Orvis Fly Tying Sale

Not sure why I've taken 21 days to post this, but if you're looking for tying material this is about as good a sale as you're likely to find. Orvis is offering twenty percent off all tying materials and tools -  excluding those from Renzetti and Whiting - for the entire month of February. Bobbins, hooks, feathers and fur ... you'll buy it eventually ... may as well save yourself some scratch. Now might even be a good time to get that Regal or HMH vise you've been lusting after. The link below will take you directly to the tying section of Orvis' online store. I receive no compensation from the company (unfortunately); I just thought some of you might like to save a few dollars. The hooks - most of which are rebranded Daiichi or Gamakatsu - are an especially good deal.

http://www.orvis.com/store/shop.aspx?dir_id=1273&shop_id=1448

Why?

Since the inception of The Rusty Spinner, I've been asked many times over why I go through the trouble of maintaining a blog. Why do I burden myself with all the links and videos, with photographs and with writing? Is it vanity or exhibitionism? Do I feed on the little bit of praise I occasionally receive? Am I a collector of followers? Am I self important? Do I hope the blog will somehow magically morph into magazine articles or a book?

The truth is that The Rusty Spinner has been around in this form and others for over a decade - the blog began as a website devoted to the history and chronology of the Orvis CFO series of reels - and in that time I haven't received even one nickel for my efforts. Any reward I've received has been intrinsic and intangible to anyone but myself. Why do it then? When I think about it, the answer to that question almost certainly stems from the years I spent working in a fly shop.

Make no mistake, being a fly shop flunkie is hardly a glorious vocation. First and foremost, fly shop work is retail work, and sometimes no better than making minimum wage in a second hand clothing store that caters to tweens and hipsters. Stop for a moment, and imagine that special hell.

"Where can I find your free range, organic, "Like a Boss" belts?"

"I was wondering ... do you stock Hello Kitty socks in a men's large?"

"I don't believe this, Margot! They're out of henna hair dye."

"Why isn't there a bike rack out front? I ride my little fixie everywhere, and I have to say ... it feels so good to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I'm sure you know what I mean."

"Excuse me ... you seem to be out of "I Heart David Sedaris" graphic tees, when will you be getting more?"

What must it be like to be subjected to that kind of inane patter all day, every day, for less than $10.00 an hour? Just thinking of it makes my ears bleed, and as difficult as it may be to believe there are those days when working in a fly shop - a shop packed with all the latest and greatest rods, reels, flies, and fly tying material - is only marginally better than eight hours of selling black rimmed, lensless glasses to people with 20/20 vision.

"Do these waders come in an antique ivory taupe?"

"Will this line make me cast farther?"

"What do you mean you don't sell nightcrawlers? I thought this was a fishing store."

"Where do you fish?"

"My rod broke ... spontaneously and through no fault of my own."

The single saving grace is that this type of chatter was the exception, not the rule. Most folks - men, women, and children - were relatively well informed and comported themselves with a modicum of sense.

"These waders only come in olive? Perfect. One less thing to think about."

"I wish they'd make a line that casts itself because I just can't double haul with a flask in my line hand."

"I know this is a fly shop - and when I'm alone I'll definitely be back - but right now there are four kids in my car - four kids who want to go fishing. Any idea where I could get a tub of nightcrawlers?"

"If you had only two days to wet a line before you left for home, where would you fish?"

"I broke my rod. Like a chucklehead, I left the freaking thing laying across the truck of the car. Smashed her good. I may have had one too many IPAs ..."

And this is what I most enjoyed about working in the shop. Most of my day - each and every day - was spent talkin' fishin'. My customers and I talked bass and steelhead, trout and pike. We talked tarpon in Florida and kings in Alaska. We talked line and tippet, knots and rigging, double hauls and single speys. We talked about the Spring Hole, the Bat Hole, and a river whose name we never used. Working in a fly shop was my opportunity to be immersed in a lifestyle that I thoroughly enjoyed. When life led me from the shop into a teaching career, the one thing I genuinely missed was the opportunity to chat with like minded folks. Hence ... The Rusty Spinner.

The Rusty Spinner is my opportunity to continue the conversation. This blog isn't about marketing. It isn't about making money or getting free swag for ridiculously contrived and complimentary reviews. The Rusty Spinner is my way of throwing my thoughts out into the ether in the hopes someone might shout back. In that regard, my time spent at the keyboard has been time well spent. I've met folks from all over the world through this blog, including a few who live nearby and have become friends, confidants, and fishing partners.

The Rusty Spinner is my way of remaining on the periphery of a world that I've long since left. Writing about fly fishing is likely as close as I may ever again come to my time in the shop and the conversations I had there. As time passes and technology changes, I suppose I am likely to lose this outlet and my connection to that world. Still, I can't help but think that the time I spend here at this keyboard - uncompensated as it may be - is time well spent. Next to the riffles and pools of one very special river that shall forever remain unnamed, there are few places I would rather be than sitting here ... talking to you.

