Hackle up

Some of the best fly-tying I’ve done has been sitting at someone else’s kitchen table the night before a journey to a new trout stream. Or in the way back of the SUV, rushing to figure out that pattern of that rust-colored caddis or bright sulfur dun.
I’m not one of those guys who packs the tying kit into his vest or even leaves it in the SUV, but I will bring it along for a long weekend of fishing, especially in places that I haven’t fished before and mostly in odd geographies.
I remember bass fishing in a series of central Florida lakes not too long ago with my father-in-law, Tom. You could kick a pebble into the lake and these ugly lunkers would eat it, but cast a dry fly above it, and for get it. They’d nuzzle it, and not liking the tickle on their noses, turn away, one by one. I’m sure if I have a hotdog or some popcorn, I’d have been all set.
The bass, however, were eating these small dragonflies, so dark blue they were black.
So that night, knowing that we’d be back fishing the next morning, we tied a couple of these things over a couple of Samuel Adams and slices of pizza. Not much too it: Take a streamer hook, spin some black muskrat onto the thing, section off the body with black thread, leave a nice long “tail” hooking up, bead the head and tie in a couple of small black mallard wings, and poof, the perfect little dragonflies.
I thought that was pretty cool. They were astonishingly lifelike creatures and sat nicely on the table.
The next day, we went back to the lake, tied on the dragonflies, but the bass had moved on and were no longer interested in the dragonflies. First of all, we were fishing in the afternoon the day before, and you couldn’t cast without almost hitting a dragonfly. But the next morning, the dragonflies were nowhere to be found.
(We ended up using some colorful dry flies, and did OK. But I have to say it was a little disappointing to not have caught a five-pounder on a home-tied and concocted dragonfly pattern.)
Then there was the time Tom and I fished the Holston River in eastern Tennessee while the snow was still dripping off the Blue Ridge. We had a load of nymphs, and it poured rain most of the time we were there. Except one night, near the Holston Dam, as we were heading in, a man who looked like an Orvis model walked out, beaming ear to ear. Most folks were getting out of the river, and we had merely come down to see what the access was like, to return the next morning.
The man clearly was happy to be back in the river after what was probably a long winter, even for eastern Tennessee. I had to ask how he did. He said great. Then he handed me a No. 20 hook with a bead of brown thread woven around it. “I caught a few monsters on this.”
I took the gift, thanked him, jumped into my waders and sprinted for the dam.
With about a half-hour of daylight left, I made a cast, felt a tug, set the hook and pulled. The tipped snapped, and the fish took off with the gift. I tried some other small nymphs, ornately tied. Nothing.
Raging against the dying of the light and Tom waiting patiently on the bank, I felt my way back to the bank and told Tom, “Let’s go tie a bunch of these tonight.”
We ate a couple of greasy cheeseburgers, headed back to the cabin, got out the beer and the kits, and tied caviar.
That night, a cold front rolled through like a hurricane, and brought with it torrential downpours. The rain was so cold, it should have been snow. It stung our faces and numbed our hands, but there we were, back on the river waist-deep, shivering and throwing copper eggs at inactive fish.
Skunked again.
Weather changes, fish change, streams rise and fall. Sometimes they ice over, sometimes they warm up. Hatches change. Sometimes they look more brown, other times more gray. You just don’t know. Fly tiers, then, have to be prepared and willing to walk out of the river, sit down on the bank or back in the way back of the SUV, and spend a half hour or hour tying the insect du jour. Not everything exists in a fly box, although I’ve seen men with libraries in their vests.
It’s easy to catch fish on your home waters, and it’s easy when a guide points you in the right direction or a buddy has done his homework. But to be truly prepared, well, that takes the ability to shift gears and hackle up.