Your granddad's weird shit: Thompson Wing Former.

Not pictured: Sea King.

I don't know where I saw this thing first (actually, not true, but I'm not giving them the traffic), but I knew upon seeing it, I wanted it.

I love your old school wet flies. I bought Bergman's trout strictly to have access to plates upon plates of painted wet flies I knew I'd never actually be bothered to tie, and I enjoy trying to tie them. I also have a hard-on for stupid gadgets, so a press that would shit out perfectly formed quill slips?

Fuck yeah, Sea King.

And with that, I started on a quest for a D.H. Thompson Wing Former, so, I enlisted the help of fellow forum degenerates, and within a few weeks I had one winging its way to my door.

Flies of our Fathers

The "Hardhead." It looks "fishy." Don't you hate people who say that shit?

This is a delightful post about bullshit fly tying, an activity that should be confined to the winter when its generally too shitty to go outside, but if you want to go outside, lemme mention an "event" that a friend of mine, who does not have an ugly American flag coat, likes to have this thing he terms the "Eastern PA Flyfishing Tying [Event]." That's not actually what he calls it, but unless you're versed in idiocy, "jam" makes it sound gay.

And not the good sort of life-of-the-party, occasionally catty, usually well dressed fun to be around happy gay but the seedy van-in-a-parking-lot creepy gay that no one wants to think about.

Anyways, he's doing this for the second year and its mostly a byproduct of a "local" forum getting together and shit. Not unlike that flag jacket guy thing, there'll be lots of assholes tying shit, but its not a trade show or a sell shit event, the format is geared towards the idea that a newbie will show up and learn, even though its basically a bunch of guys from said forum sitting around in a room. Y'know, tying flies. And shit. FWIW, its nice to put a face to your Internet nemesis once in awhile.  Read more, if you want (or not, that's the same link as before), or fuck off... Y'know, whatever.

Anyways, Awhile back, I was killing time in a used bookstore when I came across  a copy of Taking Larger Trout (pub 1950) by Larry Koller for $2.

Being a fan of old shit, and books with meticulously hand drawn colour plates (can someone explain the difference between a plate and a picture, besides classiness of term?), I bought it and promptly stuck it on a shelf and forgot about it.

This weekend, I found a really striking, and forgotten, fly in the back pages of it, the Hardhead.

A fly so striking I was immediately taken by it, and promptly tied, the shimmering swords and contrast in body materials came across immediately in print, that even if I never catch anything on it, I had to at least take an interest in making it.