Mot Juste: Redux

Three weeks. I've gone three weeks without wetting a line, and this morning my piscatorial withdrawl is hitting me especially hard. I'm forced to dive into my day dreams, imagine trips yet to come and remember those that have already happened. What follows is a post that first appeared January 9th of 2012. It is the chronicle (or perhaps non-chronicle) of what might have been the most exciting day on the water I have ever witnessed. The river gods were generous in a way they haven't been since and may never be again. Ahhh memories ...  

mot juste (noun) mō-ˈzhuest: exactly the right word or phrasing

As much as I enjoy fly fishing and everything the sport entails, I must admit that bug chucking isn't always the most exciting endeavor. That isn't to say that fly fishing isn't my passion, but let's face it, most days on the water pass uneventfully. We make a few hundred casts. We catch a few fish. We have a good but otherwise unremarkable day.

Yesterday was not an unremarkable day.     

Yesterday was something altogether different. Yesterday was the kind of day that haunts the average bug chucker - alchemically changing innocuous daydreams into obsessive compulsive disorder.  Yesterday was a day of fishing so exceptional as to leave both audience and actors alike wondering if a second such day could ever be possible. Yesterday was special.

And having experienced yesterday, I realize I've an obligation to share the story with my friends and readers if for no other reason than to let them know that yesterday is possible. So now I sit here at my keyboard, trying to string together the narrative of a day that was entirely unlike anything I have ever before experienced, and I find I simply haven't the words. I'm completely at a loss.   

Perhaps I lack the spectacular vernacular of a more accomplished wordsmith. Maybe I should stick to fly tying, and forget all about this blogging thing. I suppose it could be true that those who can, do; those who can't, teach (when not flinging flies I'm a high school teacher). All I can really say with any certainty is that I don't know what to say about yesterday. I don't know where to start, how to finish, or what it all might mean in the context of a season on the river, let alone a third of a century spent stream side.

Maybe it's enough to forgo the details. Maybe it's enough to dispense with the numbers, statistics and the play-by-play, and simply say we had a very good time. We had the kind of day the river gods parcel out all too infrequently, and if we never have that kind of day again then at least we'll have been given that moment, and the indelible impression of something very special. We'll have the memory of a day for which there really are no words.   

 

Earning Secrets

Contour lines moved ever closer; blue lines faded to dotted blue lines and then disappeared altogether. We were off the map. In a strictly technical sense, we could have used a compass to shoot an azimuth, estimate our distance to two nearby hilltops, and then pinpointed our location on the grid, but insofar as bug chucking goes we were most definitely in the land of the lost. According to our map - a USGS topographical survey circa 1984 - the stream we were fishing disappeared into the bedrock at least three quarters of a mile farther downstream, yet there we were - knee deep in a spring fed bog that reeked of decomposition and sulphur, a swamp from which a small brook emerged that we erroneously thought might hold a brookie or two. We finished the day exhausted, with nothing more than mud splattered clothing and a torn pair of waders to show for our substantial effort.

Of course, in several decades of fishing together Adam and I have managed any number of trips that were every bit as successful as the aforementioned was disappointing.

"What do you think? Have we a plan?"

"One upstream, one down?"

"Sounds good. I'll go up, you go down. If you sting one, come up and let me know."

"Will do. Luck."

I worked slowly and methodically downstream through riffles and pocket water, both to be thorough and to avoid the dunking that had become almost standard on our exploratory missions. I remember that my first impression of the stream was that it was barren, probably ravaged by acid rain, and likely devoid of any fish worth chasing. In less than twenty minutes, however, Adam came bounding downstream - sprinting through the water and leaping from rock to rock like that gnu featured in the opening theme of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.



Only twenty minutes since we had parted ways, and already he appeared disheveled. His breathing was raspy and came in labored gasps. Rod and vest were missing, presumably left streamside; carried gingerly in both hands was his net - as a Greek priestess might have presented an offering to her goddess.

"There's ... up ... up there ... there's a ... a waterfall ... first cast."

If Adam said much else then I didn't hear him. I was staring - wide eyed, stunned, almost certainly with my mouth agape - into his net. Struggling against the moist cotton mesh was an outsized brown trout that seemed much too big for such an inconsequential little brook. Shocked as I was, all the usual superlatives and vernacular abandoned me.

"Jeez ... wow ... that's one ... er ... a ... whoa!"

Adam beamed and enjoyed the moment. The fish was impressive in all the ways that mattered: thick and heavy, unmarred and unblemished, beautifully spotted and caught in a pool that likely hadn't seen another angler in decades if at all. Adam and I first found that stream (as we did most good things in those days) on a map, and in the twenty odd years since that first trip to its banks we've only ever shared its location with our most trusted friends and family.

As I reflect, I realize that my angling life has delivered many such moments of discovery: mud flats loaded with carp, gentle glides that are blanketed with hendricksons each spring, bass and bream by the bushel, even a nameless Montana spring creek that only locals fish and then only rarely. I've been very fortunate, but fortune only takes a bug chucker just so far. We cannot count on our good luck to see us through those too few seasons that we're given. Instead, we must be diligent experimenters and explorers who demonstrate a willingness to go off the beaten path, to travel outside the confines of our little piscatorial box. We need to take risks because it is risk that gives us the right to keep or to divulge the secrets we've learned.

