Doctorhook
BY LOUIS FEROX I REMEMBER when I first dabbled in fly tying as a youngster.
My dad came home with a doctor’s briefcase one night – coincidentally, we were watching Doctor Who on the telly at the time.
The case looked a bit done in and you would be forgiven for thinking that it had been transported, via the Tardis, from another dimension.
“Here son,” my dad said. “Big Ian asked me to give you this.”
“What is it?” I asked with trepidation, thinking it had a stethoscope, thermometer and white coat inside.
“A fly tying kit” was his response.
I had been fly fishing for about a year and had an old blue Shakespeare fly rod and a Rimfly fly reel that made some racket. But I only had a few flies, mainly traditional patterns like Greenwells Glory, Peter Ross, Butcher, Soldier Palmer, and a couple of Iron Blue Dun dry flies.
My dad thought I might consider tying my own flies. But I didn’t have a clue where to start. I opened the briefcase and it was full of fly-tying feathers, fly-tying tools, hackles, fly-tying thread, and a Rabbit’s mask.
I felt like a celebrity on MasterChef receiving a bag of ingredients and being told to make a gourmet meal, but without a recipe. I didn’t have a clue what to do with the stuff, and neither did my dad.
There was one place I could find out. The library.
Believe it or not, you could actually find out stuff in your local library before YouTube became the go-to resource for watching videos on any subject. I was lucky because it was five minutes down the road and it had a few fishing books.
So I sauntered down to the library, and went straight for the shelf with all the fishing books. Lo and behold, they were all out on loan and there was no fly tying books.
Disappointed, I ran back up the road and bumped into my neighbour, Peter, who went fishing to cool places and had fly boxes of flies which he tied himself. I asked him if he could show me how to tie flies?” “Aye, nae bother,” he said. So the next night I sat next to him and he explained what the fly tying vice was for, how to thread the bobbin holder, how to tie bodies, make ribs with silver wire, and how to put on hackles.
My attempts at a Black Pennell were not up to the same standard as Peter’s and it was nowhere near as good as the flies in my box.
However, I persevered because I had this image in my head of a fly box full of flies that I tied myself, and I was determined.
And sure enough after a few months, with the help of a beginners guide to fly tying that I did manage to borrow from the library, my goal became a reality. My fly box was overflowing.
That “briefcase,” after all, was just what the doctor ordered.