North 40 Fly Shop eMagazine October 2017 | Page 73

in line, I presume. But the only thing I could con-
sistently do well with these bulky gloves on was
soil my pants.
The instructions said to wet your hands be-
fore putting the gloves on. Right. I’m supposed
to stick my hands—hands already frozen from
rigging up a fly rod and pulling on waders—into
ice-cold water, trusting that wet Chinese rubber
gloves will miraculously generate heat?
I never came up with the intestinal forti-
tude to do that. You’d stand a better chance
getting your picture taken with the Pope than
you would getting me to stick my hands into icy
water after I’ve been fumbling with tippet and
trying to tie #20 Griffith’s Gnats to the end of
my line. But I did wet my hands once when the
Velcro—which snags on anything within a 10-
foot radius—got hung up in my shorts while I
was digging through three-inches of clothes
and cursing cold-weather shrinkage during an
emergency.
While wearing these gloves my exposed fin-
gers got so cold I had to constantly look down
to see if I was holding my fly line or if my fingers
had snapped off. My hands got what my father
would have described as “cold as a well digger’s
ass,” or “cold as a witch’s teat.” I have no ex-
perience with either so I can’t comment on the
accuracy of my father’s account. I just call this
kind of misery “shivering Jesus” cold—because
all I could do was stand there shivering and hol-
lering, “Jesus, it’s cold!”
My hands got so cold, in fact, that I stopped
fishing, started a fire, and put on a pot of co
fee. I held the hot tin cup in my hands until
the rubber softened and homogeneously
bonded to the palms of my hands. Hair
and lint stuck to my hands for weeks. And
I began thirsting to whip somebody’s ass.
The more I stared at the cold-weather fishing
gloves, the less I wanted to get on the water and
test my Arctic survival skills. Staying holed up at
the house for a couple of more weeks, holding
a nice hot cup of Irish coffee in my hands, and
waiting for better weather seemed like a good
idea. Actually, it seemed like a damn good idea.
So when a buddy called and asked if I want-
ed to brave the weather and head up into the
mountains, I told him I’d love to join him but
something had come up. However, in a good-
will effort to ensure his success, and add to his
fishing enjoyment, I sold him the cold-weather
fishing gloves—at a modest profit, of course.
“Don’t forget to wet your hands before you
put the gloves on,” I told him as he pulled out of
my driveway.
“Huh,” he said. All I could muster was, “Haw,
haw, hawwwwwww!” w
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