Tie flies and dreams of warmer days fishing

I’m digging through my tackle bag these days and getting ready for another year on the water.

I pull tattered, worn-out flies from hat brims — and see all of the empty spaces in the dozen fly boxes I lug around all yearlong.

Winter is the time to fill up those boxes with new flies for the coming year of fishing. Best to do it while it’s cold and dark out there.

It’s always a little mortifying to see how many fly boxes rattle around in my heavy, clanking vest — and how many flies I need to tie for the next year.

I always start my winter fly-tying frenzy by creating the flies I’ll need in late February and all through March on the Yakima River. Blue wing olive mayflies hatch in waves — even during snowstorms — and I need lots of flies to match this hatch.

I need flies to match the nymphs that live under the river rocks and flies that look like the bugs struggling to climb out of their nymphal skin to turn into a flying insects. I also need flies that imitate the flying insects right after hatching that later return to the water to lay eggs.

Whew!

It sounds more complicated than it is, but it’s easy to stock box after box of flies. Every fly angler fears not having the right fly when feeding fish are beating the water to a froth.

Some anglers carry little tying kits, and they’ll stop fishing and perch on the bank to tie up a few new flies. I’ve fished for 38 of my 46 years, but my hands still shake too much to tie flies when the trout are dimpling the water.

There are other hatches — other mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies and midges — that interest the trout during the year. But the blue wing olives — in sizes 16 to 24 — lure the trout out of their winter doldrums.

A size 16 fly is about the size of your thumbnail. A size 24 fly is smaller than the world “fly” on this page. A pile of newly-tied size 24 flies looks like lint from the clothes dryer.

But the fish are picky, and you’d better have some of those dryer lint flies if tiny mayflies are bobbing around on the river.

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.