fly line to get the kinks out.

How to fall in the river.

Readers of this blog may be aware that from time to time, I toss a bit of barbed humor into the mix, and the most frequent target of that humor is myself. After all, if one cannot poke fun at oneself, then one may be in danger of taking oneself too seriously.

The other day I placed a loop of line over a budding branch hanging over the water. I rolled my eyes and tried to free it. It remained stuck like it was attached with glue. Instead of wading back to the branch and carefully freeing the line, I instead commenced pulling on it. Newton’s third law of physics states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, when I freed the flyline, I cart wheeled ass over teakettle backwards into the water. Unbelievable. I laughed and shivered all the way through the next two hours. It is amazing that I can wade through minefields, only to manage this Laurel and Hardy sort of act.
I hope someone got a good laugh out of it. I know I did!

The Weightless Wonderod

A wee bit of humor for a Saturday:

In the never-ending quest for a lighter rod, the Sagorviloomiston rod company has come out with a revolutionary line of flyrods, the ‘Weightless Wonderod’ series.


These new rods are invisible as well as weighing nothing. Rod designer Mortimer Haggis says, “The Weightless Wonderod series is what anglers have been asking for for many years. The lighter the rod, the less fatigue placed upon the arms while casting. Since these rods weigh nothing and effectively don’t exist, fly anglers can fish whenever and wherever they like, without the least effort at all. This opens up whole new avenues to the fly such as couch angling, dream fishing, and standing in the river waving your hand.”


The W.W. rods retail for $999.95, are available from 0 through 000 weight, and come with a matching fly-line made of helium atoms. They feature reel seats made from a proprietary blend of unbelievium and nonsensium, and a fetching blank color of ‘oxygen.’

A ‘satisfaction or your hallucination back’ warranty is offered as well.


For more information, contact Sagorviloomiston at thelighterthebetternomatterwhat.clom

It's all very complicated...

“You must really like to eat fish,” the friend of a friend says to me while sipping her latte.

“Um, well, actually I release most of the fish I catch,” I mumble, aware where this is inevitably going to end up.

“So, you like to fish, and you admit you like to eat fish, but instead you release them?”

“Well, see, it is all about nature, and beauty, environmental stewardship, appreciation of the fish and the river… See, fly-fishing is more than just fishing…”

Really, though, when it comes down to it, I reflect, it is just a simple game with rules that a four-year-old could grasp: Go down to lake or river with rod and reel. Catch fish. Repeat.


Being romantics, we always want to make more out of it. Take a simple essence and surround it with volumes of philosophy.
Make it into some sort of metaphysical and existential reflection and journey. Make it into a metaphor, and find life-lessons in it. Sit by the river pondering Camus. Assigning anthropomorphic qualities to things we see around us. Our flies are art, not craft we argue to ourselves, as if just accused anonymously by an upstart and impudent thrush. We’re not just fishing see… we are, well, experiencing some sort of primal harmony. “It’s all poetry,” we murmur out loud, even if the hypocrisy peeks its irritating head through a tiny doorway in our brain, reminding us that the last time we attempted to read Frost, we fell asleep.

It just has to be more than a simple game of cat and mouse. We refuse any assertion that at times it can be quite easy. “Takes years and skill,” we argue to the trees while raising fish after fish with a fly that the carefully tied hackle fell off of on the first cast.

We have been caught by family members while lying in the filled bathtub with scuba gear, congratulating ourselves on the latest revelation or innovation in fly design. We have been admonished and punished by angry spouses when our latest attempts at dying hackle stained the sink a very interesting shade of green.

‘Normal or mundane’ folks refer to them as bugs, but we know better. They are Ephemerella subvaria. It makes a difference we reflect… Appreciation and knowledge and such.

There was once a time when we contemplated homicide as a careless Aunt referred to our cane fly rod as a “Fishing pole.”

We don’t just take a drink from the river, we sip of the essence of life, forgetting while we do so, that the last time we did this we ended up with the runs for a week.

What other kind of sport could so inspire, that we could be found late upon a cold winter morning, seated in front of the fireplace in the study, dressed only in a robe and our underwear, surrounded by tackle and fly-boxes, dreaming dreams of spring.

I once read somewhere that a newlywed bride told her friend, “My husband does not drink, smoke, or chase women, instead, he fly-fishes.”
Several years later, she admitted to the same friend that if it were up to her, she wished he did a few of those other things, and a bit less fishing.

“It’s complicated,” I try to explain to the friend of a friend; “It’s sublime.” Hearing those words from my mouth with the clarity of an out of body experience, I smile about how I am going to explain why it is ‘sublime’ to match wits with a creature with a brain the size of a match-head, attempt to fool it with a bit of old string and some smelly fur, and end up coming up short most of the time.

