WINTER 2021 | VOLUME 19, ISSUE 1 by flyfusionmag

FOCUS “They both fully connected to the moment, possibly heightened by the knowledge that this time in their lives was fleeting.” -From Last Summer on the Sage by Derek Bird

The Soul of Fly Fishing

CONTENTS 12

BIRTH OF AN OBSESSION Jim McLennan If I follow the string all the way back, it takes me to the Rockies of Alberta. I grew up in a decidedly un-trouty city but was fortunate that my parents had a love of Jasper National Park. Memories and thoughts from those days have anchored my fly-fishing dreams and aspirations for a half century since.

SPEY IT FORWARD Amber Toner Alberta’s famous Bow River is moderately wide, with deep runs and plenty of trout eager to take a swung fly. Theoretically, this should make it a great place to learn trout spey. Of course it’s never that simple.

STEPPING OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE Kayla Smith The mountains are my place of respite, but as a kid, fishing didn’t appeal to me. To better connect with my partner and to try something new, I agreed to try fly fishing. Spoiler alert: I had no idea how much goes into landing that first fish.

EMBRACING THE FUNK Jeremy Davies Lately, I’ve been tying bright, otherworldly flies that, five years ago, I might have laughed off the river. But if mature browns aren’t too wary to be fooled by such an abomination, who am I to turn my nose up? With limited time to tie, I want to cover my bases while remaining open-minded to experimentation.

Also in this issue 10 30 50 52

Stream Lines Time-Tested Gear Long Lines Wandering Currents

56 Stillwater Secrets 60 On the Vise 66 Water Marks

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STREAM LINES

Derek Bird I’m always willing to share a few fly-fishing secrets. My favorite fly, for example, is the one the trout are taking. My favorite season is the one when trout are biting. My favorite stream is the one where the trout are plentiful and the anglers are few. © Illustrator Paul Puckett @paulpuckettart

The Soul of Fly Fishing

An Irish Mob Boss and a Presbyterian Minister Walk Into a…River

ear individual at Netflix whose job it is to acquire content, Please buy the movie rights to A River Runs Through It. It’s my favorite movie and I can’t seem to find it anywhere on your platform. Though I enjoy some of the other content, my favorite movie is nowhere to be found. When I search for the movie, you make other recommendations, some of which have nothing to do with my initial search. You’ll need to remedy this flaw if you want to keep me as a subscriber. I’ve tried my best to think about this from your perspective, but I can’t seem to understand why a movie so important to me is not available on a streaming platform which I continue to financially support. As a side note, if you’re the person who also decides what to do with my money each month, I’d like you direct part of it to buying the rights to my favorite movie and then spend the rest of it on content creation (if there’s anything left over get yourself something nice). In case you’re questioning whether or not A River Runs Through It is well-known enough to stream, let me construct a fool-proof argument. Robert Redford. And if that’s not enough of an argument to convince you, I’m not sure any amount of reasoning will suffice. But just in case you’re someone who struggles to absorb sound logic, I’ll add one more irrefutable layer. Brad Pitt. If that’s not enough to convince you, I withdraw my offer to buy something nice

for yourself with my leftover subscription money. While I have your attention with the money I’m waving around, I have a few other suggestions to help grow your platform. First, please acquire the movie A River Runs Through It. Second, you’ll notice when I search for the movie A River Runs Through It (directed by Robert Redford and starring Brad Pitt) that you have a number of suggestions for me. The first suggestion you offer is Brad Pitt’s secondbest movie Legends of the Fall which is filmed in Alberta and British Columbia just north of Montana, the shooting location of his best movie A River Runs Through It. When you suggested this movie, I initially thought aha Netflix does know about my favorite movie. A difficult reality hit me when I started viewing the second recommendation: a series called Squid Game. The two are nothing alike, which led me to question my assumption that you’re aware A River Runs Through It is narrated by Robert Redford. I know it’s your platform and you can do what you want, but I’d like to make another observation. A River Runs Through It is about trout and people who fish for trout. Squid Game is not about people who fish for squid, so I’m not sure what prompted you to make this suggestion. Just in case you’re unaware, because it must be difficult to keep track of all your content, Squid Game is a series, has gratuitous amounts of violence and death, is dystopian, and does not feature Brad Pitt or Craig Sheffer. In my favorite movie there’s one death that’s integral to the plot. In Squid

Game there’s 255 in one episode. That seems like a pretty thin thread to base a recommendation on. Thank you by the way. There are scenes I can’t unsee, and you kind of ruined my fond childhood memories of Red Light Green Light. Not to get too bogged down in numbers and details, but I did notice that your platform has an awareness of fly fishing because of a particular series you feature. After Legends of the Fall you likely should have recommended the series Longmire. Though it has very few similarities to my favorite movie, it’s far more comparable than Squid Games. Longmire features vast landscapes and a number of fly-fishing scenes. Though…and not to sound like I’m constantly complaining…I’m concerned about the confusion it might create for anyone who watches the series who doesn’t know a lot about fly fishing. The characters who fly fish the most seem to be Irish mob bosses. I’m not saying that Irish mobsters can’t fly fish, but I’m guessing they just don’t make up the majority of fly anglers. Just a couple other suggestions regarding fly-fishing scenes in Longmire. In one scene a fly angler discovers two dead bodies in the river. For future content creation, can you hold off on this? I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s not something fly anglers necessarily like to focus on. You might say it’s an unspoken worst fear amongst the fly-fishing community. Don’t get me wrong. Not all fly anglers have to be Presbyterian Ministers like Reverend John McLean (played by Tom Skerritt) in my favorite movie which I can’t watch on your platform, but maybe feature a little more diversity in your fly anglers than Irish mobsters. It’s a niche pastime, and the Irish mobster might be a niche within a niche. I noticed in Longmire you didn’t appear to use casting doubles. For future reference, I assume it’s quite difficult for an actor to act like they can cast a fly rod. It’s likely far easier for them to act like they’re angry, sad, or happy. Consider using casting doubles like they did in A River Runs Through It. Please disregard my previous suggestion if you were trying to create the illusion that the Irish mobsters were using fly fishing as a front and that they weren’t actually trying to catch fish. If this was the case, you fully accomplished that. Not only were they sub-par casters, they were also fishing in river sections where they were highly unlikely to catch a trout.

If you want to see examples of stream sections where trout are likely to reside, watch A River Runs Through It. Some of the runs Brad’s casting double fishes will give you a good idea about portions of a river to feature when creating fly-fishing scenes. A heads-up though. You won’t be able to watch the movie on Netflix. I’ve already tried that. Please don’t pirate it online. That would be illegal and unfair to the artists. If you’ve run out of options (because I assume as an employee of Netflix you can’t subscribe to other streaming services), you can come over to my house to watch it. I’ve got the movie on DVD and on VHS (but that copy is in the crawl space so it will take some digging to find it). I own the novel too. Some people might tell you to read the novel first and will spout the old cliché the novel is always way better than the movie. But I’d have to say they’re both better than anything else you provide on Netflix. Since you’re planning to come over to my house for a movie night, you probably shouldn’t spend any of my leftover subscription money yourself because I’ll likely pitch you on a movie deal for a novel I wrote called Last Summer on the Sage. It doesn’t have 255 deaths in one episode like Squid Game. And it doesn’t feature Irish mob bosses who use fly fishing as a front for their nefarious business transactions. It doesn’t have a Presbyterian minister who’s got two sons who fly fish, but it does have a Catholic Priest who’s excommunicated himself from society and lives in a small cabin by a river. He fly fishes just like the Reverend John McLean in my favorite movie A River Runs Through It which is presently not offered on your platform.

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