Flyosophy

Baby’s First Bonefish

How many times have you heard some variant of the expression “_____________ is JUST like bonefishing!!!!” ?

I’ve heard in in regards to: fishing for carp, fishing for trout, fishing for redfish, fishing for bluefish, one fish and two fish, and of course most commonly in comparison to striper fishing.  Since I had never been bonefishing, I never thought too much about it.  My last adventure with Captain Mark brought us to Acklins Island in the Bahamas.  This vacation was great because like all great trips there was much to learn and new perspectives to understand.  The one I’d like to share with you today is:

Bonefishing is NOTHING like striper fishing.

In order for some douche-knuckle to honestly believe it is, he would not only have to know nothing about striper fishing, but also nothing about bonefishing.  More likely, he’s just some intellectually lazy smack-tard who has trouble seeing beyond the fact that all fishing (even say ice-fishing and fly fishing) have more than zero similarities.

Flyosophy Grammar Note:  I’m using the word “bonefishing” rather than “bone fishing” because I have come to believe that “bonefishing” is not merely fishing for bonefish but a very distinct set of techniques.

The next few articles will detail much of what I learned on this trip, and for those of you in the audience who see me as an impossibly arrogant ogre (not that that’s too far off) you’ll be happy to know that I had a LOT to learn this trip.  The skills required of a sight-fishing striper angler are not the same as a bonefisherman.

First something of a disclaimer –

I have exactly one week of bonefishing experience, and only in one location of the bonefish’s impressive range.  Take everything I write with a grain of salt, or better still catch on to the overall theme of the article – all fishing experiences are worthy of the time required to learn them.

Spotting fish

Spotting stripers is pretty easy.  They are big, usually pretty black (though they do “blonde-out”) and most importantly the sand flat of the Northeast is a pretty constant background.

Bonefish are a lot harder to see.  They are smaller, their mirrored sides almost allow them to disappear like the Predator, and their preferred habitat is a mixed bottom of sand and chunks of marl (dead coral.)  Their background is a myriad of colors – whites, yellows, browns and greens.  Normally I’d say something along the lines of “There is no substitute for experience” but in this case the eyes of a guide are probably better – if you can stand to have one around – more on this later.

Casting

What took me by surprise was how poor my casting was on the first day.  Granted some of this was winter rust, but a lot of it was the fact that I rarely cast floating lines.  Years and years of striper fishing with fast sinking shooting heads which make distance and the wind a non-issue were not the best cross-training for what is required bonefishing.  Casts need to be made quickly and in nearly any direction, sometimes into the wind, sometimes with it.  Striper fishing the fish generally moving in a predictable pattern across the flat; find that spot and you can set up your shots.  Bonefish though they typically move with the current are far more spread out – this could be more an effect of the habitat that anything particular to the fish.  I mean seriously what the hell do I know…

Habitat

The one thing I noticed about the Bahamian flats that differed significantly from my Cape Cod flats was they seemed far less full of life.  There were almost no baitfish, crabs and shrimp were present but I wouldn’t say plentiful.  In fact given the number of sharks an argument could be made that the dominant forage were the bonefish themselves.

Fly Acceptance

Stripers are not the pickiest fish in the ocean.  Getting one to take your fly is not all that difficult. Yet, the bonefish make stripers look like the discriminating white cat from the Fancy Feast commercials.  On our trip, 100% of flies presented to non-spooked bonefish were taken.  That’s not an exaggeration.  There was not one single refusal, bluegill are like impossible to catch compared to these fish.  If you can see them you can catch them, provided you don’t spook them.  I feel this is a direct response to the tropical flat having far less food resources than the Cape.  The bonefish have to eat what they can when they can…the warm water probably doesn’t help either boosting the cold-blooded metabolism, but that’s just a theory I pulled out of ass.

