Tied to a Moment

Watching an obsession form can be enjoyable and often humorous — especially when looking into the mirror.

I quickly realized the benefits of maintaining my own arrows early in my bowhunting journey. It made good fiscal sense. I was shooting a lot; I was missing a lot; and the costs were mounting. I could either bring my arrows to a shop and have them re-wrapped and fletched, or I could do it myself for a fraction of the time and cost. I saved up, bought a plastic jig, some generic wraps, and a few packs of feathers. I fletched my very first set of aluminums with that setup and killed a deer soon after.

Learning to fletch was a no-brainer but I discovered more than I signed up for. I knew I’d save money by learning to fletch but didn’t expect the activity to be so enjoyable. I fed the addiction by spending money, on shafting and fletching materials, yet my appetite grew. I wanted more out of the archery experience and was ready to move to the next level — wood arrows.

I started buying discounted cedar shafts whenever I could find them and scoured classifieds and online auction sites for bulk nocks, points, and fletching. Going to the hardware store in search of wipe-on urethanes and cements became routine, as did weathering the unnatural lacquer stench that wafted through our home and soaked into our clothes. I realized my reasons for the effort were no longer monetary when I graduated to feather choppers and burners. I wasn’t saving money and I didn’t care. I had further immersed myself into the archery experience and didn’t intend on going back. I was ready to kick it up another notch, in fact and vowed to kill a deer with a wooden arrow.

It happened that very season. On a crisp, October, evening a doe passed in front of my brush blind and back to nature courtesy of one of my crudely-decorated cedars. I felt invincible. The high was indescribable. I learned that an experience, no matter how good, can be amplified through added difficulty.

Fast-forward to 2018 and my next addiction. I loved fly fishing the moment I picked up a rod and knew it was only a matter of time before catching fish with purchased flies wouldn’t be enough. I would have to tie a fly and catch a fish with it. Period. It was an inevitability.

My fishing friend’s were interested in helping me get started whenever I’d mention it, but stitched in the following disclaimer:

“You won’t save money.”

I considered it a challenge and began tying much faster than anticipated with the help of a my dear friend Thom (Jorgensen) and the lifetime’s worth of accumulated tools and material he handed over. I was a babe in the woods — we both knew it — yet he gave me very little instruction, save for a “have at it” grin and this nugget:

“Your flies are going to be sloppy and look terrible at first. Know that going in.”

My plan was to bury the treasure chest within the bowels of my workshop until winter. There was plenty of hunting and fishing to do and I didn’t need another activity. However, curiosity got the better of me. Within a week, my impulses sent me rummaging through box and Web in search of simple fly patterns. The variety of hooks, thread, furs, and feathers were overwhelming at first. I relied on my limited time on the water to help me sort out my needs and pick a pattern that would catch fish no matter how badly I botched them. Caddis fly imitations seemed like the best bet. I’d been fishing with various forms of caddis for months, understood their lifecycle, and felt them rudimentary enough to cut my teeth on.

I began with their larva form in a size #14, which was a bit bigger than what I was currently finding beneath the rocks of the Rogue, but I wasn’t ready to tie anything smaller. The results were to be expected. I struggled with every element of fly tying from threading a bobbin to mashing a barb. I stabbed myself often. I had little idea as to which hand to tie with. And I broke thread every fourth pass around the shank. The latter resulted in a grub sized olive abomination.

The setback made me try harder. I tied well into the early morning hours and had half-a-dozen olive disasters on the kitchen table before calling it quits. They ranged from too fat to too thin but I was proud of the progression. It meant I was improving. I kept tying the following morning, throughout the day, and into the evening, getting more confident with the materials and tools. When I grew tired of nymphs, I moved to dries, testing myself with an olive, deer-hair, caddis.

Tying a dry, even a basic one, was more difficult than expected. I made the wings too long, didn’t use enough fibers, used too many fibers, and kept covering the hook eye to the point I couldn’t thread it. I also found out I was trimming the wrong end of the fibers, allowing water to penetrate and sink the fly. My tying improved with those realizations and I was able make a handful of serviceable flies to test the following Friday.

