The Doldrums
Dear reader, I write to you today in duress. Declan is catching wild rainbows in Pennsylvania and Grady is pounding on Togue on and off the ice. What am I to do with myself? The weather has been overcast and rainy in Massachusetts for 17 of the last 22 days, and temperatures have plunged to below freezing at night. There’s enough ice to impede fly fishing in the west, but not enough to comfortably fish on. The conditions will no doubt improve soon enough, once April rears its ugly head, but I’m left with no fishing outlet in the meantime. On occasions like this, I usually return to another of my precious vices - the eponymous vice.
My fly collection is rather lacking after fishing hard the previous year. My goal over the next few weeks is twofold - to get back into proper fly tying form, and to fill in the gaps in my arsenal that I identified last year. My love affair with dry fly fishing has left me with an inordinate amount of parachutes and Catskill style flies, while my nymph and emerger ensemble is sorely lacking. I’d also like to start downsizing my hooks a bit - I’m well acquainted with tying flies in the 12-18 size range, but small stream fishing in western MA often calls for even smaller flies.
I broke out the vice with Grady the other day and quickly spun up a few of my favorites - size 16 Griffith’s gnats. The gnat is a lovely floating fly that imitates a cluster of recently emerged (or deceased) midges. Midges hatch year round in Mass, and so I consider this fly to be essential in my kit. It doesn’t hurt that it’s dead simple to tie, of course. The first fly that came off the vice more closely resembled a collection of broken hackle and cursewords than a collection of midges. So it always goes when fly tying season comes around. Fortunately, I’d consider the next 3 to be reasonably fishable, if a bit crude. I even tied up a parachute variant that I thought up on the spot, which looks great to the eye (we’ll see how it looks to the fish in a few weeks though).
Next up were some simple euro-style beadhead pheasant tail nymphs - another fan favorite. Slightly more complex, but they fish great in the early spring. The first fly off the vice was poor, but I again found my rhythm on subsequent flies. I find that the key to shaking off the rust is to focus hard on a specific pattern, not until it’s perfect, but until it’s uniform. Start by tying flies that aren’t proportioned exactly “correctly”, but all have the same proportions. You can then shift your focus to fixing those proportions, until you have a set of flies that are proportioned accurately, and all look the same. Finally, you can focus on speed, but only once the prior two criteria are met.
Finally, I took a stab at a few simple size 18 BWO emergers - all you need for these is a bit of mallard flank, some fine dubbing, and a few CDC puffs. Again, I consider this fly to be essential for spring fishing in MA, and New England in general. After focusing hard on proportions and deliberate uniform tying, these flew off the vice like their real-life analogues would.
I tied about a dozen flies overall over the course of about two hours - not speedy by any means, but that can be refined later. I was surprised to find how rusty I’d become over the offseason - I don’t think I could tie a wally wing or spin deer hair right now, but by focusing on the basics, I’m sure those skills will return in time. Hoping I can get back on the water in the next week or two, but in the meantime, I hope enjoy the fruits of my labor.
-Max
