Written by David N. McIlvaney-Tuesday, December 7, 2021

I have about 450 flies distributed in about a dozen boxes. Dryness, nymphs, streamers; crazy things I bought internationally — I might not use Argentine 4-inch dragonflies on the Catskills — but they all have a reason and purpose.

This is about my flies...I didn't tie one.

"My hobbies don't need hobbies," I will reply softly whenever someone asks me if I wear a tie. I usually laugh out loud quickly, but there is a deeper reason. I like flying shops. Especially the old ones, and the accompanying nonsense friendships and hard-to-find discontinued equipment. If I didn't stop to pick up some emergencies, I would never find my preferred wading boot, the Umbrenner Ultimate Wading Boot, behind a store in Roscoe, New York, covered in dust.

More importantly, when I go fishing, I tend to do it myself, so I throw myself into the hands of (or at the mercy of) the local fly shop to find internal weight loss on the nearby water. Buying a dozen flies tied up by people who fish in the river every day seems to be a fairly fair deal.

But occasionally there are flies that do not come from the store but appear magically.

When I walked into the Ted Faye Fly Shop and met its owner Bob Grace, I was fishing for the first time in Dunsmuir, California. When I went to check the fly box, he nodded to me. I must seem to have no idea what I am doing, so he shouted, "Try some'little black shit'. Or,'Little Brown Shit' is fine."

We started discussing the relative advantages of black and brown, and I left with a box of flies, a pair of cool sunglasses, and a decent map of the river. The fly worked, I caught a few fish, but most of them were accidents, and I felt that I was not doing well enough. That was the day when I cared more about that kind of thing.

Upper Sac is a high sticky river of nymphs, and none of this is my strong point, so I went to a cafe in town that night and tasted an authentic burger and beer. When I noticed that the guy at the table next door was eating dessert with his wife, there was a fly in his hat. I waited for a suitable time and asked him if he was fishing. His wife gave me a painful smile, and then sat down to know that she had just lost her man for 20 minutes. Sorry, sister, but we all have our own burdens.

I took out my river map, and he ran across each named pond, pointing out his favorites and how to fish. We talked about the topic of flies, he agreed with Bob, and then added, "But you need the right Little Black Shit."

My food arrived, so I thanked them, and then turned to dinner. Long after they left, the waitress gave my bill with a small cup of about 20 flies. The guy has gone to his car and kindly sorted out a choice for me. He wrote "LBS" on the lid.

In my tent that night, I compared his flies with store flies. Because I really can't see any obvious difference, and if I want to dredge the river bottom, I may need all my flies, so I mixed them together, hoping that the correct and the correct combination of different types form a super correct.

In the morning, I was fishing along the trail to Mossbrae Falls, and the river exploded for me. I held up my pockets, dripped water, and even floated up and down in the deeper pools, pulling fish from every place where there seemed to be hope and some places where there was no hope. The right day? certainly. The right flies? you bet.

There are too many factors to catch trout, and sometimes you can’t analyze them. It’s best to have confidence. I believe in flies, they deliver.

A box of flies labeled "LBS" is now on my shelf. When Brook Trout did not hit the dragonfly, they even worked on the Catskill River.

David N McIlvaney had a terrible tailing loop, but managed to fish all over the world. He didn't know what to do. @the_real_dnm

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