SUPERFLY

[Steeldrifter 0]

Ah yes that very first ever attempt at tying a fly, or at least I called it a fly at the time because ugly little feathery hook just didn’t seem to sound very fishable even though that description probably suited that first attempt better. After that first year of fly fishing I had the bright idea to try tying my own flies, it sounds reasonable at the time, I mean how hard could it be after all right? Well I soon found the answer to that question the hard way.

Not knowing anything at all about fly tying I made the genius decision to go to the local sporting goods store and by one of the fly tying “kits”…I mean come on you get a vise, some hooks and a couple bags of things that once were a part of a bird or animal so that qualified as “materials” I thought…all for the low price of $19.99. So hurrying home with my top notch quality vise and dead bird parts I threw my keys down and sprinted to the basement. As I opened up my shrewd purchase my girlfriend came down and asked what I was doing? After I told here I was going to tie flies she remarked “wouldn’t tiny handcuffs be easier?” I shoot her a dirty look …after she had turned to go back upstairs of course (I may be gullible but I’m not stupid!) and then continued to set up my top’o the line sunrise vise and sort out my high quality feathers that had a strange mildew smell.

 

So now I was ready to tie my first fly, this was it I was actually going to do it, but….where do I start? I started thinking to myself “should I have bough a book?” Nawww men don’t need a book to learn things! so I pushed forward. Well I found the little spool of thread so I guess I needed to attach the thread to the hook shank but how? After thinking for a moment it hit me “the clinch knot is good enough to hold the fly to the line so it must be good enough to hold some tiny thread to the hook shank I’d say”.

 

So after using a clinch knot to attach my thread I was ready to put the feathers on the hook, but what to tie. I didn’t know any names of flies so I though “well since it’s a fly I’ll tie something that looks like a fly!”…yes that’s right… a house fly, I was young dumb and didn’t know any better I guess.

 

So I wrapped a few pieces of this and that from the tying kit on the hook and used half a tube of glue to hold them in place. So there it was, all three inches long of it…leaning back in my chair I thought a minute of a name and exclaimed “I shall call it SuperFly”.

A voice from upstairs shouted..

“who are you talking too?”

 

“I’m talking to Sup…” “ I mean nothing…that was the radio honey”

 

After all I couldn’t let her know about SuperFly because she couldn’t keep a secret and I didn’t want the whole world to know about SuperFly…that could spoil a fishery if word got out about this new fly I came up with.

 

That night was a sleepless night for me as I laid in bed dreaming of the twenty-five inch brown that was spending his last night in the river oblivious to the fact that he was going to fall prey to the power of SuperFly the next morning. As the clock went off I jumped out of bed and grabbed my rod and fly box “come on SuperFly lets go!”

“did you say something honey?”

 

“I was just talking too……No I didn’t say anything go back to sleep”

 

I had almost let the secret out again…I was gonna have to be more careful.As I stepped into the river I noticed a bunch of bugs flying over the surface and trout rising, “ahh perfect” I thought to myself..”If they are taking those tiny little bugs then they will love this three inch long one” I reasoned.

So I stripped out some line and made a couple backcast then sent SuperFly sailing forward like the man of steel soaring through the air with his cape flapping in the wind. As I made the last forward cast I heard a slight “PFFFST” noise in the air above my head, not knowing what the sound was I quickly looked for the sight of SuperFly bobbing mightily on the surface where my line had landed…but I didn’t see him…where was he at?

I stripped my line in and still didn’t see SuperFly so put my rod under my arm and pulled my leader through my hand till I saw what had become of SuperFly…I held in my hand a bare hook with a couple little pieces of fur stuck to a glob of superglue..the "PFFFST" was SuperFly exploding . I notice in the calm water around my feet a couple pieces of feathers and a tiny little piece of kinked chinelle about 3 inches long laying dead on the surface….it was all that remained of SuperFly. I thought to myself, maybe it was best that SuperFly didn’t have the chance to be unleashed on the trout that were feeding in front of me, after all I didn’t feel like cleaning fish today anyway.