“Perhaps it is a journey in humility,” I reason out loud, remembering when arrogance kept us from talking to that guy with the spinning rod that was out-fishing us ten to one. Pride before the fall? Arrogance before humility, or humbleness only because of prior arrogance… More philosophy.

What other sport would have us attempt, via some hidden and unknown rosetta stone, to decipher and make sense of the many ill-written books on fly-fishing? Some being tomes of astounding tediousness and practically unreadable. What other sport would have us chuckle with the fine author Nick Lyons, as everything possible goes wrong and he falls in the river? Perhaps it is because we have been there ourselves. We may reflect back to the time when, on the subject of beauty and fly-casting, we attempted, in a local park, to show our spouse the inherent ballet in a properly made loop, only to have a seagull eat the piece of yarn we were using as a fly, and after taking out all the line, tangle it forever in a large oak tree.

“It’s complicated…” I mumble through current muffin crumbs, watching the departing back of the friend of a friend, and looking down at the spilled coffee, and the single word traced with it on the table: “Crazy.”

After much reflection, I have come to completely agree.

My personal funniest moment of 2009

The setting: somewhere in a river valley.

The plot: Erik’s car breaks down, and he has to ride with his friend for a day of fishing and then off to a mountain town to see about a tow and find if anyone can work on a VW.

The incident:

Well, I had to transfer all of my necessary items from my dead car to my friend’s truck. I needed food, fishing gear, and essentials. Somehow I forgot something.

We get to the mountain town after a morning of fishing and begin to search for a foreign car repair place or somewhere with someone with most of their teeth left. We locate one, and as I am going to go inside, I realize that I have left my shoes in my car, which is dead beside the river. What to do?

My friend, ever the helpful sport, offers to loan me his unused but brand new extra pair of wading boots. I agree. As I tie the laces, I realize that I am dressed in all black capilene, and now am wearing size 13 lime green clown shoes. Walking in the things was like a girls first attempt at pumps. Here I am in some mountain town, dressed in black spandex and giant lime green clown shoes and about to ask for a tow.

They must still be talking about the strange way people from Wisconsin dress…

Moral of the tale: We all look like complete idiots sooner or later.

The Og factor

If you have not yet met my friend Og, a little introduction is in order. Og is a Neanderthal that I discovered is living in my basement. He is harmless, but not too bright. He takes an interest in my doings, so I sometimes take him to local parks and short fishing outings.

I have to be careful, because as dim as Og is, he more than makes up in strength and energy. He is apt to leap into the water and kill zombie salmon with his bare hands, or turn tackle into abstract sculpture by accident. He always is sorry afterwards.

Og has been pestering me to go fly-fishing for steelhead with a two-handed rod for several months now. I hesitate to do this for many reasons. Then, the other day, I found a cheap two-handed rod at a sporting goods store for $20.00. I figured “Why not?” I fitted it with a cheap spare reel and an old line, and invited Og to accompany me to the river.

He is quite excited as we walk down the path to the water. “Stop jumping up and down, Og, you’re making me dizzy!”

“Og fish! Og cast good! Og splay cast!”

“Actually it is ‘spey’… never mind. Stop swinging from that power line and come down here Og.”

“Og fish good!”

“Right, but first I need to teach you how to cast a two-handed rod. It is not about strength, Og, but involves a bit of finesse. O.K. Now take the rod like this, swing it around so, and then sort of pull and push with your arms, and cast it out. I am starting you out with a floating line for now.”

“Fromoting rine good! Where fish?”

“They are in the river, Og. Just make a short cast.”

Og tries for the next half-hour to make even a single cast. He manages to wrap the line around his head, hook me in the ear, and fall down several times.

“Og mad! Og kill”

Og manages to see a squirrel and chase it into the woods. When he returns a few moments later, he has fur all over his face and a tail sticking out of his mouth.

“Feel better Og?”

“Og frustrated. Splay cast hard. Shoulder hurt. Squirrel taste funny.”

“Maybe you should not eat raw squirrels that… oh never mind. Look, Og, your shoulder hurts because you are trying too hard. Lets start you off with this spinning rod instead.”

“Og spin good!”

Og manages to create a bird’s nest of line, and fall into the river.

“What Og do wrong?”

“Hmmm, I expect we might just try this cane pole and a bobber for now.”

“Og bobber good!”

Og manages a sort of flop cast that ends up in bouncing the bobber off of his head. In frustration, he eats the bobber.

“Og bobber crunchy!”

Yes, well….