I hit the river at 5 p.m., wet-waded in, tied on a small Hare’s Ear, and followed the current to my favorite bend. It was a warm, overcast day with random showers. The fishing was slow but I didn’t mind. It felt good to shoot line again. I fished for several hours, changing flies often with little luck save for a few 4-6″ brown trout.

As it began to get dark, I moved further downstream in search of greener pastures. There was a wide, shallow stretch of water there that was perfect for swinging a wet fly. I tied on an unweighted purplish prince with a yellow collar, found a seam, and tossed it into the drift where it was immediately hit by a decent 10-11″ chub. It wasn’t a trout, but it was something, and I was grateful for the action.

Everything changed from that point on. The sun went down, the bugs came out, and the fish began to rise. And when they rose they did it ravenously, leaving the water like breeching humpback whales for anything resembling a bug. Everything winged was on the menu, from mosquitoes to white/tan colored moths and dragonflies. If it landed on the water, it disappeared.

I knew these were small fish and probably planted but didn’t care. I hadn’t experienced anything like this for months and wanted to catch fish. I cut off the prince, thumbed through the sparse but coveted “my flies” portion of the box, and retrieved “the best” of my olive caddis. I tied it with shaking hands and eyes distracted by the chaos around me. Then, as I wetted the knot, the water rolled on the downstream side of a large rock in front of me. I reacted with a quick roll-cast before my brain had a chance to foul it all up. The line splashed just upstream of my target. The caddis fluttered down after and I gave it a quick skate as it crossed the threshold of the rock.

The reaction was violent and immediate. My line went tight and the caddis disappeared, as if swallowed by the river itself. The moments that followed were not nearly long enough. I kept the rod up, let the fish pull the slack from my fingers, jumped to the reel, and fought a beautiful 11-12″ brown to the water at my knees. What happened next was heartbreaking. I tossed my rod into the shallows, wrapped a wet, shaking hand around the trout, removed the hook, and reached for my only means of evidence collection. But the camera was not easily retrieved and trout aren’t fond of being captured. Right there, beneath the light of the moon, I fumbled my achievement into the murky water and traded a dramatic conclusion for a tragic comedy.

But that is fly fishing. That is what keeps you coming back to the water. I may not have a photo, but I’ll always have that moment where it matters most.

Author’s note: I don’t have the fly either. I lost it in a tree on the next cast and was unable to retrieve it. That, in itself, is a longer story I plan on including in my next book, which will be a collection of bowhunting and fly fishing short stories. Until then, there are still copies of my current book “Life and Longbows” for sale on this site. You can get a personalized copy right here or you can order an unsigned copy on Amazon. A Kindle version will be available next Friday.

 

 

A Bowhunter Goes Fly Fishing – Part II

Hello and welcome! If this is your first time reading Life and Longbows, STOP here and read my last post before proceeding. You won’t have the back story otherwise.

We proceeded up the Rogue, Rob in the lead, your’s truly in the rear, and Jon in the middle to better soak up the buffoonery around him. We fished every riffle and every run Rogue provided for the next several hours. Had it not been for a constant stream of Memorial Day kayakers, we’d have had the river to ourselves in addition to the perfect weather.

Nymphing wasn’t at all what I expected. My idea of fly fishing was an arching rod angling skyward, streaks of neon-colored line snapping the air, and colorful monsters leaping into landing nets. Nymphing wasn’t any of those things. It reminded me of bait fishing. You found a place you thought a fish would be, you tossed your line upstream of it, then let the current take it to the spot – rinse and repeat. There wasn’t anything graceful or romantic about it to my novice eyes but my opinion changed after watching Mudry hook his first trout of the morning.

I’d never seen a trout caught on a fly rod in person. Jon was watching his line drift through a riffle one minute and drawing line through a bent rod the next. It happened that fast; no dramatic hook set, no breaching behemoth, no dramatic exclamations. Jon gave a quick jerk of the line with his left hand and continued to draw and pinch until the little brown was splashing around in front of him. He leaned the rod back, gently pulled his catch from the water, removed the fly from its jaw, and returned it to the murky depths of the Rogue. It was quick and he was calm throughout the whole ordeal.