Wariness

Striper’s rarely spook, in the traditional sense of taking off at a high rate of speed.  If a striper detects your presence or thinks something is amiss with the fly or presentation, it simply won’t eat.   This can be frustrating because there is very little of an outward sign that the fish is aware of you.  Bonefish on the other hand are easier to read.  They with dart off, then calm down.  Mark made 8 presentations to the same fish simply because he waited for the spooky bastard to collect himself before casting again.  A striper on the flat – with very few exceptions – is the apex predator in that environment.  It has nothing to really worry about.  A bonefish, on the other hand, is a full participant in the food chain.  Still I wouldn’t say stripers are less wary, nor would I say bonefish are more spooky.  I’ve never hooked a striper with a fly that was less than 6 feet from my boots…bonefish - two in 6 days.

Depth

Bonefishing is done in water barely deep enough to get the tops of your boots wet.  This is a huge difference to striper fishing which is most often done in water that is at least a couple feet deep.  Stripers can get into very skinny water, but nothing like the bonefish.  This changes the game in terms of gear.  Striper fishermen can use heavy sinking lines and short leaders.  Bonefishing you will need a floater and a fairly long leader.  I used a leader about 12 feet long, enormous compared to my standard striper leader which is often just a few feet long.  The flies need to reach the bottom a head of the fish, but must be lightly weighted so as not to “plop” in front of them.  Also, bonefish seem able to hear the sound of a human voice.  In many years of striper fishing, I’ve never seen any evidence that yelling, talking, or laughing hysterically has any adverse effect on the fishing, bonefishing it certainly seemed to.

The Fight

A striper in the mid-30 size class is one of my favorite fish to fight.  They are strong, savvy, and have good endurance though not so much on the speed factor.  Sometimes they will pull, sometimes take off for deeper water, or do quick change of directions and head shakes.  Bonefish – from what I saw – have exactly one play in their book.  They take off at high speeds.  Impressive if you generally target trout or something, but compared to say a false albacore it’s nothing that amazing.  After this burst, they may manage a few quick bursts but they are pretty much out of ideas.  Unless you hook them near mangroves, sharp marl, or a shark (or if you used Mustad Signature hooks that bend and suck and are totally G’hey) don’t expect to lose too many fish or be able to really remember one fight more than another.

That’s good enough for an intro and overview, I’ll be fleshing out a few more details in the next few articles.  All in all when I go on a trip I ask myself two questions:

First, would I do it again?

In the case of bonefishing – certainly it’s a very enjoyable yet technical type of fly fishing, plus the whole tropical island paradise is easy to get used to – though there are some downsides – more on that later…

Second, would I do it in June?  (June being the time when striper fishing is best…not because bonefishing – or whatever –  is better or worse then)

Honestly, No.  As much as I liked bonefishing I doubt I will ever love it as much as the pure variety and challenge of striper fishing.  They are both special and unique, but my heart beats for colder waters.

I certainly would never lessen both by lumping them together.  Bonefishing is just like bonefishing.  Striper fishing feels just like home.

Posted in Flyosophy blog

My mother is the worst story-teller on planet Earth.  That is possibly an exaggeration since I haven’t met everyone on planet Earth.  I’ve always assumed that if there was a worse story-teller that person would be arrested as a serial killer for all the suicides she inspired.  No one, as of yet, has killed themselves to get out of listening to one of my mother’s rambling aural abortions, but nearly everyone has thought about it.

Why are these stories so horrible?  She has no concept of omitting insignificant details.  If she is talking about a neighbor, the story is really about all her neighbors, every neighbor she has ever had, what all of them do for work, who they are related to, what they drive, the types of pets they have, and naturally whether or not they go to church.  There usually is some point to these tales but good luck shifting through the endless list of proper names and driving directions for every setting.  Also, this is truly the Never Ending Story.  Listeners come into the story and leave, yet she doesn’t stop talking.  Any questions lead to more details which are only tangential to the main theme because they took place on the same planet.  It’s really that bad.

