I picked up fly tying at age 12. It was a fun hobby and a great way to kill a winter day dreaming about summer. Growing up in Alaska, summers were for fishing and winters were for hockey. I did not really tie flies to fish much, I just tied to tie. Other than the occasional glo-bug or other simple egg flies, matching the hatch was something that readers of Fly Fisherman Magazine always seemed to talk about but it never resonated with me. In Alaska, meat in the form of eggs and flesh are always on the menu for Alaskan gamefish, but I became fascinated with classic hairwing patterns. Skunks, Thor's, Golden Demons, and Fall Favorites in 2 different dressings. Anything that struck me as cool looking. Other than a couple of Dolly's and bows on a Skykomish Sunrise, I don't think I caught much on the bins chock full of flies I tied. Although I fished most weekends in the summer (remember no fishing in winter...that is time for hockey), we mostly used glo-bugs and the laughably crude 3 for a dollar bucktail coho flies which were sold at every store next to the corndogs.
Thirty years later, as fishing still consumed my increasingly rare time off from the corportate grind, I walked into the job of seventeen years and told the boss that I would be leaving my job in 2 weeks on a road trip that would last 2 months.
After fishing through Montana, Idaho and Wyoming for about a month, I headed north to Alaska. With vague plans other than to fish a bunch and not run out of gas on the way, I met an old fella with a strong southern drawl and duct tape holding his britches together absolutely crushing steelhead on a local river. Not swinging or drifting beads like the masses but throwing straight downstream and retreiving. As he caught fish after fish with the most unorthodox of methods, I watched. After several more chrome slabs came to hand for him, I took off my pre-rigged bead and started to fish in a manner much like his.