Day 87 - Realistic Flies

I subscribe to a handful of blogs. The other day I ran across a blog that talked about how to make realistic ant flies. I perused through the blog and was intrigued by how they made the fly out of monofilament and markers. (If you'd like, here is the link to that blog.)

As I was reading the blog I remembered that Fly Tyer magazine had an article a few years ago about tying realistic flies. In fact, I think the author was from England and was coming to the United States for a competition. As he was coming through customs his flies were confiscated as the officer didn't believe that they were fake. They looked too much like the real deal.

Now I've had friends tell me that these flies don't fish very well. They don't provide the right movement or float the right way. So it seems to me that the only reason you'd tie a fly like this would be to mimic the actual species. At this point it stops being a fly pattern, and becomes mini art. At least I think it does.

It stands to reason that people take the different aspects of fly fishing and hyper focus on one aspect or another. There are anglers who love to cast and practice daily to master the control of line, rod, and reel. Yet, those same people sometimes never actually fish. And then there are those people who are so absorbed at looking/identifying the micro organisms of a stream that they don't know how to effectively present a fly. Then there are others, who can tie wonderful patterns, but can't fish a streamer. Yet in spite of this hyper focusing, we all count ourselves as anglers.

As for me, I like to dabble in just about everything. I like to tie my own flies. I love to stand in a stream and read the currents and figure out how the water will move the fly. I even love the feel of casting and how it "centers" my soul. So maybe this dabbling in everything prevents me from truly mastering one skill. However, I feel that if I can focus a little bit on everything somehow that will elevate my skills as an angler overall. At least, that's what I hope.