Math – specifically the Scientific notation – enjoys a concept of “significant digits.”  This is essentially a way of rounding off numbers that are either incredibly large or incredibly small.  1,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,231,276 are not considered significantly different.  This is a math concept, and not a bad one, but it can lead to some quirks.  Especially if one considers that of all the celestial bodies known to exist in the universe there is only one known to harbor life…one could argue that life is insignificant.

Now let’s consider last week’s special guest, a small carving of a Cigar store Indian or Native American to be Politically Correct.

Flyosophy Fun Fact:  The Flyosopher has fished with exactly one Native American who was adamant that the term “Indian” is less offensive than the term “Native American.”  Why?  Because “Indian” refers to the fact that European explores had not clue where they were when they first interacted with native cultures…whereas the term “Native American” names these peoples after an Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. People using the term “Native American” ought to have known better, and simply called the various peoples by the name of their nations.  It’s an interesting perspective to consider.      

The detail that the carver, Kevin McKenna, was most proud of…the blank of wood used to create that Indian was taken from a cigar box.  There are much softer woods that are a lot easier to carve, but to him it was significant that the wood match the theme of the piece even though there is no way anyone could know that just by admiring his work.  He also carved some General Patton’s, created a mold, and cast brass statues from 1944 and ’45 pennies.  The one cent piece of those years were made not from copper due to war shortages but brass shell casings.  So the prominent general of the war immortalized in the spent bullets used to fight it.

Whether a detail in a fly is significant or not depends not so much on the fish but the fisherman.  If a fly with some small detail gives you confidence the significance of that can not be overstated.  However, I do find it silly how many flies are published which vary so little from others, often by the very same tier.  Color changes, size changes stuff of that nature.  But I am considering these differences more as a fly tyer rather than a fly user.  I consider techniques used to make the imitation more significant than any detail or even material.

With that in mind I submit the following

Mole Crab

Hook:  Mustad Signature Shrimp Size 1

Thread:  Tan something or other

Eyes:  40# Mono melted, Sharpied, and dipped in Soft Body, Small non-lead

Mouth bit: Orange Craft fur

Legs:  Loco Legs Tan

Body: Amber Polar Chenille

Wing: Badger hair

Like nearly all the flies I tie this is a variant of a variant.  I got the idea from Dick Brown’s Ghost shrimp, and a Crazy Charlie variant shrimp pattern tied with badger fur.  I simply merged the patterns, swapped the body material to polar chenille which is great stuff, and made the whole thing bigger.

Mole crabs – ankle biters, sand fleas, or really any smallish crab – make up a significant portion of what a striper eats, especially on the flats.  I never used to like to fish crab patterns, but I’ve learned to love them.  The key is to get the fly to the bottom ahead of the fish.  Though you are sighting the fish, it is often better to play zone rather than man to fish coverage.  Casting at a cruising fish you are unlikely to get the fly deep enough unless you use a fast sinking line, and then there is a good chance the splash may spook the fish.  Casting to likely structure and waiting for the fish to cruise by is often the most productive way to fish these patterns.

The mono eyes are sections of 40# test mono which has been melted to form a ball and then colored with a Sharpie and dipped in Soft Body – an epoxy substitute.  I’m sure you can use any of the light cure stuff or 4-real epoxy, but I really like the Soft Body for this and since I hate it for everything else, winner.

To begin wrap the shank, tie on the dumbbell eyes and add a small clump of craft fur. I like to use orange because it contrasts well and many crustaceans have orange in their shells or egg sacs.

Next tie on the mono eyes to the sides of the shank.  The most important thing is to not get in the way of the hook bend.  Eyes may or may not be a significant detail, but they can definitely screw up the fly and make it harder to hook fish.  Next add a couple rubber legs.  I use on on each side but more could be better.  Finally wrap the body with the polar chenille.  This will create the illusion of legs.

Last step, add a wing of badger hair – for smaller flies possum may be better.  Like many natural materials the color of the badger fur will vary, if available I prefer to use a ginger tan over a darker brown.  As is the case with most flats flies, it should look like it belongs there and crabs despite what you may have read from other D’bags named Murphy – can’t fight off stripers.  They hide or they die.

