Mark Bowler, the editor of Fly Fishing and Fly Tying, has published a good few articles that I penned over the years. These are located in the “Last Cast” feature at the end of the magazine and they tend to be a little quirky and whimsical in nature. (I don´t consider myself in any way enough of an expert to offer anything else!) He asks that I refrain from posting the articles he publishes here on the blog until a few months after they are printed in the magazine for copyright reasons and I am happy to comply. While rummaging on my computer, I spotted three articles that whose respective statutes of limitations have expired and so I thought I might post one of them now and the others will follow soon enough. These are the versions I sent to the magazine and they may have been subjected to further editing.

Here goes the first which was published in October 2022. I hope you enjoy it!

Tying under the influence

Little seems to have been written about the association between fly tying and inebriation and, as mature adults, maybe it is time for us to address this question now. If you take a look at the myriad flies designed over the generations and consider how outlandish they are, and how far removed they are from plausibly imitating any natural organism, it becomes clear that they were the products of brains richly infused with ethanol. In the case of a number of salmon flies, even alcohol might not have been sufficiently stimulating, and we can only imagine that their creators were under the effect of hallucinogenic drugs. Be that as it may, it is more likely to be booze for most of us. 

Does this sound familiar? Are you partial to a wee dram while whipping up a few artificials? Join the club. You are following a long-established tradition that has furnished us all with many zillions of fly patterns, many very effective, that could never have come if their creators had been remotely sober.

I am not an advocate of heavy drinking per se and readily accept that being drunk is not in the least advisable if you are undertaking a number of activities, among them skydiving and brain surgery. Respected members of the legal and medical professions are quite right to remind us of the perils of imbibing too much. Apart from mad and dangerous things, drunk people embarrass themselves in smaller ways that are too numerous to mention in full but that include starting quarrels, talking gibberish and, in our case, lying shamelessly about the size and number of fish we catch.

So is alcohol a bad thing? Of course not! Given the negative consequences of hitting the sauce outlined above, it might seem sensible to steer well clear of it but there is not a single fisherman of my acquaintance who has successfully managed to do so. This may be no bad thing. After all, a night in the pub is the only decent way a day of fishing should end. It offers solace to those whose hearts have been broken by vanished monsters or by fish that, in one way or another, have let us down. This happens more frequently than most of us are prepared to admit. And of course it enhances and enlivens the shared ruminations of fishermen at the end of a long day and it allows us to think that we may not be crazy after all, or at least no crazier than those around us. It recharges our batteries and rekindles hope. The pub, we begin to realise, is the natural home of bullshit and bonhomie and, in no small way, it is alcohol that helps weave together the strands of our collective narrative and creates the very fabric of our sport. 

Well, maybe. But what about alcohol and fly tying? How commonly are fly tying and drinking undertaken simultaneously? Fly tying gurus are pretty quiet about this but my suspicion is that they are reluctant to admit that their sessions usually end with their wives throwing a glass of cold water in their face and marching them off upstairs to sleep it off.

As far as I can see there seems to be no valid argument for fly tying while sober. The best attempt to make that case is to argue that the drink will interfere with your fine motor skills, if you happen to have any, or that it will compromise hand-eye coordination. The flies you tie will look, frankly, crap. Either that or they will simply fall apart. The enthusiastic drinker may well find, when looking at his creations in the stark new light of day, that there are unusual and innovative design features in the previous night´s patterns: nymphs tied back to front or even inside out, dry flies tied out of lead wire, midge patterns tied on pike hooks, and so on. 

Should any of these disasters allow us to abandon the creative buzz experienced during their creation? Probably not. Look on the bright side, the booze might have made you a little giddy but at least has not made you ridiculous in public. You have not sworn at anyone, gotten all steamed up in some petty argument. You haven´t keeled over on the way to the loo or fallen down the stairs. You have not gotten into a fight or, even worse, become docile and emotional or told to a woman you have just met, in your wife’s presence, that she is the only true love of your life. 

No. In the fresh light of the following morning you can be reassured that you have not disgraced yourself in the eyes of anybody else. The only witnesses to the previous night´s tomfoolery will be an empty glass and a bunch of ridiculous-looking flies that will never catch anything. You can wash up the glass and throw the flies away.

Relax. Nobody need ever know.