Too Many...

This morning, I was paging through a book of bass and panfish fly patterns. My next outing on the water is never far from my mind and I’m thinking it’s about time to uncase the nine foot, six weight and pay a visit to one of my favorite southern Wisconsin smallmouth rivers. If I’m going to do that, I have to tie more flies. Well, “have to” is perhaps not exactly right. I want to tie more flies. That’s more accurate, more honest to the true nature of my affliction.

I have way too many flies. Trout flies, bass flies, pike flies, steelhead flies. Flies that are specific to one river on the other side of the country or meant to imitate one particular insect emergence on that same river. Places I’ve visited once and may never see again. Flies that are used or fish-chewed beyond utility and I have kept so that eventually (virtually all roads to ruin begin when we first use the word “eventually” to describe our intentions..), I may shave them with a disposable razor and reclaim the hook in order to, well, make more flies. Flies that I only need or use in August. Or April. Or only between Memorial Day and Flag Day, in the afternoon, if it’s cloudy, but not too warm.-. Too many. I have little Tupperware containers of them laying all over the house, in forgotten corners of closets and holding the cobwebs together on seldom-visited shelves in the back of the basement, somewhere past the place where the boxes of wrenches and cans of spare nuts and bolts end and no-man’s land begins.

Every once in a while, I take a notion to change my ways and get this demon under control. I go through all my flies, or at least as many as I can find at the time, and send hundreds of them to my brother in Pennsylvania. Other times, I make myself throw some of them away. That’s painful. What if I need them some day? Never mind that I’ve gotten along perfectly fine without them for nearly decade. None of it ever seems to make more than a minor dent in the overall number of flies, though. There’s always more hiding somewhere on the remote shelves and in the forgotten nooks of our home.

I know how it happens. I know how it comes to be that I have all these flies. And well I should know, because I’m the guy who makes them all. I do it with deliberate intent and in full recognition of the consequences. But here’s the thing: I don’t care. I’ve decided it’s a non-problem. I tie flies in part because it is the on-ramp to the road to being on the water. It’s the drum roll that precedes the unveiling of the Grand Prize and the fuel that stokes ever higher the fires of my anticipation of the moment when I’ll actually be fishing.

So, whether I really need them or not, I’ll keep tying lots of flies. Flies for Wisconsin Spring Creeks and flies for brook trout in the UP of Michigan and flies for smallmouth bass in sparkling, boulder-studded rivers and high clay-banked creeks. Flies I might not always need and flies that I probably don’t need, but cannot risk being without and flies I flat out do not need, but want anyway.

I have to. It’s the closest thing to fishing I know of without actually crawling into my waders.

Maybe I should put up some more shelves in the basement..