“You didn’t even use your reel.” I said.

“Nah. He was a little guy.” Jon laughed. “You don’t need to use the reel on those guys. You have to watch how you set them. Too light and they’ll get off. Too heavy and you’ll either hit yourself in the face or launch them to the next county.”

“Do you ever use the reel?”

“Oh yeah. If I have a decent fish I do. You’ll know the difference.”

He caught two more that way, leaving me to question my technique or lack thereof. His calmness threw me the most. His movements seemed simple – effortless. He never looked as though he was working, whereas I was analyzing every step of the process and trying not to get snagged.

“Your casting too much. Let your line drift upstream until it starts to work its way in front of you, then let it float a bit longer.”

I did what I was told. I flicked my line upstream and let the nymph drift with the current until my line was straight out in front of me. Suddenly, the line went taut vibrating the rod from tip to cork.

“Woah!” I yelped.

“You’ve got one, man!” Jon laughed. “Keep that rod bent and start drawing line!”

I tried to do as instructed; drawing line with my left and pinching it with my right. Keeping the rod bent was my biggest challenge. I hadn’t fought a fish in over 15 years and was used to letting the reel do the work. This was an entirely different ballgame. Still, I managed to land the little brown and the memory that accompanied it. The size of the catch didn’t matter. I had landed a trout with a fly rod – something I’d only thought of doing a week prior. How quickly things had changed.

We fished well into the afternoon with little effort. Time slipped around us like the current at our waists – only a bit higher in Rob’s case. At around 1:30 he waded through a deep bend and climbed into a stretch of what he assumed was shallow rapids. Jon followed to put a little distance between us. I’d just suffered the loss of an overpriced nymph and stayed put to re-tie. This lucky bit of misfortune resulted in a pristine point of observation for the calamity that was about to befall my comrades.

What Rob thought was “shallow” rapids was actually a rock shelf that gave way into a 3-4 foot mucky hole. He ascended the shelf, lost his footing, then descended in the manner a toddler might a Fisher-Price plastic slide. Jon howled. I howled. Rob’s reaction was…complicated. He splashed. He thrashed. And he howled but not like Jon or I. This was something else entirely. Something I’d only heard at the John Ball Zoo when the chimpanzees discovered something they didn’t agree with.

“Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Ah! Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Ee! Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Ah!”

He bobbed around in the hole like this for several seconds, thrashing and spewing and making horrible noises until Jon waded over to help. When he leaned out to give him a hand, Rob took a whole lot more, pulling him and all of his gear in with him. Chaos ensued as my friends fought to retain their footing. The water exploded into a mess of waders, rods, line, and sunglasses. It reminded me of two boar hogs fighting for a wallow that wasn’t big enough for either of them. The ordeal was over in minutes but seemed like an eternity. Neither friend dried out the remainder of the trip. Both carried a little bit of the river back to the truck.

We pulled several fish out of that stretch, including a nice 12″ brown I excitedly butterfingered back into the brine after a solid fight. It would’ve been a major confidence boost but I couldn’t make it happen. The missed opportunity left a bittersweet taste in my mouth the remainder of the trip. I felt inadequate for missing the fish but more legit because of it. I knew the feeling all to well. I felt the same each time I’d slipped an arrow over a deer.

Our day concluded with a handful of trout caught and released, sunburns, squishy waders, and smiles as wide as the Rogue itself.

A new chapter of my life had begun and I’d just penned the first line.

My appetite for fly fishing knowledge has become insatiable between posts and I am happy to report I’ve made major improvements. My casting has improved, I’m catching fish, and I’m having fun. Having a wealth of information available on YouTube has made all the difference and I am thankful for all of the content available on the subject. Check out Joe Humphrey’s video on nymphing, for instance. It is unbelievable and totally changed my perspective on fishing nymphs and wet flies.