To make a long story short, I was never able to teach Og to cast that day. We returned home instead, and Og returned to his corner in the basement.

I had tried a fly-rod, a spinning rod, and a cane pole, all to no avail. What type of rod and line would enable Og to make even a basic efficient cast, I wondered?

Then it hit me. Og was sort of human. Could it be possible that he was limited by his lack of skill? Was it possible that it was not about the rod, line, or style of fishing at all, but instead stem from Og’s lack of practice? After all, I remember hitting myself, hooking myself, and falling in the water too. Perhaps Og was human after all?

The Og factor… the human factor. The 99% slice of the mastery pie. It seems that this is always the last thing to be examined. Instead, we attempt to compensate for our lack of skill through adoption of ‘more efficient’ tackle and styles instead of realizing that as Og Shakespeare found, “The fault lies in ourselves, not in our squirrels.”

How to dress for Steelhead and Atlantic Salmon fishing

The other day I was re-reading a history of my hometown when I came across a photo from the early 1900s. It showed a dozen or so men and boys fishing in Lake Michigan off of a pier. They were using long cane poles and bait. Each was dressed in a shirt and tie and a bowler hat. Not a sport shirt in the crowd. That set me thinking about the sport of fishing and dress in general.

Now I am known as something of an oddball. I am one of the last people of my age to actually study classic English dress, and often enter the river sporting one of a multitude of Irish hats, or British cloth caps. Flyfishing, like all other sports these days, has its own couture. Trout fishers have the Lee Wulff vest, the ubiquitous ball cap, the necessary or unnecessary do-dads and accessories attached to zingers, and the little net hanging from the back. Want to be a trout fisherman? Then one had better look like one.

At least this is better than the NASCAR/BASS circuit, where participants become walking advertisement space; billboards to commercialism.

After a long string of emails with a colleague concerning proper traditional dress for Salmon fishing in the UK, I began to think of the differences between the aristocratic and exclusive nature of Salmon fishing, and the rather proletarian nature of Steelhead fishing.

Atlantic Salmon are the nobility of fish. In general, one also needs to be a nobleman or at least wealthy to enjoy good Salmon fishing. Private associations, clubs, and districts own the rivers, with some less quality water being set aside as public. In Scotland, Salmon fishing was divided by class. The upper classes (nobility, peers, wealthy industrialists, etc.) leased the fishing from the crown, while the estuaries were reserved for the lower class tackmen that pulled nets behind boats. Water bailiffs made certain that Joe lunchbox never poached the river itself.

North American Steelhead in contrast is the poor-man’s Salmon.

Rivers are free and belonged to the public in many cases. Licenses are inexpensive, and everyone can participate in the sport. Sort of egalitarian fishing. (As long as there are fish left…)

The way we dress for the two sports and their complete contrast struck me as fodder for a little humor. So here is my tongue-in-cheek guide to dressing to fish for the respective species.

Atlantic Salmon:

Go to a high end sporting clothing retailer specializing in wing shooting.

Purchase a Barbour Bordor waxed cotton jacket for $399.00. Add a suit consisting of matching tweed breeks, vest and jacket. Partner that with several tattersall shirts. Should run between $899.00 to $1,200.00 Accessorize with leather-lined Wellingtons for $430.00, and a Harris Tweed cap for $50.00 Woolen knit or silk regimental tie will cost about $30.00.

You should look quite sporting while in the bothy, or seated at the dinner table sipping a fine merlot.

Steelhead:

Go to garage. Locate old hooded sweatshirt you use when you work on the car. You know… the one with the hole in it caused when it got tangled in the torque-wrench; the one bearing a large oil-stain. Tear off the sleeves. Wear this over a piece of capiline so old that you can see through it. Add either a ball cap obtained from a Nebraska farmer, or a knit hat with holes. Spend $499.99 on sunglasses. Find abandoned gloves behind dumpster. Cut off fingers. This will cost nothing, and provide for a good conversation piece, as well as keeping your hands warm. Spend $479.00 on Simms jacket. Use sleeves torn off old sweatshirt as socks.

You should look quite sporting while passed out in your car, or seated at a picnic table eating a gas-station chili-dog.

(Mis) adventures with fur and feathers

Top: Hmm...

Middle: Um...

Bottom: A wee bit better

When I began fly-fishing, it was inevitable that I try my hand at fly tying. It was not just the creative aspect that drove my decision, but the fact that I am notoriously cheap. Store-bought flies were expensive, and it seemed that I could save money by creating my own patterns. It also might have been some sort of karmic fate or curse. I am still kind of divided on this. At least being a fly-tier has given me an excuse to be enigmatic, as in “Don’t talk to Erik over there, he is kind of weird. You know…he ties his own fishing lures…”

Every journey begins with a single step. In my case, I tripped and fell into the river.


