“What’s this doing in here?”
I plucked the oddball fly from its slot on the backside of a swing leaf in my nymph box, from a place reserved for trial runs and rarely used once-or-twice-a-year kind of stuff.
Holding the flashback fly between my thumb and first two fingers, I shook my head.
“No, you didn’t quite make it into the lineup, did you buddy?”
I should tell you this: The solitude of my favorite trout river provides me the freedom to talk to myself. And it’s become a habit — not often enough to consider me strange, I wouldn’t think, and certainly not loud enough for streamside starlings to hear me over the breaking currents. I only comment aloud on the remarkable things, and I do so somewhere above a whisper. But I like to speak the questions. Because these thoughts seem to command more answers when they resonate aloud.
That last question needed no reply. It was obvious. And I’ve known it for a while now. The first time out, a new fly needs a good showing. It should run strong out of the gate. If any die-hard angler is to lend his fragile confidence to a new fly pattern, it takes more than the adoring recommendations of a friend or some well strung sentences of persuasion in a magazine. No, a new fly has to show up at the first dance. It must make a good impression. It has to put fish in the net.
And this is how confidence flies are found.
I stashed the odd flashback creation on the scrap side of a small foam box — a place reserved for retired flies, rusty things that I find in the low hanging branches and some of my own flies that have run their last lap. For some of them, I strip the hook with a razor blade and re-tie with new materials. Others find the trash bin. This flashback thing will no doubt make it to the wastebasket, in part because the hook was just unlucky.
I flipped my box’s inner leaf over and scanned my few rows of go-to patterns. Every one of them has a story about their first time out. And as I tied on a #14 Walt’s Worm (copper bead, orange collar, mono rib) I thought about what happened with that flashback fly. I easily remembered the day and the details, because fishermen never forget the fishy things.
“Probably not fair,” I said aloud. “It was a slow day all around. But,” I reasoned, “I still caught a handful of fish on the Bread-n-Butter and a BHPT.”
No, that flashy fly didn’t get it done. And I won’t complicate my selection process by keeping any hangers-on. Turn ‘em loose! Let ‘em go!
“I keep a clean box,” I said. Then I began casting, tucking the #14 Walt’s into an upstream pocket at twenty feet. “And you, Mr. Flashback, just didn’t make the cut.”
Fish hard, friends.
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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Lol, sounds like Bill Belichick in waders. Ruthlessly culling the herd, feelings and sentiments be damned. I have a small wallet of mixed grill confidence flies; from the bottom of the column to the top. These are flies are my Grail flies. I have another box of semi reliable back benchers whose productivity is just enough to keep them in the game, albeit seldom. I have a jar, not unlike yours, that is reserved for those flies who saw the light of day just once, only to hear “Oh, hell no!” Born only to be fed back into the machine: fly tying’s version of Soylent Green.
Bill Belichick in waders. That’s hilarious!
After a disappointing start last Sunday in the driftless I more or less said wtf and gambled on a Coulee Scud nymph recommended by the Driftless Angler Fly Shop. I quickly caught a nice Upper Midwest Brown and then several more in three hours.
I’m now crazy about the Couler Scud.
Oh yea. I probably need to trash over fifty flies from when I started tying about a year and a half ago. I have that Italian disease of accumulating things that should be in a landfill somewhere. I’m happy to say that my last invention to come out of my mad scientist laboratory performed brilliantly the first and second time out. If it does good again on my next outing, Saturday or Sunday, I have no other choice but to name this fly DAMAGE INCORPORATED. Please God don’t make it rain too much tonight.
It’s alright to talk to yourself.
It’s alright to talk to yourself and answer yourself.
The time to start worrying is when you talk to yourself, answer yourself, and then ask, “What did I say?”
I bought something from a small Tenkara company and they threw in three flies, including a purple Stimulator.
That sat in the “big and bushy” box for a couple years until one day, when nothing else seemed to work, I tied it on. And of course I promptly caught a fish.
That was the first and last fish the purple Stimmie fooled. But it got a fair hearing.
Thank you for a brilliantly written blog, keeps me coming back. I think I’d love it even if I wasn’t a fly fisher. This one cut deep, I thought for sure the twist was going to be tying it on one more time and coming through big for ya. Almost left me with a lump in my throat. Some of my favorite flies are fashioned from my trim pile that I collect around the vise, just wad it up, tie it on with some intriguing profile. One of a kind.
After 25 years of fly fishing, seldom using a streamer, I decided to jump on the bandwagon with your full pint streamer. I watched your YouTube a couple times, spent 1.5 hours at the vise, and finally hit the River. The full pint made the cut for me! Now I just need to speed up the tying process! Thanks Dom!
I tried some of Dom’s 17 confidence nymphs that I hadn’t used before. The Polish woven nymph worked right away. I had the same experience with the brown bead head stonefly nymph, and the jig streamer. The black and tan has not worked for me so far in either size 12 or 14, and I’ve given it plenty of chances. It looks so good and makes so much sense that I’m not ready to cut it yet, though.