Tie flies and dreams of warmer days fishing

By Chester Allen | The Olympian • Published January 11, 2008

My goal is to tie about a dozen flies a night for the next three months. Some nights, I’ll tie up to three dozen, which takes about two hours.

I do tie all year long, but that’s just to replace flies — or copy some flies bought from a local fly shop.

There are always new flies to tie and test during the coming year. My new copy of Fly Tyer magazine trumpets “4 Emergers you MUST tie,” on the cover, and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve already tied a dozen of each.

More and more of my flies are tied to imitate emergers. Emergers are the losers of the insect world — bugs that couldn’t quite make it out of the water to fly away. Emergers are stuck in the surface film of the water, and you can almost hear them squeaking: “I’m helpless, I’m helpless, I’m helpless ... .”

Trout love emergers, so I do too.

The size 18 sparkle duns I tied last night are emergers. A tail of Zelon — fiber invented for carpet but found useful by many fly tiers — sparkles under the water and looks just like the shuck — crinkled skin — that hangs off the tails of crippled mayflies.

Yeah, I know this is a nerdfest, but I can’t help myself.

I work hard to make my flies look crisp and neat, but I really want trout to chew those flies into tattered messes. A ruined, chewed-up fly is a great fly — and those get stuck into my hat brim before leaving the river.

I love full fly boxes, but I love empty fly boxes more. Empty boxes — and fly-studded hats — mean a lot of great days on the water.

And more fly tying every winter.

Chester Allen’s fishing column appears Fridays in The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-4226 or callen@theolympian.com.