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Tying Temptations

Fur and Feathers for Fun

By Doug CaldwellPublished 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 6 min read
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For context, it is important for you readers to understand there only two seasons in the Yukon: Winter and Not-winter. Both can last for five or six months in duration and each has climatic extremes that determine what we humans can do for fun and recreation out of doors.

The author's first successful fish encounter

As a wee lad, my grandfather and dad infected me with the desire to match wits with fish of all kinds, and I still have this affliction that gets interrupted each year when the water turns solid and the only fishing is through a hole in the cold thick ice. Apart from being uncomfortable, ice fishing is not exciting unless you catch one bigger than the six inch hole you caught it through. With ice five feet thick it will take some time to enlarge the hole to extract the angry and wiggling fish all the while trying to avoid cutting the fishing line with the axe or chainsaw.

I much prefer sitting in my pontoon boat under the sun in the Not-winter season tossing artificial insects to the finned creatures under the surface. This is the matching wits part I mentioned earlier. It begins with selecting the best fly to entice the fish to bite, considering they are living in the stew of emerging insects and have a very clear understanding of what is real and what is a man-made bug hiding a sharp piece of steel. After you have tied on the chosen fly, you must now present the fly on the water to act like a real insect of that species and mimic its movements enticing a fish to bite it.

Many years ago, I learned to tie my own flies, primarily to save some money and create flies that better represent the bugs that live here. Store-bought flies can have a huge variation from one manufacturer to another. There are also differences in the fly’s appearance due to species variation from one location, like say Taiwan, to those found in northern Canada. Tying your own is also a good way to help winter pass a bit quicker and build up an inventory of flies to lose, damage or decorate trees with a bad back-cast.

Image from Sportsman cigarette packege Fly collection 1960s

Our long winters also stimulate northerners to find a hobby to prevent excessive television viewing. Over the 45 winters I have lived here I have restored a number of guitars, a couple motorcycles and cars, learned all about radio-controlled airplanes and built a few which I promptly sold as I don’t have the confidence to try flying something I spent much money and many long passionate hours building.

Fly tying has been my go-to pastime for burning away the winter blues. Armed with a tumbler of single malt scotch I can sit at my tying table and hours will fly past until my wife says its time for bed. I can measure my progress by looking into my fly box and count how many I made that evening. I find there are only about a dozen fly patterns I tie now as these perform best for the fish species here and their water environments. When you first get into fly tying, you attempt several wild and exotic fly patterns to become better at the craft of building them. You will also buy many expensive superfluous materials like bird capes (a section of a skinned bird such as a pheasant with an assortment of different sized feathers of a specific design), hunks of fur hides - polar bear is stupid expensive - and tinsels of various kinds, hooks in an assortment of shapes and sizes and many other little expensive shiny items that only get used for tying showcase flies not typically used for real fishing. I have also used bits of snipped fur from our dog and cat, tail hair from the horses, hair from moose and bison now resting in the freezer and other things found around that get stored in a variety of containers that take up space and seldom get used- but I am loath to throw them away in case I’ll need them…one day.

Often while tying a certain pattern I will recall when I used one to catch a specific fish on a local water and I am reliving that experience in memory while slurping scotch looking through the window at forty below with snow falling. Often, I’ll think, “Only four months to go before the water flows once again.”

Arctic Grayling a wonderful stream fighter

Like most things, there are good and bad aspects involved. With fly tying one of these is getting my tying table set up so all I need is within reach. It takes a few days to get things just so. Another negative is the mess created while tying. Tiny bits of feather or fur and tinsel that defy the vacuum cleaner’s abilities and cause my wife to commence her cleaning speech. You never really understand static electricity until you must clean up the tiny clippings from elk hair or crystal flash thread.

Normally I begin to tie in my home office sometime in early November with the intention of keeping everything ready to begin tying with very little preparation. This way I can close the door and keep curious pets and grandsons from exploring all the enticing things on my tying table. My grandson now works doorknobs so I have to buy a locking version to prevent the inevitable.

As I grow older my eyesight is not what it used to be, so I am relying on magnifiers to make tying easier especially with the ultrasmall mosquito patterns which are equally difficult to attach to the leader of my flyrod when fishing at twilight.

Tying one on

I give flies as gifts to my fishing buddies and sons with the condition they report back to me how well they worked and the circumstances of the water that day. Fish can be very fussy about what they bite on. In general terms fishing flies can be very similar, but fish will focus on the little things that make the matching wits part difficult. A real caddis fly may have an olive coloured body, but if the fly you tied has a dun or other colored body, they will not bite on it no matter how well the fly is presented to them. So tying the same fly with an assortment of variations to them like body colour is essential if you hope to catch fish reliably. I tie about a dozen of each variation to address this situation which takes up more room in the fly box. I have different fly boxes for each type of fly. Dry flies are in one box by themselves while leeches, woolly buggers, blood worms and similar insect species are in different boxes. Salmon flies are in their own boxes as well.

Fly tying helps my winter boredom to pass quicker and by the time spring rolls around and the ice melts off the water sometime in late May, I’m armed and ready to go test wits with the fish once again.

My cane stream setup

happiness
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About the Creator

Doug Caldwell

I hope to learn from all of you members on this site and share in some tale-telling. I am looking forward to the different styles used to tell these stories. I look forward to reading yours.

Be Well

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