The fly tyer in winter, vol. 1

A few days ago the morning sky was shrouded in dark gray.

The traffic on the East Side Highway, usually clear and visible from my perch above it, moved slowly, like wraiths passing slowly through the barely-visible edge of the mist.

You wouldn't even know the mountains were there if you hadn't seen them beforehand. The valley could be a mostly flat plain in eastern Montana or Nebraska for all that we could see.

By mid-afternoon the day heated up just enough to evaporate some of that dense moist air. When it did, I could look to the west and barely make out the silhouettes of the mountains. Traffic along the East Side Highway had resumed a cautious normal speed, and in a field just beyond the road, the first seasonal flights of geese had come in for a landing under the covering gray.

There were only a few; two flocks of about forty birds each; we'll see more in that field where they'll stay for a few weeks, pushed south out of Canada by cold air that tells them winter – real winter – has arrived. This year these first batches of geese signal that real winter has arrived early.

On stormy days we'll see and hear them come in. There will usually be around two hundred, at times five hundred or more geese landing in that field. Over their generations they've learned the route. They come in, feed on the stubble and fallout from the third cutting of hay, and stay until the weather warms in the spring.

Our house in early winter

Our house sits on a gravelly ridge on the east side of the valley, a tough place, in its former state, to graze cattle or grow hay. 

The gravel was deposited here when Lake Missoula suddenly drained and the gravel was washed across the lake bottom  and deposited on the other side by the sheer force and energy of all that moving water. 

Today we look out over the back deck at the remains of it, where each winter I can watch the geese from the comfort of my chair through the windows that separate our warm living space from the biting cold.

I'll sit and watch the geese, and sometimes I'll slide the glass door open just enough to hear them. I'll stand there and listen, coffee cup in hand, while their wild cries, tens and hundreds deep, stir something deep, something primitive within me. 

After a few minutes a chill penetrates the comfort of my shirt or sweater and I'll retreat to the room I call my hovel and tie flies.

Waterfowl, winter, and flies

 For years I lived in an area where waterfowl hunting was easy. You might say I was spoiled. At one point had enough teal flank to stuff a small pillow, certainly a lifetime supply, and a full pillow's worth of mallard and pintail flank. Over the course of many moves since, those feathers were distributed to the friends I left behind. I'd keep a few, knowing that I could always go out and get more.

That was then, this is now. I haven't shot a teal in years, and have to purchase just a single pinch of the flank feathers at prices I didn't foresee then.

If you hunt ducks, please pick the flank and breast feathers into separate baggies, and if you don't tie flies, give them to somebody who does. Those feathers will be appreciated. They'll go to good use this winter.

During the long months of short days that are coming there will be plenty of time when an afternoon behind the vise in my hovel will turn unannounced into evening.  It can happen without my noticing as I enjoy that pleasant and almost effortless rhythm that a fly tyer gets into when the materials seem to flow between your fingers and the flies accumulate at a comfortable pace in a little pile beside the materials on your bench  that go into them. 

When it's going right you'll tie more flies than you'll ever use, and the overflow lands in the hand of your fishing friends, who in turn might keep you supplied with duck feathers, deer hair, or maybe a sought-after section of elk mane.

When fishing season comes, the gift comes full circle when you reward them with winter-tied flies – long after the wild cries of the geese have faded into the sunlight of spring.