To begin with, I did not have a vise. I also had no proper materials. I used old yarn and cotton sewing thread and attached them to inappropriate odd hooks using my hands. I wanted them to look like the few flies pictured in my book The Big Book of Fishing, which must have been tied by the three-year-old daughter of the publisher. Mine were not even that good. For some reason, I failed to grasp the simple concept that the thread belonged under the materials. My first flies looked like something the cat choked up.


I fished with them anyway, but was puzzled when, after a dozen casts, all the materials fell off. It didn’t matter though, any fish retarded enough to give my tying abominations a second glance, would be just as likely to eat a bare hook. I added glue in an attempt to secure the materials better. I lacked head-cement, so I used five-minute epoxy. This solved the problem, however the flies now lacked any motion at all, being entirely stiff with glue.


Then one Christmas, I received a vise and toolset. Santa must have a sense of humor. Either that or he’s a sadist.


I began the process of acquiring some actual fly hooks and inexpensive materials. What I should have done at this point was visit a fly shop and buy a book. Instead, I went to a craft store and a shop that sells lure-making supplies. I bought colorful craft yarn, plastic pony beads, ostrich herl, a package of various feathers intended to decorate masks, some hackle, three thousand yards of black chenille on sale, peacock herl, brass wire, and a single spool of tying thread. To this I added several packages of Mustad hooks. I returned home with excitement, brewed up a pot of coffee, put on some Bach, and arranged all my various acquisitions and the vise on the dining room table.

The first step in this gloriously creative day was to place the hook in the vise. This was far more difficult then it looked. The vise was one of those Indian import jobs, based very loosely on a Thompson classic (or perhaps on a Medieval thumbscrew). It sported an adjustment handle in the rear and a screw knob that one turned in order to, in theory, hold a hook securely. All I really required of the vise was to hold the hook. It did even that poorly. After a few minutes of fiddling, adjusting, pricking myself with the hook, more fiddling, and a good amount of freeform cursing, the hook sat in the jaws of the vise. It stayed put as long as I didn’t touch it. As soon as I attempted to wrap it with thread, the hook popped out with a loud “SPRONG!” and flew across the room to be located later by the vacuum cleaner.


Then the cotter pin that held the adjusting lever broke.


Undaunted, I fixed it with a bit of old wire, realizing all the way that one gets what one pays for.


I finally got the thread on the hook. Champagne all around! Then the thread broke for the first of ten thousand times, and I sliced open my fingers on the hook. I noted on the grocery list on the refrigerator that I needed to restock band-aids. The yarn I was using for the body was by now kind of claret colored by blood. I added some peacock herl, wound in a saddle hackle and some tinsel, and ran out of room at the front of the fly. Lesson #1: Don’t crowd the head.



I began to attempt to use the tools that came with the vise. These consisted of a pokey thing, a strange curved springy thing, something with two prongs on it, and some sort of pliers. These tools were obviously designed and made by Pakistani orphans, who had as little idea as I did as to their intended use.



Everything that could go wrong did. Materials that seemed secured mysteriously unwound themselves after the fly was completed. My heads unraveled. I tied in feathers upside down and backwards. I forgot steps. I had a blast.

I persevered and continued tying. Out on the water, I showed off my small collection of flies to others, who politely nodded and smiled. The common consensus was that “Those flies will catch a fish,” which is the stock courteous reply when unable to think of anything positive to say.

One of the first materials I collected were several packages of marabou. These I tied in as a tail. I liked the effect, so I added more colors. The first Wooly Bugger I tied consisted of thirty Marabou blood quills, a whole lot of thread, and a plastic pony bead. It floated.

The only solution to this, as I reasoned it, was to add more materials. More marabou would make the fly heavier, and thus it would sink faster. Right. The resulting monstrosity was nearly impossible to cast. After two or three hours of fishing, the fly became saturated with enough water to allow it to sink. Once it was waterlogged, it weighed around a pound or so, and became impossible to use. Back to the drawing board.


At a local fly shop, I found a giant grab bag of deer, caribou, antelope, and elk hair clippings dyed in wild colors. This collection of floor-sweepings, end-pieces, and mangy fur set me back only eight bucks. Man was I pumped. I had begun to collect some fly-fishing magazines, and was fascinated with what one could do with spun deer hair. Talk about running before learning to walk…


I created, in order, a succession of mutations that could only be appreciated by a person on an acid trip, and a huge mess in my apartment. Wherever I went, deer hair of various colors fell off my clothing. Lacking the proper razor blades, I employed an old pair of dull scissors in trimming my creations to shape. The results looked like a near miss by a hedge-trimmer with the shakes. Several neighborhood bass actually ate the things, proving that bass are just not that bright. Adding to the difficulty of working with the hair was the fact that most of the pieces were in effect unusable, which was something that never occurred to me.


