Re: Why?
Fly Tying
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Re: Why?
From: Ken
Date: 16 Jul 2001
Time: 13:48:17
Remote Name: 207.180.0.8
Comments
This is a question that I tried to address in my book A Perfect Fish. It is what the book is about and I tried to come at it from many different angles and sensitivities. Because we create flys from our own storehouse of experience they tend to reflect our particular ways of seeing nature. This is a good and natural expression of our fishermans spirit. When we do not nurture our own ideas we become dependent on what others have explored and developed which is a good way to learn but at some point it becomes a limiting energy to growth. We must set out on our own and try to see nature in the way that feels right to us as individuals. If we never do this in our fly tying then we will always have to use ideas (flys) that are not exactly what we can imagine or want. The flies that have already been created are not all the flies that will be created and to limit yourself to that which is fixed (the known) is to handicap yourself to possibility, (the unknown). There are many ways to see nature and many of them have not been expressed or discovered as yet. Anyone can discover new insights and express their fishing awareness discoveries as flys unless they believe that all the possibilities are already fully known. The market would have you believe this and yet when a good new fly is created it will be promoted as the answer to the problems that the older flys did not answer. It is your relationship with nature that will fulfill your desires to have a fly that reflects your insights - if you experiment with the insights you gain on your own and tie those flys that you think will work because of those insights. Some will work and some won't. This process is never a mistake, it is growth through learning through personal action. This is a quote from my fly tying book and although it does not completly answer your question it can lead to your answering it for yourself which is what you have to do for your own satisfaction anyway.
"Flies are illusions, they may be inanimate objects when in a fly book but once they are in the water they have to be perceived by fish as living beings for them to be fooled. Spirit is what you are trying to imitate in a fly. If you sit long enough with the desire to understand this, it will come to you. You will understand something - intangible - on a wordless, bone-deep level and that understanding can not be expressed through photographic realism. It can be approached, even touched but never quite captured because something essential is missing. It is the fisherman tyer, who sees and knows with more than just his eyes who can appreciate this felt connection to the living being he is touching somehow along with his seeing. A fisherman who feels the spirit within the creature he is trying to imitate will tie flies that capture the essence of that creature and the fish he is trying to catch will see it too, because mysteriously it will be there.
Tyers who know this, know it in a way that is very often impossible for them to communicate in words, yet they can articulate it through their flies in a way that catches and holds the attention of fish. And this, of course, is the only true measure of their ability to perceive and act on the intangible as real and absolutly operational in fly fishing and fly design. This capacity is not as fully developed for some as for others but it exists in all fishermen and it is always possible for any fisherman to engage it at any time. It is a feeling that leads to a state of awareness called savvy". Break all the rules and add to the lore of salt water fly fishing. Salt Water fly fishing and fly tying needs to break from the tying and fishing trances it has ben subject to for too long. Here's to the future without those spells and bindings.
Last changed: July 16, 2001
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