Today's quote is provided by list member Alan Di Soma.
Traveling Companion
>
> "G.E.M. Skues had very little sight in one of his eyes and used a "jeweller's
> eye glass" when he "dressed" flies. I wish I had been his travelling
> companion.
>
> "I had secured a window seat, back to engine, on the sunny side of the two
> o'clock train for Winchester, had extracted from my kit bag my little
> travelling wallet of fly-dressing materials, and had settled into my corner, when I
> became aware that I was not to travel alone. A passenger who had already come
> up from somewhere down the line - Winchfield or Old Bassing, or further south -
> was to go down with me. It was a mid-July day, and my companion was no less a
> personage than a dark sherry spinner. (See Sherry Spinner "link" below)
He had placed himself obligingly on the
> lower ledge of my window pane, and had disabled himself from flight by the
> loss of his setae. He therefore offered himself most conveniently as a model
> for imitation, and as soon as the other companions of my journey were seated,
> and the train moving out of the station, I fixed a Limerick hook of the
> correct length in my little hand held vice, selected a little batch of ruddy-brown
> seal's fur dubbing, matched it against the model in the sunlight, waxed a
> length of hot orange tying silk, selected a rusty blue-dun cock's hackle of
> appropriate size, and whipped it on the hook, broke off the waste end, whipped
> to the tail, tied in three bright honey-dun whisks and a length of gold wire, spun on
> a tapered length of the dubbing, wound it to the shoulder, wound on the wire
> at nice intervals, secured it at the shoulder, broke off the waste end, nipped
> hackle-point in the pliers, wound the hackle some six turns, wound the tying
> silk through it, pushed back the hackle fibres, and finished with a whip
> finish on the neck of the hook. Twice the process was repeated before the train ran
> through Farnborough, when the wallet was tucked away."
(The Way of a Trout with a Fly ~ 1921)
