But the pile of fly tying materials… It seems to have a life of its own, I cannot control it no matter how hard I try. I clean it up, put things away and brush the scraps off the edge into a trash can with my hand, but no matter how good my intentions, it returns to the same state of confusion as if it were the concierge at the check in of a fancy restaurant. One moment sir, I’ll return momentarily.
When I started tying I began with nothing but a few different colors of marabou and some black hackles. But if you tie your own flies then you already know where this is going so we’ll just skip ahead. Once you start tying you never look at anything the same again. And more importantly, you’re always looking. And your friends know it too. And your wife.
I’ll never admit defeat because of the seasons or the weather. But I will concede to the fact that come fall, the fishing does slow down a bit up here. It’s a fact of life living in the north east. We all deal with it in our own personal ways, but the one way most of us use the time to take our minds off the details that the sun has gone down before we even eat dinner and that we aren’t on the water is to tie flies. You might tie during the slow fishing season to refill fly boxes that slowly gained empty spaces during the busy fishing season. You might tie just because it still connects you to fly fishing. The idea that you might not be casting a fly rod everyday now but that you’re still supporting the act in other ways has its own way of keeping one’s sanity in check. Or, if you’re JP, you suggest tying with a group at a local establishment that has room for a few people to set up vices in an area off to the side somewhere… and serves beer.
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