That’s it.  Easy fly to tie and to fish and that may be the most significant detail of all.

Posted in Flyosophy blog

Philosophy, religion and science are all attempts to describe the nature of things.  This is most often written – Capital “T” Truth.  The lines between the big three get a lot blurrier the deeper you go.  For instance, Science takes the high ground because of the Scientific Method, which is nothing more than a philosophy, and often conflicts with religion’s nature of attempting to control how people live – yet what controls a person’s life and life-span more than science and its brain-child technology?  One could argue that despite Science’s lofty goal of expanding the human mind, its greatest accomplishment is making people dumber. Religion is naturally not free of this either often tiptoeing into the sciences though leaving the necessary method of science behind.  It’s a poor world view that is more certain of the answers then of the questions.

Also there exists an element of faith in both – though science may claim otherwise.  But seriously, string theory?  Infinite alternate universes created every time a person chooses chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla? (Oreo is my favorite ice cream for you people obsessed with every detail of my amazing life.)  Mathematical theory…you’re kind of asking a lot there.  I personally do not believe in infinity nor that retarded “i” thing for the square root of negative 1 – give it up it doesn’t exist, imaginary reality my ass.  If there was an imaginary unit, I would be the chairman of its Treasury.  Like say I had Green Lantern’s ring, you would never not see green cartoony things orbiting around me: green belly-dancing girls, a green butler who hates me named “Murphington,” a green shaker of cayenne pepper that I’d dash in the yellow eyes of my hated foes.  Against my imagination Superman would be defenseless and Wonder Woman would be disturbed, but I digress.  Actually one last thing, it does bother me that the imaginary unit probably was a currency of childhood once upon a time, today kids seem a lot more boring, and I’m not ok with that.

 “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

Carl Sagan

In the quest to understand the nature of things I feel the most complete and accurate answer thus far comes in the form of the Religion/Philosophy of Taoism.  That’s not to say I think it is complete or accurate, just the best so far which is kind of sad given that these ideas are thousands of years old.

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When
people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and
non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long
and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and
after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing
anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets
them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t
possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets
it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Lao-tzu

In a nutshell, Taoism offers an often paradoxical view of the duality of creation.  A man who digs a hole also creates a hill of dirt that sort of thing.  When a thing is in harmony with its nature it is good.  Tigers kill, sheep don’t, and water flows to the sea…that sort of thing.  Think about your own life, odds are pretty good that the most stressful times have been when you were forced by society or some familial duty to be in a position contrary to your nature.  Far more difficult challenges in harmony with your nature weren’t nearly as bad.  That’s why one man can cheat on his wife without losing a wink of sleep, where another guy feels guilt after refilling his soda at Burger King – there are few if any universal truths when dealing with individuals.

This brings us to last week’s special guest, my precious precocious pup Daisy.  Golden retrievers are great dogs, gentle, friendly, happy to be with you and smarter than they seem, but not overly so.  Daisy was a soft dog even by the cushy standards of Goldens.  She wanted to play fetch, swim and be petted, but never liked rough housing or even playing tug.  She never chewed up her toys, not even fairly delicate stuffed animals.  One day I found her in the yard trotting along with a possum.  She’d gently put it down, go sniff something, gently pick it up and carry it to the next destination on her adventure.  When I saw this, I figured the possum was dead and called Daisy in but told her to leave it outside.  Sure enough after being in the house a few minutes, the possum shook itself up from its self-defense coma and wandered off none the worse for wear.  Daisy was a gentle dog.

However…When I first came home from the hospital after my injuries, Daisy was completely different.  She stood by the window and would viciously bark at anyone who passed by the house, something she had never done before.  She would literally bristle, with her hackles erect around her neck and down her back growling at all the world like an angry German Shepherd.  I was slightly concerned she’d bite the mailman, who she always loved.  She wouldn’t play, she didn’t want to get petted or brushed – brushed was always her favorite; she was a completely different dog.

