the Book Mailer - "fishy" Tales

You may recognize the name at the bottom of this letter as similar to one of your regular correspondents. Yes, I am Joe Kissane's brother. Actually, there are four of us, fly fishers all, and we enjoy the information and products that fill each edition of The Book Mailer.

Joe has earned a reputation as one of your most parsimonious contributors (2003 Winter Book Mailer, pages 26 & 51; 2005 Fall Book Mailer, pages 8 & 22), and I like his line "when I was young and had no money (as opposed to being old and having no money)." We started tying flies before we were 10 years old, not only because it was fun but because a pair of Glen L. Evans flies sold for 15 cents in those days and it was cheaper to tie them. Of course, the Noll fly tying kit had a pretty steep start-up cost of $10, but even so the payback came pretty quickly.

Those Noll kits didn't include a bobbin, so we made our own out of wire and a rubber band. Hunting friends provided deer hair (to which Mike, the oldest, is highly allergic!), rabbit fur and the like, and yes, we scavenged the occasional roadkill squirrel. I admit I hadn't thought of checking the dryer filter for dubbing material until Joe mentioned it. By the way, a load of jeans, especially older pairs, provides an excellent source for Adams bodies.

We're not as competitive as we were in those days, although Joe has published a book, Drag Free Drift: Leader Design & Presentation Techniques w/ CD-ROMand developed - or at least synthesized - a fly pattern, the Cheap Lazy Bastard (2005 Fall Book Mailer, page 22), for which the rest of us are secretly jealous (imagine being able to deduct fishing trips as business-related expenses). These exploits have been discussed in your pages, along with a number of money-saving tips.

One of those was using Sharpie pens to alter the color of tying thread and thus avoid the time spent tying in different colors for ribbing, etc., and the cost of additional spools, I suppose. That concept gave me an idea, and I got a chance to test it on a fishing trip to Idaho a while back.

Ever had a fish rise to your fly only to refuse it at the last instant? Of course you have. Experts tell us that although the fly was close enough to elicit a response, something about it just didn't seem right. They suggest a slight variation in size or color to make the ultimate connection. This point was being driven home as our youngest brother Steve and I were fishing the same area with the same pattern, except that Steve's was a dark olive while mine was pale olive, and he was having much more success (forget what I said about being less competitive!).

When fish are biting, the last thing in the world you want to do is re-tool. Your fingers turn to thumbs, and shaky ones at that. But I did have a green Sharpie in my fly vest, so I simply colored my fly a shade darker and dropped it in the stream. In the time it took me to re-cap the pen and return it to my vest pocket, I had a fish on, and I hadn't even made a cast!

Of course, the tactic has its limitations - you can go from light to dark, but not vice versa, and it certainly won't change your hook size. But if color is the determining factor, markers are a quick fix, especially in the twilight when my arms get too short for me to see well. Sharpie has added several colors to its array, and now makes them in a smaller (cheaper) size, too. They also have the advantage of being permanent, although I imagine any marker will do.