The Good Old Days?  

Something about the past seems golden. Fish are larger in memory. Weather is better, streams uncrowded, and equipment prices incredibly low. Of course, we're not talking about top-shelf equipment. At the time, this was mostly available by mail-order. In local sporting goods stores, there was a choice of half-a-dozen rod makers, with offerings in perhaps four line weights, and three reel manufacturers, including the ultra-cheap imports. Two major line brands were on display there, and leaders and tippet by Stren or Trilene. Ignoring the imports, there was ONE fly-tying vise, Thompson, with two common models. ONE hook manufacturer, Mustad. It certainly made choosing your first equipment easy.

On the other hand, it was next to impossible, even through major fly-fishing suppliers by mail-order, to get anything made for women anglers. I found a vest to fit in the "Boy's" department of a cheap department store, but even their smallest hip boots were still at least two shoe sizes too big for me. As for waders... Can any woman who lived through that era forget donning two or more pairs of heavy hunting socks and still having her feet slide back and forth? Not to mention the rest of the waders fitting like a clown's pants at the top, and bagging around the knees like an elephant's skin? The best feature of these archaic waders was their durability. Made of industrial-strength rubber, heavy as a wet canvas tent, it took thorns like bayonets to penetrate them, and if it happened, you darned well knew where the leak was! They were easily patched with a one-dollar kit available at any garage, and it was common to see anglers wearing waders as patch-laden as cartoon tires. Waders at the time served another function: A weight-loss device. There was a fad a few years ago to wrap yourself in plastic wrap and sweat off excess pounds; Waders of thirty years ago operated under the same principle. Between this, their sheer weight, and their bagginess increasing their water resistance, it's a darn good thing I was younger, stronger, and more foolish while wearing them. Other than vest and waders, we wore street clothes. There was no other choice. In cold weather, we bulked out in old-fashioned thermal weaves, wool or down; In rainy weather, there were plastic ponchos or rubberized raincoats, with all of the wonderful attributes of the waders of the time.

Fly-tying back then was both more creative and more difficult. There were few synthetics, except tinsel (real metal) and rayon floss. Our wild synthetic experiments used such things as stocking nylon, latex from surgical gloves or less mentionable sources, Saran Wrap and nylon paint-brush bristles. Even getting natural materials was a hit-or-miss process. Sometime literally; Road kills were an unpleasant but reliable source of materials back then. To this day, I can recognize a road kill by whatever unmangled tuft of fur or feathers is left on the carcass. NOT an ability I normally brag about. Then, there were the local hunters and trappers. Deer hair, rabbit fur, squirrel tails, and duck and pheasant feathers were major components of our flies just because of their sheer availability. Local farmers were somewhat less reliable. Your average barnyard chicken does not have neck feathers worth tying with, but I do remember one rooster-chasing episode that was a combination of the Keystone Kops and Hitchcock at his bloodiest. On the whole, hackle was a mail-order item. Loose hackles were available, but mostly low-quality and grossly overpriced. We bought necks. That was all there was of any quality. Genetic science as applied to fly-tying feathers was still in the egg, as it were. As with most mail-order items, you were never quite sure what you'd bought until it arrived. To find the quality, color, and range of sizes you wanted all in the same neck was like striking gold. 

Fly-tying catalogues of the times were not usually illustrated, but just reading the text was exhilarating. The array of exotic feathers, furs, and hairs was like a world tour of road kills, although I admit that the results when my orders finally arrived were seldom even that glamorous. This meant a lot of our fly-tying materials were made or modified at home. Nothing was safe from my scissors, from the dog to the inconspicuous parts of my mom's furs. Even my own hair didn't escape being incorporated into a fly. I regularly saved the combings from my cats in envelopes labeled "Cahill Cream Cat Fur", or "Adams Grey Cat Fur". Leftover yarn and thread from craft projects was fair game, too. Dyeing and blending our own dubbing was commonplace. I recall trying to dye the speckled breast-feathers of a starling to mimic Jungle Cock, with little success. And discovering that a coffee-grinder does a good job of blending small amounts of dubbing after ruining the kitchen blender.

My fascination with dye spread into dying my own vests and gloves less conspicuous colors to blend with streamside vegetation. I built a couple of rods from blanks, took apart reels and cleaned them or modified their drag, tied my own knotted tapered leaders, experimented with leader and line design, even spliced up what had to be one of the first sink-tip lines. Some of this was sheer inventiveness on my part, but more of it was the limited availability of the right kinds of tackle. Even fly boxes of the time were anathema: Hackle-mangling rotary boxes or spring clips, rust-attracting magnetic boxes or sheepskin wallets. I'm sure there were more sensible products for the high-end market, but I was certainly not in the right place or financial situation to know about them.

This was also well before the boom in instructional literature. There were few enough good angling books that nearly all of them were on my shelves. Large areas of the sport were scantily covered, even in the foreign books I could peruse in the library. Professional instruction? I wouldn't have believed it if anyone had told me that would exist someday. There were two ways to learn: From a fellow angler, or by the school of trial-and-error. Usually both. 

I normally have the reputation of an archaic old fogey, but if anyone really asked me, I'd tell them the good old days are NOW. Never has there been such a wide range of well-designed fly tackle available almost everywhere. I can walk into a general sporting-goods shop and get woman-sized fishing pants of lightweight, breathable synthetic; Or a tackle shop in a small Montana town and find woman's size waders, light and comfortable. "Solar-stop" gloves that actually fit my tiny hands; Well-designed, well-fitting lightweight "technical shirts" in attractive colors and women's sizes. Foam terrestrials that float like corks. Hooks with extra-large eyes for aging vision. Gore-tex and Polar Fleece. Genetic saddle hackles graded by size and quality. These are just a few of the major miracles of the golden age of fly-angling: Today. Here's to all of us who are old enough to appreciate it!

--Rabbit Jensen--
Autumn 2007 Issue