The Art of Tying Flies

My great grandfather Chisholm was a very special man. His nicknames were Chizzy and the Old Timer, and he gave up professional baseball and professional hockey to pursue a career in the less-high-impact sport of fishing.

Known around his small community, he was a guide, taking his clients to one or two of his alleged favourite spots, and faking a bad fishing day whenever anyone got too close to his real favourite spots.

He was cheeky, sly, and fun.

I never got to know him, but my father did. They spent countless hours together playing sports, smoking cigars, and going fishing. At 94 years old, he passed, confident in his legacy.

My father learned to tie flies from the Old Timer when he was just a small child. He got his first real job as a park ranger in his teens, then apprenticed for his father as an electrician, and did odd jobs around town so that he could afford the equipment to tie his own flies - and a Corvette to drive to his favourite fishing holes. He eventually left town to go to university, then college, then university again, then finally moved to the city to teach at the local college and marry a wonderful city-slicker.

At 40, he and my mom were finally ready to settle down and start a family. First, my sister arrived, then 14 months later, I made my debut. We were not boys but my mom was a feminist. Unbiased, my dad happily shared his knowledge of hiking, fishing, canoeing, sports, cars, electronics, robotics, and woodworking with us. Unaware that these were “boy” activities, my sister and I took it all in and learned. Not only that, we are both extremely competitive, so we learned hungrily, attempting to be the best.

Our little fingers were the perfect size for tying knots, and trimming hairs and feathers, but they were not so good for applying glue. We made mistakes, got messy, and took action, as Miss Frizzle counselled us from the Magic School Bus.

I will never forget my first fly. I added way too much deer hair, so the little guy was so fat and fluffy. I pretended to be a hairdresser to tidy it up: chop, chop, chop, chop. Like a bad mullet from a cop movie, my fly’s hair was wild, uneven, and yellow. It did catch fish, though. One of which landed on my mom’s glasses one fishing trip when I accidentally smacked her in the face because I was so excited about catching a fish on my fly.

As we got older, we got involved in other things, but we were always enthusiastic about taking some time for fishing. Since COVID, we have been able to get back to the art of tying flies: cutting feathers, tinsel and hairs; tying knots and cutting lines, and painting little eyeballs onto tiny little hooks.

It has become a bit of an addiction: we sneak into the workshop to create flies for each other’s birthdays and Christmas; we search up YouTube channels to see the best types for the area we plan to fish next. Although our glue skills have improved, our little fingers are not so little anymore, so it takes us a little longer to get things precise. Our fingers are bigger but our scissors are smaller. Hours of tying still feels like hours of tying, passing the time sharing stories and reminiscing.

For those of us with busy minds, tying flies really is the best form of productive meditation. Well, aside from fishing itself.