Fly fishing is for true men. Hemingway did it and he wasn’t no pussy, right? It’s what all true God-fearing man’s men aspire to become – an honest to goodness, straight out of “A River Runs Through It”, fly fisherman. No time for pansies here. I strap on my waders like Calvin Coolidge on an (at the time) illegal whisky bender. To put it bluntly – I ain’t no sissy.
I have gotten more deeply into fly fishing in the last few years so it was only a matter of time before I began tying my own flies. Here are some of the many super manly tools I needed.
- a fly tying vice – nothing says “balls” like a good old vice.
- a bobbin – Yep, still manly… as in “Hey Jim, grab me a cold one. And could you re-spool my bobbin for me. The tension on my thread is a bit much.” – completely natural guy talk.
- a bobbin threader – Need I explain?
- a whip finisher – I don’t want to explain.
- hackle pliers – Pliers are cool?
- scissors
- head cement – OK, this is just a bro smokescreen for “nail polish”.
- assorted threads, feathers, furs, and peacock herls
I’ll stop my list right there and just gather myself. I mean this is all for fishing right? Yes, in a way. But when I brought home all these assorted tying tools I found that my wife knew what most of them were for, despite never having picked up a 5 weight. Meanwhile I had to refer to my Fly Tying Bible (that’s a real book folks). That’s when I realized, Fly Tying = Man Sewing.
With that out of the way, let me show you one of my first flies. For now I am keeping it simple, a tenkara fly called an Ishigaki Sakasa Kebari. It consists of just cheap 100 Yen shop black thread, and some lower grade ginger dry fly rooster hackle. You wrap the feather and then tie the base down to push them back in this reverse cone shaped style. It’s not supposed to look like any fly in particular, but in the water the hackle spreads and contracts with the current inducing strikes.
I am in the process of tying more of these types of flies and look forward to using them on some small streams here in Hokkaido. Hopefully I can catch my first iwana (land locked white spotted char) on a fly I tied!
