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| My desk. |
I’m
a lousy trout fisherman. By that, I mean everybody usually catches more fish
than me. But I love it. I love the rhythms of fly casting and the history of
the sport. It is a great way to pass the time between bird seasons.
My bookshelves are lined with volumes of fishing literature, and
I’ve read every one, some many times. I can spend hours at my fly tying desk
and enjoy every minute of it. A few years ago I built myself a fly tying desk,
with stacked shallow cedar-lined drawers, which are now filled with every
imaginable fly tying material.
More
than a few of my flies are tied with feathers from ruffed grouse or woodcock.
The colors look buggy to me, and apparently to a few of the fish too. Soft
hackle wets can be tied from grouse hackles, and woodcock feathers make great
wing cases on nymphs.
The
old traditional wet flies, like Parmachene Belle, Tomah Jo, Coachman, Montreal,
and White Miller, are all favorites of mine and I fish them all. Sometimes
brookies are still fooled by the bright colors, but they seem to have gotten
smarter in the bigger streams.
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| Where's the trout? |
More
than a few rainbows have been fooled by those Tomah Jos, but the wood duck
flank feathers needed are hard to come by. Just looking at those beautiful
feathers is half the fun of those flies. Did I mention that I have tied hundreds
of Atlantic salmon flies and stored them in a large Wheatley box? And I’ve
never been salmon fishing. I just like pretty flies.
Sylvester
Nemes’s soft hackle wets catch more fish for me than most wets or nymphs, and
some of the patterns even call for partridge, like the Partridge and Green.
That makes my heart smile.
My
fly boxes are filled with traditional streamers, from Black Ghost to Grey
Ghost, and Edson Tigers to Warden’s Worry, almost all the patterns originating
in my New England. The only thing I’ve ever caught on a Muddler Minnow is the
back of my head. Actually, the Black Ghost is about the only streamer that I
have much faith in. And it had better be tied on a number ten or smaller.
Adams,
Wulffs, Royal Coachman, and a down-wing fly I call the Red Tag Coachman are the
dry flies in my vest. In a box that stays in my fishing duffle, are hundreds of
dries that I tied over the years, tied just as Art Flick would have taught, and
they sure are pretty to look at. Once in a great while I dig through them, but
usually, if the fish are rising, it’s those simple flies in my vest that I use.
And most of the time they work well enough to keep me fishing.
I’m
stuck in the old ways I guess, which may explain why others catch more than me.
But fun in fishing isn’t measured in numbers of fish caught.
The
thing I love most about trout fishing is the country. I’d rather fish a hidden
stream, way back in the woods, than a crowded popular river any day, even if that
secret stream rarely produces a fish while the popular one is loaded with trout.
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| Spring grouse. |
And
so often on the hike in, I’ll scare up a grouse, which of course both startles
and delights me. Or sometimes a woodcock will flutter ahead, paralleling the
stream bank before disappearing into the forest, giving me another place to return
to hunt in the fall.
Maybe
trout fishing for me is just prospecting for grouse and woodcock.
