I can remember the very first fly I ever tied. 

Not physically tied of course.  My father had me sitting in front of a vise literally before I can remember.  When other kids were watching Big Bird with joy and love, I was pondering how best to murder him and use his feathers to hackle Seaducers.  It was a strange childhood.  Like that time in art class, I drew an Easter Basket with a bear trap hidden beneath the eggs, chocolate and plastic grass. I needed some Zonker strips.  I suppose in some ways this could have been taken as a sign of mental illness, at least the teacher thought so.  Then there was the Christmas I spent the evening in front of the TV playing with two spools of tippet material, practicing my blood knots, not sure how old I was but I know that I believed Santa brought them…and it was easy enough for my father to convince me that I’d get naught but coal if a trout managed to defeat one of my knots. 

I suppose by a certain set of standards my father could be considered the worst parent ever.  He encouraged me to play with knives; he would sift the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms then eat them citing that he was an adult and could do as he wanted, I was stuck with the oats or whatever and felt dejected and unlucky.  He taught me to never ever tell anyone the truth about a fishing spot.  If it was good say you got skunked, if it was horrible say it was great.  This was best used one evening.  After we had fished and caught a limit of trout at some lake, on the ride home my father stopped at the local park which had a small fishless pond/puddle.  There were no trees so this was one of the places where I first learned to fly cast.  My dad placed the stringer in the pond, rigged up his fiberglass rod and handed it to me.  He offered sage encouragements like “What are you retarded?” and the one I have regretted since my first report card, “A-student huh?”  Hard to feel smart with an Elk-hair Caddis in your ass…but kind of hard to feel stupid when you are fishing.

So I was there flailing away, when some kindly know-it-all stopped by to tell me there where no fish and I was wasting my time.  Now my mother had beaten traditional morals into me with a wooden spoon (in later years the wooden spoon would break and Kid liberation reigned supreme for the 2.9 seconds it took her to fetch the metal slotted spoon – that hurt.)  Respect your elders, don’t talk back, no matter what grandma says just accept it as gospel and nod politely.  So I shrugged, and tried to indicate I was practicing.

“No need to be humble, son.”

The guy looked over to my dad who was holding the stringer of rainbow trout in the classic hero stance with a douche-grin a mile wide. 

“No one catches trout here.” The man blathered.

“Ever see anyone fly fishing here?”  My father asked with a hint of shock, a teaspoon of shame, and the perfect garnish of fear that he may have just revealed his secret spot. 

The conversation ended and we left quickly.  The next night when we were down at the park to play Frisbee with my mother and siblings, there were three guys fishing the puddle.  My father was never one to talk to another guy while fishing, but that night he asked each guy if they had any luck.  Surprisingly enough, they hadn’t.

Luckily for all of us, my mother was everything my father wasn’t.  So though it is arguable he wasn’t much of a parent in his own right, I have no doubt that I had the best set of parents a kid could want.

What I didn’t have was a lot of friends, or more honestly any.  I had just started at a new school, and I was awkward, dorky, and more or less incapable of communicating due to a fairly severe speech impediment.  So naturally I got picked on a lot.  I’d be standing in the lunch line and this rotten kid Matty would punch me and cut in line.  Now it didn’t hurt, at least not nearly as badly as the 30-50 beating a day I suffered at the hands of my older sister, but it did confuse me and I never knew how to respond.

Some teacher called my mom to tell her what was happening…this was before schools adopted “No Place for Hate” policies…hate was part of the curriculum, some of the best parts really.  My father inquired if I had tried violence.  I hadn’t, in all honestly the kid’s punches were so feeble it barely registered with me that he was trying to hurt me.  Still cooler heads prevailed (for a time) and my mom though it would be better if I joined a group to make friends, and that’s how I became a Cub Scout. 

I should mention that I had no interest in the Scout Law or helping old ladies, my mother had sold me on one key point.  The Cub Scouts had a Father Son Fishing Derby.  Even as a kid I knew what that meant – Revenge!!! 

That’s right my fellow Scouts – sell your stale candy, make your pathetic arts and crafts, bow to your Den Mother…but come Columbus Day I shall destroy you all.  Akela can’t save you from my wrath.     