After a few months of tying some Polar Shrimp that looked like rejects from a pre-school craft fair, some Dahlberg Divers that sank backwards, and a set of Double Egg and Sperm flies made from non-colorfast materials that bled into a sort odd pinkish-white mess, I found a picture of a Thunder and Lightning in an English magazine. Aha!


By now the reader may realize that I lacked completely in the needed skills or the proper materials to even think of tying a full-dress salmon fly. Nevertheless, I forged blindly ahead. My motto seemed to be “Enthusiasm will make up for skill.”


All sorts of colorful feathers and furs were used to create this first salmon fly. It actually looked pretty cool, especially compared to the other crimes against nature that emerged from my vise. I proudly gave several of the flies away as Christmas gifts. My father placed his in an Irish hat, which was a bit too much of an honor. (To the fly, not the hat)


Then one day I ran into a strange character in a local flyshop. He had suitcases of flies he tied, all mounted expertly in small plastic boxes. He seemed to be an unlikely candidate for a fly tier. He spoke with a deep hillbilly accent, made wild claims and exaggerations, carried a bowie knife, and smelled like mothballs. I figured that if he could tie nice flies, I could too. Besides, I had one major advantage; my father and mother were not cousins.


Few flies remain from that early era. My wet flies floated, and my dry flies sank. Most were discarded or mercifully lost in trees.


Slowly, my flies began to improve. I broke the thread less often, bought a vise that actually held a hook, purchased quality materials, and began to practice technique.


So, where was I?

Oh right; the original goals of creating pretty flies and saving money. I guess I am mostly successful at the former, but failed miserably at the latter. I expect I am not alone in this. There should be a warning label on fly tying materials and tools.


A couple of other rather unexpected things happened too. The dining room table, and in fact, the entire dining area somehow slowly morphed into a tying area. I never intended this to happen, but one day I walked past the piled-up mess, took a sip of tea, and muttered, “Well, there it is then…”


The second and even more unexpected thing was that I found myself enjoying the creative process and beautiful finished results of tying flies almost as much as I did fishing.

It was a heck of a fun journey.

So, as I type this with an old Lady Caroline embedded in my sock, a piece of tinsel stubbornly caught in my hair, and surrounded by dozens of fly boxes, I can honestly say that it was worth it.


I just need to get a better vacuum cleaner.

Gastro Fantastic

 I have no idea how I came up with this, but I thought you might get a kick out of it.



Gastro-Fantastic
Copyright 2009 by Erik F. Helm

I took a shortcut through the woods. The path curved through the forest floor, and I followed it with some recollection or intent to fish a Hendrickson hatch. It was a strange wood, and under the deep beds of ferns grew colorful mushrooms and flowers that reminded me of candy-canes. It all seemed so familiar, in a bizarre way. I had been here before a long, long time ago.

As the path led through a grove of unusually crabbed and ancient oaks, I spotted a cottage.
It was a small dwelling, but lit with color. Moving closer, I realized that the structure was constructed entirely of various cans of beer. “How strange,” I thought as I found myself knocking at the door.
It soon opened, and I was confronted by an old woman with a long nose complete with warts, and wearing a big floppy black hat.
“Come in my pretty,” she said. “Have a beer.”
“No thank you,” I said, as my eyes adjusted to the brightly-lit interior. The old woman held out a can of Hamms, and with a grin that revealed her missing teeth, popped open the beer.
“Mmmm, good beer…, nice and cold!” she cackled.

As I refused her offering for the second time, I noticed that a large cage stood in the corner, and that an enormously rotund figure was seated in it drinking a beer. The floor of the cage was littered with empties.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, turning to the old woman.
“Oh never mind him,” she replied, “That’s just our Christmas dinner. We’re just fattening him up.”

“Hey,” I exclaimed in sudden clarity, “You wouldn’t happen to be a witch?”
“Of course!” she stated, “Everyone knows me. I am the wicked witch of the forest. I live here with my husband. He cooks meth in the back shed.”

As on cue, a huge figure of a man in faded and stained bib overalls came into the room through the back door. He looked exactly like Boris Karloff playing the Frankenstein monster, but sported a NASCAR ball cap. He made a mooing noise as he walked.

