Well that was a new experience!
My Probus friend, Fishing Bill (as opposed to Walking Bill, often mentioned in these musings), invited me round to try to teach me how to tie trout fishing flies. I believe that in the best circles this skill is called ‘fly dressing’, though tying, or tangling, seems a bit more appropriate to my first attempts!
Bill first demonstrated how to tie three different flies – a partridge and orange, a nymph and a spider. Don’t these flies have great names – and they look so wonderful (to me at least!), representing as they do different insects in various life stages.
Two of these flies I’ve seen Bill catch trout on, and using one of them even I caught a trout once!
As far as I can appreciate, flies are tied by putting layers onto the shank of a fish hook (hence the term ‘dressing’) – first an initial layer of silk thread, wound round the shank and then secured at one end. Then a copper wire is wound sparsely over the silk to represent the insect’s body structure, and then a feather or similar to represent the wings or legs of the insect – according to the insect being imitated. I’m sure there’s a lot more complexity than that, but Bill’s being very gentle with me – it’s on a need to know basis!
Well, I’m still at stage 1 – trying to tie off the silk thread without it unravelling! I could blame my eyesight for the difficulties I’m experiencing, or my lack of dexterity in poking the threads under (or is it over?) each other to secure them. Or maybe I’m not patient enough. I’m a bit more ‘ball-park’ than ‘exact’, as a personality.
The process reminds me a bit of learning how to tie a bowline knot when in the school scout group. Learning then was accompanied by an incantation that went something like ‘pretend you’re a rabbit – make a loop, go through the loop, round the tree and back through the hole’.
It doesn’t work for fly tying – so far!
It is, however, an illustration of how wonderful our Probus Club is in the selfless sharing of experience, the mental stimulation and the enjoyment – and in this case also the anticipation of catching a trout on a fly that you’ve ‘dressed’ yourself!
Here’s hoping!