 

That was thirteen years ago. Now my shelves are stocked with expensive tying books the sunrise vise has given way to a fancy vise with some Italian name on it that I cant even pronounce, the nineteen dollar material kit has been replaced with a couple thousand dollars worth of select grade hackle necks and feathers from exotic birds that look like they should be endangered and I now tie flies with boring names like Adams,Hendrickson and hares ear.

 

There are still times though when I find myself alone in the basment at my dimly light tying bench staring at my new high tech vise contemplating the rise of ….”son of SuperFly"

 

SD

[Guest]

Love it

 

OSD.

[flymaster 0]

Hey that reminds me of the last fly I tied! And a clinch knot isn't acceptable to start thread in on the hook.? HUGH! Oh well we all should quit tying to please each other but tie to please the fish. I was talking with a guy on a tailwaters the other day and discussing BWO's I showed him my cdc version it is really plain, but effective. It consists of 2 materials cdc and green thread for the body oh ya and a piece of scrap hackle fiber for tail. We got in the water within sight of each other at my last count I had on 5 brown to his 0 and he left. He took his pretty, perfect looking little hard to tie hackle flies wtih him too! God you guys hate it when I ger on here early after a 12 hour shift at work don't ya?

 

FM

[tdeyette 0]

Excellent Read Steeldrifter.....

 

I'm sure all of us can relate to bits and pieces of your story!

 

(It kind of sounds like my spider made from a kitchen sponge and rubber bands...but that's another story )

 

Thanks

 

Tom

[Alex C. 0]

That was a great story. It made me go back and look at my first fly I tied a whole month ago

 

I haven't looked at it since about 3 or 4 days after I tied it , I can honestly say that is the ugliest light cahill I've ever seen, but I was so damn ectremely proud of it just as you were so proud of superfly. I'd hate to have anything similiar happen to my " frankenhill" so someday I'm gonna have to run up to the craft store and buy a frame for it Oh and here's a pic of Will's favorite fly I've ever tied:innocent:

 

He keeps bugging me to submit it for fly of the year next year but I just don't know if I could afford the insurance to mail a priceless fly like that. Once agian great story

[appalachian angler (tn.) 0]

Funny, fun read SD! Strange how this sight is transfoming some of us into essayists, journalists, and comic writers. Everyone in this sport has some issue that gets them all twisted up, and the "LODGE" is allways a great place to let it all unravel (sometimes literally!). Keep the goodtimes a-commin'.

 

A.A.

[Essoxfly 0]

Very entertaining story SD

My first fly will be a booring story, so i'll spare you for that

 

Keep the feathers on the hook,

Jakob

[Guest]

I distinctly remember the first fly i tied. I must have been 9 or 10. nobody in the house flyfished and there were no fly rods available to me. Everybody in my family fished, so I thought i could probably trail the thing behind a bobber and catch bluegill. No vise, so i borrowed my dad'd vise grip and put a long shanked hook (probably a cricket hook) in it. i stole some of my mom's thead and attched a set of orange featehr wings to the hook (I can't tell you where I got the feathers from either, probably found them left over from some cub scout project or something). I managed to tie off the thread and trim it. but I rrealized that this probably wouldn't be sturdy enough to hold together. For head cement i ended up using some white liquid rubber ( a 1960s "magic" adhesive, that came in a tube). That was it, the simplest streamer possible, no body or anything else. I did fish it and it caught bluegills. Somewhere along many moves I lost that thing (not on a fish). Twenty five years later i started tying flies with a real vise...many of those were much, much uglier than that first one. I figure the first couple of hundred flies were extremely ugly. Still have a few of those around today to rremind me what not to do.

 

Mark Delaney

[Guest]

Very nice story SD..Takes me back to the first fly i tried at before i found this site...I still have it though those bitter fish wouln't even attempt to take it from me.Thanks for bringing back some laughs and memories..

 

tt