“Say,” I began, “ you’ve got it all wrong. The house is supposed to be made out of candy and gingerbread, and you are supposed to be eating Hansel and Gretel after fattening them up on candy, not beer. And Lester or Zeke over there, whatever his name is, is a woodcutter, not a meth cooker.”

“Oh, we used to have a candy house many years ago,’ she reflected, “But we updated it for modern times.”

A knock sounded at the front door, and I stood aside as the witch opened it to reveal a family of bears, all bearing a striking resemblance to Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

“Not you again!” the witch cried. “I’ve told you before a hundred times, you have the wrong house!”
“We have no porridge here.”

This was getting stranger and stranger, and a funny sort of boiling and churning feeling was coming from the pit of my stomach.

Another knock sounded at the door, and with an exasperated sigh, the old woman opened it a second time.

The three bears were replaced by a tall figure in a red cloak and hood. He carried a fly rod and creel, and looked exactly like Issac Walton in drag.

“What the ‘ell do you want?” the witch asked.

“I have come from the temple of Moron,” he stated loudly. “Have you heard about the end-times?”

He opened his creel to take out a religious tract, and out spilled hundreds of cans of chili. They were covered in hatching mayflies.

“Hendricksons,” I said aloud, waking to an aching in my gut.

I was in my tent, back in the real world. It was three in the morning and halfway through an epic trip for trout. As I unzipped the rain fly and made my way to the porta-john, I reflected that Rob was right in his warning to me late that evening.

Canned extra-hot chili and discount beer is a lethal combination.

Some tales from a flyshop

A few tales from a flyshop:



I am a bit of a collector of humorous true stories of folly. My sense of humor can be rather ironic, or sardonic. Fictional stories of human foibles are always amusing, but when they are true tales… ah, now we have a real gem.

My time running a flyshop often included bizarre encounters with a variety of customers. There were those who took themselves way too seriously, individuals that would not listen, people that always asked me the same three questions, homeless people killing a few hours, customers who would never speak to me… well, you get the idea.

I don’t want to give the impression that all my customers were eccentric, indeed, most were wonderful persons, and I still call many ‘friend’ to this day. However, just like the stories of personal mishaps, strange individuals stick out in my mind like characters out of Chekov or Joyce.

Here are a few examples of those individuals and incidents burned into my memory.

Pedro and the line

In the department store that my fly shop was part of, we had an employee whose job title was “Cleaning.”
Pedro always smiled as he went about his tasks. He had the joy and innocence of a child. He also spoke little comprehendable English. He had been in the country for quite a few years, but only spoke Spanish and a few jumbled English phrases. Conversations beyond “Hello, how are you?” turned into comedies of errors.
One day, a customer came into the shop to have all 300 yards of his salt water backing replaced. I mentioned that it would take me a half-hour at least, and he decided to take lunch. “I will be back to pick it up at two o’clock sharp, my plane leaves for the Bahamas at four.” Two hours should be plenty of time I thought.

Half way through the process of removing the backing to an awaiting plastic garbage pail in the back room, I was called back into the shop to aid a customer. When I returned, the sight that greeted me was one of horror. There stood Pedro with the fly line all tangled in a heap by his pile of trash. “Erik… Que?” he asked, holding up the pile. “NO QUE!” I responded, rushing forward to grab the line. Alas, it was in a hopeless tangle. You probably wonder why I coiled the line into a cardboard box instead of using a line-winder. The company I worked for was notoriously cheap, and we had no line winder. Indeed, even the reel-winder was defective, and ran backwards.

Suffice it to say I was covered with terror sweat when I wound the last coil of line on the customer’s reel just in time for him to pick it up and drive to the airport. Untangling that fly line added a few gray hairs to my head.




Midwest cutthroat

Every once and awhile you get a person who is convinced that he or she is right about an observation despite being told by experts that they are incorrect. Such a customer walked into the shop one day and wanted to buy flies for cutthroat trout. “Where are you fishing?” I asked. The answer was on the warm water tributary of Lake Michigan that is our local river. He went on to explain that he had been fishing the day before, and he had spotted some fish that ran about four or five pounds spawning in the river. He had thrown every fly he had at them, but could not get them to eat. He described the fish as having a sort of red coloration to their pectoral fins. Finally, the light went on in my brain. “Those are redhorse,” I explained. “A kind of sucker.”
“They were cutthroat,” he argued. “I know my trouts!”

I didn’t argue further. He obviously “Knew his trouts.” Ever since then, it has been a joke to me when asked what I am fishing for, to reply “Wisconsin Cutthroat!”



Of glo-bugs and hoppers.