This lasted about a week.  Once my mood and condition improved, Daisy went right back to being a happy playful dog who loved the mailman and never barked at cars.  Clearly, the dog was taking her cue from me.  When I was hurt and weak and needed to be protected, she sensed that and sprang into action though it stressed her out.  When those things were no longer true, she went right back to her gentle nature.  Every dog is a wolf; it’s always there just often buried, but it’s in the nature of the thing to come forward when needed.

It’s in my nature to be simple and a minimalist.  That’s what inspired the following fly.

Herring Fly

Hook – Owner size 1

Extended body – 35mm Articulated shank (Tube, cut hook, Waddington shank or equivalent)

Tail – Marabou

Body – Bill’s Bodi Braid or equivalent

Wing – Yak Hair, Steve Farrah blend

Spreader – Estaz Grande

Eye – Whatever don’t bother me with details

This fly is what I use to imitate baby herring which live in the many Cape Cod kettle ponds (but not nearly enough) trout love to eat them, especially the large hold-over browns.  Now I have a zillion patterns for stripers which imitate this bait, and these patterns would work.  However, they were intended to be cast on 8wt rods.  I do most of my trout fishing with a 2wt rod.  I can fish this pattern on a 2wt, because even though it is a fairly small fly, I tied it using the techniques of big fly tying from last week.  Sneaky.

I tie just a bit of marabou and flash to the hook – the smallish hook easily fits in a trouts mouth, and I perfer to have the hook near the rear of the fly when fishing for trout.  Bass just swallow baitfish, trout tend to bite at them.

The hook shank and the extender have been wrapped with bodi braid and I added a bit of yak hair as a tail.  Unlike a traditional Rangely Lakes streamer – the shank on the hook is very short and a fish will not have a lot of leverage.  An important consideration given the light tackle I plan to use.

Here you see the Estaz ball which will function as a spreader.  I decided to use peral instead of read because I have the bleeding effect near the tail.  A fish bleeding from the gills is probably screwed, a fish bleeding from its tail is totally screwed.  Just like last week I add small bundleds of Farrah blend to give the fly size without bulk.

Pearl around the body with a thin topping of peacock with an eye to complete the illusion.

Now why not just bring a heavier rod for streamer fishing…because carrying two rods is a pain.  With this fly in my box I can plan a day around say dry fly fishing or as is more often the case fishing scuds.  If I find a mess of baitfish getting whacked by trout I’m in the game with a big fly and the same rod.  It’s just another way of approaching the situation, maybe this interests you, maybe it doesn’t.

It’s not really in my nature to care.

Posted in Flyosophy blog

Last week’s special guest was Sylvanus Packard…hold the applause.  No doubt you have heard of him, he’s the visionary who, in addition to obviously being a favorite of the ladies, donated enough money to Tufts University so that they named a building after him.  There they hung his likeness on the wall until a bored student thought it would be funny to steal it.  The student – who shall remain nameless – though never a favorite with the ladies -  was the true visionary because nearly 20 years later, it’s still funny.

No one wants to be forgotten, or worse to feel like their time on Earth was largely unnoticed.  Philosophically, I think we have little understanding of how much impact we have on the lives of others.  All of us whether we like it or not live in the same reality. Certain individuals or professions are honored more than others, but everyone plays a role – though possibly a negative one.  For instance, say you needed surgery, clearly the skill of the surgeon will determine your recovery, but also the work ethic of the dude who cleans the operating room.  It’s just much less likely anyone will ever thank that guy, or know his name, or remember him.

Of course not many people will remember the surgeon either…at least not for very long.  If we accept that both guys saved lives, and then consider the Butterfly Effect.

