First Flies

I’ve always harbored reverence and fascination for beings that can fly - not for birds, so much, though I like them well enough - but mostly for the ethereal flyers: the angels, white witches and fairies of myth, and the insects that may have inspired the myths. I’ve not yet seen an angel, a witch or even a fairy, but I have seen the insects often enough. I remember a late spring morning on a little stream in western Virginia when I crept up to a familiar pool and witnessed the sudden materialization of a squadron of large mayflies suspended below shimmering wings, darting in and out of thin shafts of sunlight streaming through a canopy of leaves. I was enchanted and enthralled, as I have often been when encountering a hatch of aquatic insects. For several minutes I watched the mayflies’ graceful aerial ballet with pure admiration. To my profound surprise, a brook trout as bright as a box of emeralds and rubies suddenly shattered the mirrored surface of the pool, leaping a foot into the air in a glistening spray to nab one of the flies. It seemed as if these beings, predator and prey, were popping into my dimension from worlds unknown to man, and were just as quickly returning.

I don’t recall exactly when I first saw a mayfly, or was cognizant of what it was, but I must have been a boy growing up in Idaho and experiencing the wonders of the natural world of the Rocky Mountains in a way only a boy can. Whenever it was, it must have been a short time later that I learned there were men who made imitations of these insects and used them in an activity they called fly fishing. I immediately understood that fly fishing was something I wanted to do, and that I wanted to tie flies like those I had seen in the local sports shop. Unfortunately, I knew no one who actually used or tied fishing flies, and it must not have occurred to me that there might be books or other tools to help me. But that didn’t stop me from trying, for I was of an age undeterred by lack of experience or knowledge of a thing - it was enough that I could imagine doing it. And so I pilfered a few of my dad’s fishhooks and my mom’s most colorful spools of thread, and went to work on a little set of flies. Possessing none of the fly-tying gizmos that I am so familiar with today, such as a vise and a bobbin, I took the most straightforward approach, holding the bend of the hook in one hand and winding a strand of loose thread around the shaft with the other. Somewhere on these little abominations I attached feathers of sparrows or blue jays that I found in the yard where my cat devastated their original owners. I’m certain my creations would have horrified any real fly fisherman of the day, but I was proud to pinch them between my thumbs and forefingers and wave them around in the air as if they were models of fighter planes in an imagined dogfight.

I never actually used one of those flies, because I didn’t have a fly rod and had no idea how I might acquire or borrow one. But I have little doubt, knowing what I now know about fishing flies and the fish they are designed to entice, that I could have tossed one of my little creations into one of the innumerable “cricks” coursing from the nearby mountain slopes and it would have attracted more than a few of the ravenous and not-so-bright little rainbow trout teeming in those frothy runs. An average fly purchased in a modern fly shop costs about $2.50 today, but I would readily pay $100 for one of the flies I tied almost 50 years ago. Perhaps someday one will simply pop back into existence, if only for a few minutes, just long enough to bind itself to the end of a fine tippet and find the trout it was destined to catch.