In The Beginning

How did I begin my journey as a flyfisher and tyer? It all happened so long ago, the precise details have dimmed with the passage of years. Even so some bright spots of memory remain, like dappled sunshine on a shady streamside trail.

Before fly fishing, there was just plain fishing. At age six, my first rod was a slender limb cut from a weedy tree by my Uncle Marvin and tipped with an equal length of braided black nylon line stolen from his baitcast reel. There was a round red and white bobber, a split shot, a #10 Eagle Claw hook and a Prince Albert can full of garden worms. Next came a bamboo pole, then a baitcast outfit of my own with a reel that gave me plenty of backlashes to pick out. This developed a lot of character, and also the patience that would later be such an asset to me in fishing and in life in general. I moved on to a spinning rod, and finally a fly rod.

That first fly rod was a Shakespeare “Wonder Rod,” an 8 ft. 8 wt. fiberglass stick, heavy and floppy and perfectly awful in comparison to today’s fly rods. But it was mine and I loved it. A maroon painted Southbend Finalist reel spooled with a garish green “Torpedo Taper” line completed my rig. This entire kit was courtesy of my Mother’s S&H Green Stamps.

My first “flies” were very cheap cork poppers imported from somewhere in the Far East. These were sold as an assortment, packed in a little round plastic container divided into wedge-shaped compartments like a pie. Although the poppers came in various colors, the yellow one seemed to work the best and was my favorite. My family was quite poor, and lack of funding was a recurring theme in my early fishing. Replacement poppers were not always immediately available, so my supply was used with great care. 

As a fly fishing instructor, I know that the most common casting error made by novices is to break the wrist on the backcast, thus throwing the line and the fly toward the ground behind them. Much as I might like to believe that I was somehow immune to this problem, the events that are recounted below make it clear that I was not.

I was 15 years old, and in my first summer with the fly rod. My favorite place to fish was “The Gravel Pit Pond.” If it had another name, I never found out about it. I would get my Mother or Grandfather to drop me off there and return to pick me up a few hours later. The dirt road that lead back to the pond and the gravel pit beyond is gone now, and I suspect the pond is too. Back then, however, it was in its prime of life--full of bluegill and crappie, bullfrogs and water snakes, and an occasional largemouth bass. The Pond was accessible only from the road side, the far side backed up to a thick swamp. The road itself provided ample backcast room.

One afternoon at the pond I was fishing away and getting enough action to keep me quite happy. I had been making easy short casts and doing well, but gradually the hits got fewer and fewer. Along the far bank what I was sure were larger fish dimpled and swirled seductively. I just had to try to reach them. I was whipping away for all I was worth, and almost reaching my target. Then I noticed that my popper no longer seemed to be floating. How could that be? I stripped in my line to inspect the fly. Oh no! The popper’s body was completely gone. In my attempts to cast further than usual, I had apparently beaten the fly on the ground behind me until the cork disintegrated. All that remained was the hook and a few yellow hackles streaming out behind. 

This was an especially disheartening development. The fly box was empty and there was no backup. And Mom would not return to pick me up for another hour and a half. Dejectedly I rolled what was left of my fly out onto the water in front of me and started twitching it along just below the surface. I was quite mesmerized by the action of the hackles in the water. Just as I was thinking how neat this was a larger-than-normal crappie loomed up under the hook and inhaled it. Needless to say, I continued to fish.

It soon became obvious that I was catching more and bigger fish with the accidental wet fly than I previously had with intact poppers! Thus began the search for a nice, bright yellow underwater fly. This was at the very beginning of the “Fly Fishing Renaissance” in the late 1960’s. Fly fishing gear was hard to come by, especially near my New Jersey hometown where most anglers concentrated on conventional saltwater fishing. A couple of nearby bait and tackle stores had a very modest selection of trout flies, however, and I found a source of Yellow Sally wet flies. These went for forty cents each, which seemed pretty darned expensive. I don’t think that my allowance at the time was even a dollar a week, so it was awfully hard to keep myself in flies. That’s when I decided I’d have to start tying my own.

I knew nothing about tying flies, and had no source of instruction. So I set out on my own, quite resourcefully if I say so myself. For hooks, I used the same offset Eagle Claws I used for my bait fishing, complete with slices in the shank to hold the worm in place. I had no idea that these were not appropriate for fly tying. I bought a package of dyed yellow saddle hackles, which I cut into pieces to use as both wings and hackle. I got a spool of yellow floss for the bodies, and some fine gold tinsel for ribbing. I didn’t buy tying thread. After all, my Mother had plenty of sewing thread that I could use. I couldn’t afford a real fly tying vise, so I got a tiny toy machinist’s vise at the Woolworth’s Five and Dime. I don’t remember how I solved the problem of finishing off the head of the fly; apparently I came up with something that worked.

I regret that I don’t have any of those earliest flies. I do remember them, however, and they were incredibly bad by any reasonable standard. Even so they caught fish, which was the most important thing. Soon my fly fishing mentors, no doubt impressed with my persistence, took pity on me and helped me to acquire better tools and materials and some reference books.

These were my first steps in a pastime that’s kept me happily occupied ever since. And although there have been many other bright spots along the way, sometimes the oldest memories are the best.

--Mary S. Kuss—

Winter 2008 Issue