Side Note: The Butterfly Effect – this is the belief that seemingly minor actions ripple through space and time to create powerful effects in the world.  This idea is credited to the mathematician Edward Lorenz whose attempt to describe chaos theory led to the now proverbial expression “A Butterfly flaps its wing and causes a Hurricane on the other side of the world…”  Nice story, but never forget the first rule of Chaos – it’s chaotic.  A much better story, and earlier, is the Short Story A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury.  The tale is about Time Travel and how the accidental death of a single butterfly millions of years ago altered the future in ways no one could imagine.  I have imagined this.  I imagine a lot.  I once imagined that if I were transported back in time to England during the period where the Angles, Saxons, Latin-speakers, and Jutes (no one remembers the Jutes) were verbally duking it out in the war of words that would eventually become the English Language.  The key difference my presence would have made:  today the subject of every imperative sentence would no longer be “You Understood” but “Bitch Understand!!!!!!”

According to the Butterfly Effect, the surgeon saved some lives, but the dude who washes the floors saved a hell of a lot more, since the surgeon did a few, if that, operations a day where that guy cleaned like every operating room every day.  Does this mean anything?  Of course not but that’s the true legacy.

Fly tiers aren’t immune from this.  It would be great to have a fly named after you, to be a part of history, to be remembered.  Partly this drives innovation, it definitely drives publishing, but in the end history decides what to remember and what to forget.  History reflects more of the needs and desires of the people writing it than the people about whom it is written; sometimes, only sometimes it even reflects the truth.

Something to think about…here’s something else.

Bunker Fly

 (Adjust the colors and it can be anything, herring, golden shiner, perch…whatev)

 Hook – Mustad 8/0 – with a weighted keel

 Thread – Like I care

 Tail – Super Hair support, yak hair

 Spreader -  Blue Water Chenille Pink

 Wing – Steve Farrah blend, White, Rainbow, Peacock

 Eye – Something big

 This fly is a big fly.  It’s not a huge fly or anything, but like all big flies it needs some consideration when tying it.  In a nutshell, a big fly needs to appear bigger than it actually is because if the size were created entirely with material it would be very difficult to cast.  The other consideration is a bit harder to appreciate until you have tied a few.  Mistakes in a small fly are small mistakes; mistakes in a big fly are big mistakes.  The easiest way to picture this is to consider a small baitfish pattern like the deceiver.  Often there is white material below the shank, colored above.  This looks ok on a small fly, but ridiculous on a big one, since baitfish are generally only darker down a thin part of their back.  Also, profile errors in a tiny pattern are hard to detect, in a larger pattern they scream out at you.  Nothing to worry about, just something to consider.  We’ll bring this concept back later…actually next week…

Now what may seem counter intuitive add some weight to the shank.  I prefer to use strips of Non-lead Tungsten wire.  The difficultly with casting large flies has less to do with their weight and more to do with their air resistance.  A fly that is actually heavier with be able to functionally reduce the drag.  It’s a balancing act.  There is a point where adding more weight will make the fly hardier not easier to cast.  I learned the right amount of weight to use for patterns by experimenting with an unweighted fly and adding beads to the hook during test casts to get an idea of the amount of weight to use for flies of a certain size.  Sorry I can’t be more technique specific, but for this fly 15 inches of wire does the trick.

Tail support, tie in a stiff material – I like Super Hair.  This material will be surrounded by others and subdued, so feel free to use something bright.  I like chartreuse.

Yak hair makes the best material for a tail.  Though it is a natural material, just pretend it’s a synthetic.  All the techniques and rules for tying in synthetics apply to yak hair.  In addition to its beautiful translucence in the water, yak hair rarely fouls.  It can of course, but compared to long saddles it’s a non issue.

Spreaders have been used in a number of flies for years now.  My favorite was Buffy the Striper Slayer, mostly because I liked that show.  How hot is Charisma Carpenter?

Answer: Incredibly Hawt

I have given up using EZ body as a spreader for Blue Water Chenille simply because the chenille adds a gill effect flash and some movement.  It does the same job, but with a big fly anytime a material can serve two purposes its better to use than having to add a pink hair or something else to achieve this.

