Now I understand how Mugato in Zoolander felt. Everyone at the fly shop is picking out different hackle, feathers, and fur, and here I am at the fly counter grabbing fistfuls of pre-tied adams and caddis, feeling left out for not tying my own.
I find it best to begin all writing about flyfishing by first writing about hunting. Or, alternatively, the Asian culinary arts. I’ll start this one by talking about Boomer.
Sitting on my fly-tying desk, on a shelf above the straggle chenille and holographic tinsel, is an 80-year-old Richard Wheatley fly tin. The edges of its aluminum lid, with that distinctive satin finish, are rubbed bright from the friction of bouncing about in a fly-vest pocket. It bears the inscription:
R.N. Jarvis
4, Short St.
Cambridge
Lockdown at the ViseFifteen flies we’ve tied during the pandemic Illustration by Paul Puckett CHERNOBYL ANTIBODY. Unlike traditional flies, you eat this one. Helps ward off belief in fictitious cicada hatches. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE DRAKE. Only floats on the right side of the river—the far right, more like a side channel, or a drainage…
I’m sitting in Bob Mitchell’s Fly Shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, watching Brian Bergeson tie a fly. His thread wraps are quick and confident. He trims a tightly bound clump of bucktail and a plume of hair rises and settles to the table. His Red Bull sits safely outside the fallout radius. His fingers seem…
IT’S 3:00 A.M. IN THE EVERGLADES AND TIM BORSKI IS LOOKING FOR SNAKES. I’m riding along with him as we drive very slowly down State Road 9336—the only four-digit road in Florida. It is 34 miles from Florida City to Flamingo, a distance we are currently covering at about 15 miles per hour. “Right up…
In a town crazy for baseball, there are at least a few people in St. Louis, Missouri, that regard the Cardinals as mere amusement—something to occupy their time while driving to some of the most underrated flyfishing streams in the Lower 48. Many of those drives start at T. Hargrove Fly Fishing, tucked off Interstate…