Though there was a prize for the biggest fish, the grand prize went to the team who caught the most fish.  At the pond we would be fishing that meant bluegill and perch.  I had learned from my older sister that the best way to catch a sunfish was to take a tiny ball of beard and place it on the very tip of the hook.  Worms worked but more often than not the fish would pick the slimy things apart and avoid the hook.  Luckily I have always been a mean little punk, and I knew that if you sat on the dock and flicked the big black ants into the water the fish would eat them.  So a small hook made to look like an ant would be best, that way I could catch more and more fish without having to re-bait the hook.

So I sat at my father’s desk and on a size-14 hook wrapped a black hackle between two over-sized balls of black dubbing.  The proportions were wrong, the fly lacked grace and balance, and I know that this pattern has been tied for eons, yet I consider this my first fly.  I knew the situation I would be fishing, I knew the behavior of the fish I would be targeting, and most importantly, I knew how I wanted to catch them.

I have come to believe that the single biggest moment in a fly fisherman’s life is when he knows that a fly is not only as effective as conventional gear, but in certain situations more effective.  In this moment the fisherman stops doing what he has heard or read or been taught – stops fishing on borrowed faith and creates a little of his own.  This is when the artist, no matter how crude, is born. 

My father was very proud.  He probably had several dozen-dozen ant patterns in his various boxes, but I wanted to make my own fly for my own needs.  I knew he was proud because he asked me what he should do to catch the biggest fish.  He trusted me and my fly to catch the most fish, and as the second part of the team he made it his task to catch the biggest.  

This was yet another huge moment.  My dad was an expert fly fisherman.  He never knew his own father and had learned everything he knew from books, trial and error, and dumb luck.  When his adult friends would fish with us, they would always be the ones asking questions, never the reverse.  Perhaps this trait developed because there simply never was anyone he could ask for advice, or maybe it was a pig-headed trait of his.  That’s one of the hardships of being a child and losing your father; you only get to know him from that perspective.  For instance, I remember my father being much taller and bigger than I, though his last fishing license clearly states the opposite; it still surprises me that his medium sized vest is too small for my extra-large frame.  The belief is ingrained, even for something so concrete and easy to understand.  I mean height is one of the only aspects of a person which comes down to mere numbers. Was he pompous or was he the opposite shy and intimidated by “experts?”  I can’t honestly say.  The memories I have are distorted, as though seeing his reflection in the ripples of a pond.  Sometimes the waters are flat and things are easy to understand, at other times it’s like I skipped a rock over my own memories.  Nothing you see is a lie, but not all of it would prove true.

Suffice to say I never saw my father ask anyone a fishing question, until the day he asked me.   

He didn’t like the answer.

The lake had bass, had pickerel, and was rumored to hold tiger muskies.  However, to win the biggest fish portion of the contest I advised my father to take some Wheaties, get them wet, mush them into a ball around the hook, put the whole mess into his mouth to suck on it so the bait would stay on the hook better, and as a final indignity cast the loathsome bait into the darkest waters of the lake and pray for carp.

“Can’t I use this frog I tied?”  He wiggled a deer-hair frog with rubber front legs and rear legs of bucktail tied to hook shanks.  Yes, I definitely remember him complaining about the Wheaties.

As for the Derby itself, the ant fly destroyed the competition…which isn’t saying much, since it was a rainy day and most of the kids and nearly all of the parents had no interest in fishing.  My father never managed to catch a crap that day, but he did hook and land a rather cranky bullhead which was slightly larger than the largest fish I caught.  There was only two other guys fishing.  The father in the duo was using a Kastmaster spoon suspended six inches under a bobber; his kid was using a night-crawler with the bobber sitting directly on the hook.  My father ended up fishing with that kid and helping him hook and land a few bluegill (at the time I was miffed but now I understand and am proud to say I’d do the same thing in his shoes – provided we had established a comfortable lead.)  As I always did, I followed my dad’s example and let the man use my fly rod and he caught a few bluegill as well (dipping the fly in the water was all the cast he needed.) 

Did the kids finally accept me at school?  Did they carry me on their shoulders like Rudy, Lucas, or some other feeb in the stereotypical “Zero to Hero” movie moment? Of course not! See turns out that Cub Scouts are dorks, who knew?  Matty the mean kid still punched me, and I still stood there like a moron. 

Eventually, word of my cafeteria ordeal reached the ear of my father, who again asked a profound question of his own.

“Why don’t you just turn that Matty into a bloody mess and then ask everyone else if they want the same?” 

My mother and the principle didn’t like the answer.  Yet, the topic never again crossed the dining room table.