Buggs: This is what I love about us fly tiers/fishers. CREATIVITY !! Well done, lad. well, done !!
Larry J >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/17/2005 6:24 PM >>> Since the list is so slow, I thought I'd post a little 'story' that I perpetrated on a restaurant owner near Green River Wyoming. I may have posted this in the past, but there are a lot of new listers who might benefit from such well-told lies, as that is part of the art of flyfishing. (See JimmyD's, Jester's, and Jimi's last stories) I was traveling home from a seminar in Green River, and stopped in at this restaurant on the way home, one I'd been to many times. It's an upscale steak-place with a bar up front. The restaurant was full, so I waited at the bar for a table. After a little while the owner came in (I recognized him from other visits) and he commented loudly about this absolutely huge Royal Wulff hanging from someone's rear-view mirror out in the parking lot. I fessed up and claimed it (one of my 14/0 RW's). He asked "What in heaven's name would you use a giant fly like that for?" Well, I had some time to kill, so I spun up a little yarn for him. I had noticed a couple of halibut tails mounted behind the drink bottles behind the bar, so I figured he'd been halibut fishing in Alaska. So I non-chalantly answered him "That's for halibut dry-fly fishing in Alaska." He stopped in his tracks. "For what?" he asked. I repeated. He said "No way! I never heard of anything like that, and I've been to Alaska many times." I said "You just don't have the right guide- or else you're not with the 'in-crowd' up there in Alaska." He said "What am I missing here?" So I told him if he got the right guide who would take him out on the darkest moonless night of the shortest day of the year, there is a special species of aquatic stone-fly that is 10" long which surfaces to hatch into these giant winged adults, to breed, and to fall back into the water. When the halibut sense this, they rise to the surface and start feeding on these giant dry flies, even the 'barn-door' size halibut. That is what that fly is for- this special 'halibut-hatch'." Well, his jaw dropped to his chest as he vapor-locked like a '58 Rambler. His first words were "No freakin' way, man!" So I got up and went out to get the fly for his inspection. It even had a short piece of 200# test mono leader attached for hanging it. He said it looked real, as he was a flyfisher, but he wanted to make sure. So he brought it back into the kitchen for one of his chef's (a flytier) to inspect, and lo and behold, he told him that it was a real fly. Fancy that. So he returned with this puzzled look on his face, saying " Well, the cook says it's real. So you really dry-fly fish for halibut with this?" The hook had been set, and it wasn't barbless. Let's see how much backing he can take out, now. Well, by then he had drawn a little crowd of his cronies, two of whom, I learned later, were his fishing buddies. So now he needed to know how to fish this fly. So of course I made up a casting technique, which I dubbed the 'heave and pitch' method, on a 14wt rod. Sounded good at the time. I was making all this up on the spot. He said "I'm gonna call Henry, my guide up there! What time is it? Why didn't he tell me about this? I tip him real good! This isn't fair!" I had all I could do to keep from busting out laughing. So I tightened the drag some and told him my record dry-fly halibut to date was 276.5 pounds, but it wasn't in the G&F records because it was caught after dark and after hours. Now he was grayhounding across the surface, running all over the restaurant, showing it to all of the customers he knew, telling them what his next fishing trip was going to be. I almost couldn't take it any longer, but I did. I let him play out for about a half hour, and then told him that I practiced Catch and Release fishing, and it was time to let him go. You should have seen the look on his face. "I been had- haven't I." He dryly said. One waitress who witnessed the whole charade cracked up and exclaimed "At last! At last! Someone has caught the jokester!" The owner slumped into a barstool and just silently stared at the fly. He finally said "You got me. You really got me. I was believing every word of it." So I showed him a big box full of the giant flies I was going to put in the Green River Fly Shop, and he bought 7 of the 9 that I had (various ties), saying he was going to give them away as gifts. I found out next trip that he had kept them all and decorated his den and office with them. They also got a showing of the residents of the "Baits Hotel", which they loved. The account you have just read is true, although the story is pack of lies. That's why it's called "Fantasy Fly Co." Buggs McAuthor
