The western Montana hot stove fly tying league

The meetings are probably coming to order – in some sort or another, all over western Montana.

For about 16 years on Tuesday afternoons we held a meeting that would qualify for the hot stove fly tying league in my shop. A typical session might go like this:

The guys would start rolling in about two in the afternoon and we'd exchanged greetings. They'd get settled into their customary places around the fly tying table, plug in their lamps, set up their vises and fuss with their other tools.

"What are we tying today, Chuck?" one of them would ask.

"Let's tie some Caddis Variants," I might say –...