To finish the fly use the light airy Farrah blend.  I like to lay small bundles like shingles along the spreader.  Keep them fairly short, only a tiny bit longer than the tie-in point for the yak hair tail.  Farrah blend fouls like Greg Kite and keeping it short is the best way to reduce that.

Glue on an eye and done.

Oh look the nameless feeb has a predictable comment to make I’ve heard a billion times, yet I’ve:

A). Never killed anyone for saying it yet

B). Have yet to win a Nobel Peace Prize for my Stalwart self-control.

“But can you cast that fly?”

 Nameless Feeb

Of course I can, you could to if you learned to cast.  There I said it.  Learn to cast people, if I encounter one more simp who goes on and on about his love of fly fishing yet can’t make a simple cast.  What am I to make of that?  Are you lying about loving fly fishing?  Are you deficient in vitamin T? Seriously, ask yourself that question for this is how you are presenting yourself.  Rant over.

A big fly can be a key to success in the right situation.  I’ve used flies like this in off shore rips, pike fishing, last at night, and during spring herring runs and when the bunker are in.  I’ve also used it sight fishing when the stripers had corralled some adult bunker.  Day in and day out a smaller fly is generally easier to fish, and often more effective, but again everything depends on the situation.

Play around with the ideas of bigger flies and who knows maybe you’ll cement your own legacy into the lore of fly fishing.  We may all want to be the next Alexander the Great, but if we end up like Sylvanus Packard, that’s just fine.

Posted in Flyosophy blog

Sexy Librarian – in Context

Did you catch last week’s special guest?  Probably not since it would have required insider info, and even the people with insider info barely noticed the single most traumatic emotional experience of maybe not my life but possibly my adult life…

The special quest was a key, the key to my truck, the truck I no longer have…Koiko was murdered.

It was an odd feeling.  The day I took possession of my new ’12 Tacoma, I did not feel happy but somewhat miserable.  A sick knot in the pit of my stomach, the feeling you only get when you know you are doing something wrong.  I could have gotten Koiko repaired – it would have cost nearly twice the value of the truck – but I could have done it.  Instead I bought a new one, the 01’ Tundra and the ’12 Tacoma are extremely similar in terms of size and body shape.  Also, I bought a green one.  The differences are so subtle that no one noticed I had a new truck.  There’s Murph, there’s his green Toyota truck…

The reason I still feel off is because it’s not yet my truck, and I’m not sure it will ever feel that it is.  I get that this is weird.  I understand that it isn’t normal for a person, a human, to feel more love and devotion for a thing than for anything else.  Am I really this emotionally crippled?  I think we all know the answer to that.

But then I read something about love, about forming emotional connections.  Think about your friends, your family, and especially your siblings if you are lucky enough to have some.  Do you really have that many common interests or similarities bonding you?  Or is it more accurate to say the four-letter word “love” is better spelt “TIME…”

I caught the 2013 Fly Fishing Film Tour – and my favorite film was the Brother’s Brown.  It’s about the three Grajewski brothers who fish together for brown trout.

Flyosophy Fun Fact:  I know Matt quite well – though we have never met, the internet is strange like that – for years I lobbied hard to either marry into his family or get his parents to adopt me.  Regrettably his sister had standards or something…more regrettably the three brothers I already have don’t fish.

The film is enjoyable to watch and it is easy to see why the three guys are so close.  What is less obvious but more powerful is the deeper under-current.  They aren’t close because they fish together; they fish together because they are a pack, because they are brothers.  They have put in the time, and in a world full of other things to do, and other equally valid demands on that time, they continue to spend it together.  You should check it out if you have a brother or a son- and if your son doesn’t have a brother maybe you won’t pull out the next time you’re violating his mother…

Which brings me back to Koiko…because of the time/love beautiful sensitive side I was showing, not because of that whole “violating” thing…

I drove that truck for 12 years.  Maybe 12 years doesn’t seem like a long time but to me it is.  It’s nearly four times longer than any place I’ve ever lived, far longer than any relationship, at least twice as long as any job I’ve kept and much longer than I’ve known Mark – my oldest fishing buddy.  12 years, sadly, is more time than I have ever had a dog, and it’s longer than I had a father…so there’s that.