The most annoying time of the year for me was the season when salmon ran our river to spawn. Dark and nasty, these Chinook salmon were often covered with fungus. Their appearance in the river caused all sorts of fools to come out of the woodwork to attempt to catch them in only inches of water. The preferred method of ‘fly fishing’ for these boots is to use glo-bugs and split-shot.

Every phone call at this time of year was the same: “Are the salmon runnin?”
Every customer likewise asked the follow-up question, “What color glo-bugs are them salmon taking?”

Despite my best efforts to interest anglers in changing their tactics and using streamers, it was always the glo-bugs that sold.

So one day, when the 999th customer was explaining to me that the fish would only take pink glo-bugs, I said to him, “That’s not what the last guy said. He was catching them on grasshoppers.” The guy looked at me incredulously for a few seconds before I broke into a smile, and told him that I was just kidding.

He walked out the door with a bag of hopper patterns, despite my protests again and again that I was just kidding.

The bigwig.

Some people have an inflated view of themselves. This was obviously the case with one very prominent lawyer that was also a former bigwig with a prominent fishing and recreation organization. They say that fly anglers can be arrogant. How true that was became apparent when I approached this gentleman one afternoon to ask him if he needed any help. “Do you know who I am?” He asked with a rather haughty inflection.
“Do you know who I am?” I responded before I could catch myself. His eyebrows rose with incredulous shock at my lack of groveling.

I never saw him again.

The lawyer and the deceiver

The lack of chartreuse tying thread for deceivers led me to suggest to yet another lawyer that many tiers simply used white thread, and covered the head later with colored fingernail polish.
“Do you even TIE FLIES?” he asked.
“No, actually I just walked in from the street,” I responded. “That’s why I came up to you and asked if you needed any help with the thread.”

I never saw that guy again either. I have got to work on my people skills.

What weight is it?

The sheer number of fishermen that came into the shop looking to buy fly line and yet not knowing what weight rod they had was simply baffling. I kind of wondered what kind of goofy setup they were fishing with. Which leads us to the next customer…

The lawyer and the backwards line.

More lawyers. It is not my intent to pick on lawyers, but I knew that these customers were lawyers because they told me so.
Me: “Hi, can I help you?”
Them: “I’m a lawyer.”
To this day I am unsure if this was supposed to be some kind of warning, or simply an introduction. It reminds me of a giant grizzly wandering wild the woods with a wooden placard around his neck that reads “Bear.”

Two gentlemen in suits came into the shop during the lunch hour on a Friday, and I approached to see if I could help, or simply direct them to anything.

“Were lawyers.”

The taller lawyer explained that he was an ‘expert’ fly fisherman, and that he was going to take his friend fly fishing for the first time on a trout stream.

This situation is very difficult to handle. The novice or beginner will often overlook advice in favor of his buddy’s. The ‘expert’ buddy doesn’t want to be contradicted, so I was often forced in these situations to stand back as poor decisions were made on the novice’s behalf.

Sensing from body language that I was not wanted, I remarked that the reel that the ‘expert’ was holding was quite nice and “May I see it?”

“Help yourself’” he said.

I noticed that the line badly needed cleaning, and after getting his permission, I started stripping it off the reel. It seemed to be some sort of level two or three weight line. Then, after fifty feet of line lay at my feet, it got a lot fatter.

“What weight line is this?” I asked.
“Five weight. My spare reel. Gonna lend it to my buddy here.”

Please forgive me dear reader. I could not help myself.

“You know,” I began. “The fly line is on backwards.”

He looked up, and realizing that I had effectively removed his mantle of ‘expert’, mumbled “I guess that’s why it never cast right.”

While I reversed the line and cleaned it, the novice listened to his friend’s advice with, if I read his facial expressions correctly, a bit of apprehension.




Match the hatch (cork handle)

A very accomplished local fly fisherman came to me one day with a rod to send back to the manufacturer. This was a service that we offered free as a courtesy, and was a weekly occurrence.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
He pointed to a deep hole in the cork handle, and told me a story.
Apparently, he was fishing the rod when some sort of insect decided it was time to hatch… from the cork of his rod! It squirmed its way out of the cork, hatched, and flew away, leaving behind the large hollow home of his larval stage.
On the line entitled ‘Defect or issue,’ I wrote. “Bug hatched from cork. Please replace.”
I often wonder what the manufacturer thought when they got that one, but sure enough, they replaced the rod. Wonder where the cork-eating bug ended up…

Fly reels and bourbon don’t mix

Calmer heads prevailed when a guy who was obviously stinking drunk came into the shop spitting with anger at the Orvis Battenkill reel that he had bought from us. My colleague Bill handled the situation perfectly. I, on the other hand, was in favor of placing the reel far up his anal region.