I must admit that I've become complacent. I've been satisfied, sated, and perfectly happy to rest on my laurels. I've stopped experimenting at the vise, and my maps - all of them so well worn and creased - have either been discarded or forgotten on a shelf. As I look forward to the remainder of the year and the opportunities it will bring I make myself a promise. I'm going to travel outside of my comfort zone. I'm going to visit new water, and try to see old water with fresh eyes. For every dozen, proven flies I tie - I am going to tie one experiment, one Franken-Fly, and I will fish that fly at the first opportunity. I will find my way out of the bug chucking rut in which I seem to be mired. I will learn something new, and once again - I will earn my secrets.

How Cold Was It?

On our way to the river we passed a filling station that had an LED thermometer out front ...

-2 degrees ...

In the sun ...

That's a special kind of cold ...

Which I suppose makes us a special kind of crazy ... 

 

Or not ...

Day Dreaming

Thinking about fishing seasons past - and about changing the look of the blog - so I thought I'd share the fish and photos that inspired and eventually became the current Rusty Spinner banner ...

The rod is a Montague Manitou - one hell of a dry fly stick - matched with a Hardy LRH.

This is the photo that eventually became our current banner.

The same fish caught a week or so later on a little 7' 4# quad matched with a Peerless 1A.

Maybe the most beautiful brown trout I ever caught.

As much as I enjoy steelhead, I can't help but think that the hendricksons will be back soon.

Suicide Runs

My wife tells me that I am obsessed with fishing. I suppose she's right; she usually is when shining a light on any of my many peccadilloes. And one need look no further than this blog for proof of my obsession, but to say I am obsessed is really only half the truth. While I am always thinking of fishing - the fly, cast, hook set, and the ensuing ballet - I am also compelled to get out there and do the deed. I need to fish.

Thinking, talking, or writing about fishing neither satisfies nor sustains me. I need to step into the water and wet a line. I relish that moment when I lay out a cast a little farther than I'm usually able, turn over the leader as leaders were meant to turn over, and place the fly just about where I hoped to place the fly. I need to be there in that the moment when a blackened and scarred snout emerges from the grey green depth. Even thinking about it now, I can feel my heart skip as I wait for that imagined fish to inhale my diminutive and poorly tied hendrickson. I need that moment as I need the love of my family, and could no more abandon the water I fish than I could forgo the water I drink. Fishing nourishes me every bit as much.

Enter the sting of a new year's weather and an`annual winter-run of steelhead. If not for steelhead, January, February and March would mark a barren, dreadful season. Steelhead save us - the afflicted - from ourselves. Steelhead give us hope at a time when many other anglers can do little else but pine for warmer days and open water.

To my way of thinking, there are few game fish that are quite as game as a fresh chromer, even when water temps approach freezing. Few animals are quite so fast, and fewer still as unpredictable. When a steelhead enters the river she is hell bent on procreation. When she is hooked, every ounce of that preternatural, adrenaline fired sex drive pushes her toward escape. The takes are sometimes very soft, a series of gentle, almost imperceptible taps. More often, however, a steelhead will attack the fly with absolute abandon - be that fly a #8 beaded stone or a #2 Purple Peril.   

And what won't we do to satisfy that January jones, to get that mid-winter piscatorial fix? In my little corner of of the world, the closest steelhead are Salmon River fish - two and a half hours away. On average, we make the trip some three to five times a month. That's two hundred ninety miles and five hours per round trip. Two hundred ninety miles and five hours of sore backs and heavy eyelids, bad weather and snow slick roads. Most days, it's a suicide run to get from here to there and back again. To some small degree, we're taking our lives in our hands every time we make the trip.

"Is it worth it," my wife asks. "Is it really necessary to drive all that way for a fish?"

I smile at the question, kiss her cheek, and slough off into the living room to play with the kids. She doesn't understand, but in her defense - few people do. We don't make the trip for a fish.

Suicide runs aren't about steelhead. Suicide runs are about opportunity. They're about possibilities, slim chances, and overcoming the odds. Perhaps more than anything, they're about hope.

Few things could be better, and fewer still are quite as necessary.

River Chicken ...

"When I was a little boy every little squirt wanted to be a harpooner or a sword fisherman." - Quint, Jaws (1975)


While chasing steelhead on the Salmon River, this river chicken paid me a visit to show me how the locals get things done. For the first time in years, I had a video camera in my pocket when a video-worthy moment presented itself.

2012: A Narcissistic, Porntastic, Photographic, Piscatorial Review ... and Primus Sucks

We have one more trip planned before 2012 fades into the sunset, but the river nymphs and weather gods may conspire to keep us off the water. It's time for a quick look back ... and Primus ... because Primus sucks.

Who Needs a Sealed Drag?