Things I Don't Understand

Don't know if I'll ever see this light, no matter how or where I look at it

A mother swan and her cygnets came cruising by and it brought to mind this craze about tin shot. The swan is a royal bird in England. And they feed on aquatic snails, either stuck to the weeds or picked off the bottom of clear streams. Lead shot left on the bottom of streams looked like those aquatic snails. But only in certain sizes. So the Brits banned the use of lead shot in certain sizes (they still allow it in smaller and larger size, so this isn’t a general environmental control thing). I can understand that. But then sometime in the 1980s the good folk at Orvis got to hear about this. You have to realize something about them, at least back then. Orvis, as a culture can’t help but adopt something if it seems to be snooty. If the Brits did it, by their reckoning, it had to be classy. I mean these guys were trying to sell tweed breeks to American hunters and fishermen in the 80s and 90s (that’s in the 1980s!!!). In America only golfers have the gall to dress like this:

But there you have it. And that began the craze of non-toxic split shot in the US. Even though most of the lead split shot used by fly fishermen actually comes from the UK.

Lead is toxic. There’s no argument there. Any amount of lead added to the environment is more lead in the environment. But the amount of lead added by fly fisherman is negligible, compared to all the other sources of lead. But okay, on an absolute level you can argue against it - but I’m not sure you should do so if you drove to the stream you’re fishing. I don’t care what kind of vehicle you got there in, unless you rode a bicycle you added something detrimental to the environment. Which of course was also done in the manufacture and shipping of your bicycle.

Next I don’t understand these flyboxes that weigh about 23 pound each.

You’re meant to be carrying flies, not the boxes. These things weigh so much the weight of the flies is inconsequential, but more importantly they limit how many flies you can carry by loading you down with the weight of the plastic. The old DeWitt boxes were the opposite. They weight about 12 gms each and can carry about 9 gazzillion flies each.

I’m not sure what these guys are building these fly boxes for. I know we have an ongoing weight problem in this country, but you could have a hippopotamus sit on one of those things and not hurt it. On the other hand don’t drop one on your foot. Wading boot or not, you’re likely to suffer severe blunt force trauma. And the cost, Holy Mother of Christ! $65 for a fly box! I’d pay it if I thought it would catch me more fish. I suppose you could throw the box into the river and cause shock waves to bring the fish to the surface, but I’m not sure that works for me.

Then there’s the Einstein who came up with these slotted nymph boxes. I think they were on the right track with the slim foam lined box.

Here’s a severely depleted box of Purple and Blue Jerries (My fly names tend to a Grateful Dead bias, but that’s my weirdness) in its usual disarray. But I can pack about 350-400 flies into it (There are 40 in the first two rows). But then they decided that’s too many flies in one box, so they deiced to take some space away from us by cutting little triangles into the foam, and little slots to go with them. Now you can only use half the space. I guess there’s an argument to made saying you only lose half the flies when you lose a box. I’m sure you’re wondering about the mental acuity of this CosmicJohn dude. Doesn’t he know those slots are for holding flies. Like this:

Right. And after about an hour down the trail all the flies are sitting loose in the box to come spewing out onto the stream side maze as soon as you pop open the box. And of course there are the nimrods who combine the slotted foam boxes with the multilayer armor and super dense silicone foam to give you a box that holds about 13 flies, weighs in at a good 15 ounces and costs about $80. This weighs and costs about as much, is as good at holding flies but is a whole lot better tasting.

My buddy Frank goes on a pilgrimage to Montana every year. He always comes back with something a little whackier the year before. A couple of years ago I’m standing by him and he opens a bottle of something and clouds of gasoline waft out. “What’s that?” I said.

I though he said, “Viagra.”

“Frank,” I said, “I think you have this whole leaded/unleaded thing figured out wrong old buddy, what you’re looking for comes in a little blue pill.”

“No man,” he says, “This is the best fly floatant there ever was.”

“Jeez Frank, they gave up mixing paraffin wax in gasoline around my Grandfather’s time, somewhere around the time Dame Juliana was writing her stuff.”

So let me get this straight - the same jamokes who won’t throw a lead split shot into a stream have no issues dowsing their flies in gasoline before casting them onto the water? Okay then, just though I’d ask.

How about a nice disc drive reel for your new 2 wt rod? Whiskey, Tango Foxtrot? There really are folks out there peddling that stuff.

I’m not even going to ask anyone to make this make sense.

In all their history, I’ve found about 3 things Orvis got right. The first was the CFO fly reel. I have a thing about CFOs. The second was the Super Tac L Pak vest, something they had in their line, and sold for way over 30 years. Some guy there needed to ask why they managed to keep selling them for 30 years. Unless it was a bunch of folks buying them to give as gifts to folks they didn’t like, there had to be a reason.

The thing was perfectly size to carry 4 to sex big Dewitt fly boxes in the big fron t pockets, a bunch of slim nymph boxes in the breast pocket, and a whole fly shops worth of other crap. It had big pouches in the back and could do everything but stand on its head and whistle Dixie out its butt. Fortunately mine’s still going strong, though I think after this year I’m going to have to find someone to copy one for me. A tailor in India or some such place would be able to do it. Because the geniuses around here have moved on to assorted contraptions such as this misbegotten son of a drunken night between a backpack and a fishing vest.

Or maybe it’s needed to carry the 3 lb fly boxes!

There’s a lot of this sort of stuff, but that was just my rant for the day.

In the meantime here’s a pretty fish. I took it on a 13’16” 8 wt Sage Sonic Spey rod, a click pawl Hardy Bougle reel and a 31/2” orange and black tube fly. The jumps alone were worth the price of admission.