His complaint was that the reel spool was scraping and bent. This, of course, was due to the fact that he had clearly fallen on it in a drunken stupor, a fact that he never told us. His anger should have been directed inward, as it was obvious that he was at fault. There are some people in this world for which any sense of personal responsibility did not exist. Here was a prime example.

Bill calmed me down, placated the customer, and motioned me into the back room to escape the booze fumes as well as replace the reel. He then bent the reel back into shape with his bare hands. Returning to the customer, he told him that he had replaced the reel with a new one. The goon was drunk enough that he probably could not see properly to determine that it was the same reel, and had enough of a distorted sense of time to not notice that it only took us five minutes to ‘replace’ the reel. He yelled a few more threats our way about defective expensive gear and then staggered out of the shop. We never saw him again. Thank God.



“Its on sale!”

Human psychology is a funny thing, especially when it comes to sales.
Like most retail establishments, I held an annual sale. In this case, it was a store-wide sale in all departments. It attracted all kinds of goofy bargain hunters. Early on, I found that if you reduced the price of something far enough, it would sell. I sold two trout priests at 70% off to a guy who didn’t fish and had no idea what they were. A pair of size 13 wading boots that were discontinued sold to a short woman that wore a size seven. When I stated that I thought that they would never fit her, she exclaimed with big eyes “But they are on sale!!”

Old flylines placed in a discount bin always sold as well. An ancient seven weight level line found in the back room sold to a guy who was intending to fish for bonefish. I did try to explain that it would not work, but it WAS ON SALE!! He bought it anyway. His expensive dream vacation to Belize would be torpedoed by trying to save twenty bucks on a line.

Getting rid of spare spools became a chore. I had a whole shelf of discontinued spools in the back room. I finally put a sticker on each spool that read “Was $900.00… Now only $15.00!!”
They sold like hot cakes. Elderly woman purchased them as gifts. If you got one, then I am truly sorry.

“You know… a spey line!”


One of my customers came in one day to show me the incredible ‘deal’ he had purchased in the bargain cave of a local big-box sporting goods store.

It was a two handed spey rod that he paid fifty bucks for. He had an old Pfluger reel to go along with it.
“What weight line did you get for it?” I asked, observing that the rod was marked as a 6/7.
“You know, a spey line,” he answered.
I looked at the line. It was a long belly 10/11 weight.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Might make a good weed-whacker,” I replied, handing the rod and line back to him.

This is a funny local phenomenon. People here seem to take great pride in a bargain without realizing whom they are speaking to. Kind of like a guy who sits for hours in a doctor’s office in order to show the doctor how much money he saved by performing his own surgery using an old pair of sewing scissors.

Saving money can lead to wasting money if you are not careful.

I learned this the hard way when in sixth grade. I pestered my mom to bid on an ancient trumpet in the school’s blind auction. For ten dollars, we took the thing home. I thought I was pretty smart. I already had a nice student trumpet, but for only a few bucks, I now had another one. Then I took it to the local musical instrument store. The brass expert examined it and handing it back to me, explained all the myriad defects. Just repairing the valves would set me back by six months of paper route earnings. “What should I do?” I asked him.
“Make a lamp out of it,” he replied.

Or a weed-whacker…

Ultra-light brain

A customer came in one day looking for a one-weight rod. Due to lack of sales in super heavy or ultra light rods, I did not stock any one-weights. The guy was disappointed, and told me that he used a one-weight for all his fly fishing. I though he was referring to trout, but when he took me over to the bragging board, sure enough, there were several photos of him with large steelhead.
“Wow, that must have been some fight,” I said.
“Yea… it took me an hour to land it, and by the time I got it to the bank, it had died.”

The gentleman

I got the call at home on my day off. My coworker Eric was excited. “Wait till you see what this old guy left on your desk!” he said.

The next day a large bag greeted me that was filled with ten or twelve Hardy perfect reels in various sizes.
The customer wanted new lines placed on all the reels and spare spools, and for me to tighten, adjust, and fix any defects. Who was he? Who was this guy with such a collection? Who was this who trusted me to service his reels?

It turned out that he was a customer that years before had brought me a hardy reel to get a line placed on, and remembered that I had fixed the handle on his reel, and washed, cleaned, and oiled it for no charge. He had a better memory than I did.

When he came in to pick up his reels he was well dressed and had manners of a European gentleman. I had saved him some money by cleaning one line instead of replacing it. He thanked me kindly and profusely.

It was an honor to meet him, and an honor to service his reels.  His sincere thanks still resonates with me.