“The strangeness of Time.  Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can’t see, whose beginning you’ve forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Life is as transitory as the tides.  Everything and everywhere and everyone you know or care for will eventually leave you, unless you leave them first.  Nothing is set in stone, and considering all the sand on the flats not even stone is free of this.  If there is something you love and enjoy, best to love and enjoy it now.  Time is relative, and we must never lose sight of the relevance of this. The greatest gift is time; it’s all you have to give.

I love fly fishing and fly tying.   I’ve put a lot of time into both of these things.  I enjoy playing with new materials, creating new patterns, and tinkering.  Working to achieve a certain effect, or to maximize a certain quality to test the limits of what I thought was possible.  Sometimes these creations are successes, more often they are not what I hoped to achieve, but they all teach something.  If that’s all they can say about me, then I’d be happy with that.

Now for the single most controversial comment I may ever make…

 “Tying with synthetic materials requires more tying skill than tying with natural materials.”

The Flyosopher

This is not to say that the results are more or less effective, or that synthetics are superior to natural materials.  Simply, if you find good natural materials and lash them clumsily to a hook – they will work.  The tyer’s skill is often secondary to the quality of the materials.  Marabou, hackle, rabbit fur – these all have a beautiful inherent motion and life.  Synthetic materials do not have this, and creating the illusion of life with these materials requires more of the tyer.

To illustrate this consider the following fly…

Super Hair Baitfish

Hook – 2/0 Mustad

Thread – Danville 210 White

Tail and wing – Super Hair – a bit of flash material

Eyes – Whatev stick on or 3D it’s all good

Super Hair is a fairly stiff synthetic, which reduces its movement but a skillful tyer can use these qualities provided he follows steps that are unnecessary when tying with natural materials.  Nearly everything life-like in this fly is there because the tyer put it there – very little comes from the material itself.

Before tying in any synthetic material it is important to stagger the tips.  Natural materials do this naturally.  The taper with cause more vibration and allow the material to twitch and pulse and not look like a paintbrush.

Flash – adding flash adds movement.  While natural saddle hackle is always moving in the water, a hint of flash creates this effect for synthetics.  Don’t go nuts with the stuff, but its possible to pull some out in the field.

Variety is the spice of life, but it is also a sure sign of it.  Synethtic materials have little variety fiber to fiber, so the tyer will have to create this.  I use: Pink, Yellow, Chartreuse, Grey, and Teal added to white to create a baitfish medley with all the colors of the rainbow.

The colors are hard to see in the pic…but thats not important what you should focus on is the method they are tied in.  Most synthetic materials will not compress much under thread tension so the fold back technique is useful.  It’s also useful for creating a more realistic profile.

I added a throat of white and a topping of light tan, stuck on an eye and Viola a nice baitfish pattern.  Flip through any pattern guide and you will find similar flies tied by Captain X with material Y – they are all fairly effective.  I used Super Hair because unlike say Farrah blend it is more of a blank slate to illustrate my point that synthetic materials require more skills than natural ones.  Now is this fly more effective than that rabbit one – can’t say that, but this is a lot easier to toss around, and if I want to throw something huge I have to use synthetic materials – or my beloved Yak Hair with is almost a natural synthetic…add to this the reality that if you tie big, anything that may seem unnatural to a fish is also embiggened.

Take the time to learn how to work with ONE synthetic – if nothing eles you may find it imporves your skills the next time you work with bucktail or hackle tips or even marabou.

Time is the most percious resource available too you.  Share it and spent it wisely – invest in your family, invest in your friends, invest in yourself.

Posted in Flyosophy blog