Rambling Along the Silk Road

by Andrew Laird Turner

The fly on which I caught my first trout was surely a simple, wingless wet fly – a gray hackle peacock perhaps.  My father often chose simple wet flies for our early outings. They’re the perfect choice for beginners.  Fish will take them dead drifted, swung and stripped.

As a kid, I never thought about how flies were tied even though fly tying material was always strewn about my father’s fly tying room.  He tied coho and trout flies for local sporting goods shops. But his desk, with the wooden spools of thread and floss amidst the feathers and hair, was off limits.  Much later, I came to understand his tying reflected the post-WWII consensus that modern materials were better.  So the threads and flosses I had seen were nylon and rayon….

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