The Fly Shop

Last year about this time I decided that I--Kris--needed to spend more time outdoors. Since the weather and the geography weren't doing much for my cycling, I decided to get my fishing license and try to do some more fly fishing.
For starters, I basically stink at fishing. And to make things more difficult, Rhode Island isn't exactly well known for it's fresh water fishing. The end result was that while I caught some fish, I didn't do that well and ended up frustrating myself more often than not.
Finally, this fall I decided that I if I was going to fish in Rhode Island, I needed to do it the way locals did it. I looked up a fly shop and drove down to ask them what I was missing. There were about 3 people in the shop. One was the owner and the other two weren't exactly shopping, but they also weren't working. What were they doing? Regardless of what these guys were doing, they had a lot to say about how to have fun fishing in Rhode Island. Turns out that while I was spending my time in the stinky rivers fishing for fish like this:


They were out fly fishing for fish like this:

Obviously I need to start doing as the romans while in rome.
My parents got me a heavy weight rod for Christmas and I took up an invitation by the owner of the shop to start coming down to the shop to tie flies with the crew. I've started going down to the shop about once a week and I've been learning how to tie patterns for the salt water.
It's been crazy spending time at this shop. Every time I go by I see between 2 and 5 guys hanging out in the shop, doing nothing. Never fails. This same group of guys love Rhode Island. In fact, last time I was there the discussion was about how blessed they were to live in Rhode Island! It's like bizaro world Rhode Island: a place where the people love this state and they're also super nice (we generally have not found the east coast to be as friendly as the midwest or west).

On Saturday, I went to a fly tying seminar hosted by the shop. A (supposedly) famous salt water fly fishing captain gave the course on patterns for sand worms. When I walked in, the owner, Dave, grabbed me right away and said he had something for me. Two of the usuals--brothers actually--had machined me a custom base for my tying vise. (Since I only have an inexpensive vise, it can only clamp to tables. The shop's table is too thick and I always have to bring a board to clamp onto, which ends up being ghetto and unstable.)

Here's my new base. It's made of steel with a padded base that won't scratch tables. The Brothers told me that they noticed I travelled with my vise a lot, so they made it so I can totally disassemble it. It's really an awesome upgrade for me. The guys refused payment too. I couldn't believe it.
Now I know what those guys hanging around the shop do all day. They make fishing stuff for people they hardly know.

Obviously, I was surprised and super grateful that these guys made this for me. I've probably not spoken more than 5 minutes with them, but I see them every week at the tying get-togethers.

Here are a collection of the worms I made during my class, using my newly upgraded vise.


And here is a close-up of one of the worms.


This is one of the other patterns I've been working on thanks to tips from my new fishing crew. It's called a surf candy. It imitates bait fish and then you can trim to back to make it the same length as the fish present that day.


The fishing season doesn't start until May, so I won't have much time to enjoy my new flies with the guys from the shop. Still, can't wait to get started.