A Hotel Prayer

I was browsing blogs and found this on Becks and Brown Trout. Nice.

It has been four months since I last wet a line. Tonight in my hotel room I think it got to me.........

 Our father who art in the met office
Hallowed be thy name
let no more waters come
The floods will be done and no more dredging done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our chance to wet a line
Forgive us our trespasses with grayling and fly
As we forgive them who practice tenkara
lead us not towards the squirmy worm
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the season
The rise and the take
Catch and release for ever and ever
Amen

I put a permanent link in the blog list on the right margin. I'd like to see what Spring in Yorkshire looks like.

Fly Tying: Rocky Ford Flies

I'm tying up some more flies for my next trip to Rocky Ford. The temps there are predicted to hit 50 degrees by the end of the week, so I hope to go at least once, maybe twice this week.

Pheasant Tail Nymph

Hook: curved scud/pupa, 1X short, #10

Thread: black

Tail, Abdomen, Shellback, Legs: pheasant tail fibers

Rib: copper wire

Thorax: brown/copper dubbing

I tried to buy some new natural pheasant tail recently. (It's sad, but the feathers from the pheasants I bagged 30 years ago when I lived in Iowa are all gone.) A shop that should have done better had no natural, only dyed. So I got some brown, which I used on these flies. I'm not happy with it. It's thin and limp, so I had to use more fibers than I would like. Normally, 4 or 5 fibers of natural would do the trick. To be fair, the guy helping me felt so bad that he went into his own stash of fly tying materials to see if he had any natural to give me. I'll go back and see if he was able to order any more

by now.

Red Tag (Wet)

Hook: dry fly, 1X long, #14

Thread: black

Tail: red wool

Body: peacock herl

Collar: partridge

Red Tag (Dry)

Hook: dry fly, #14

Thread: black

Tail: red wool

Body: peacock herl

Hackle: brown 

This is an old fly originated in England around 1850 as a grayling fly. It migrated to Tasmania, and by 1920 was a popular trout fly throughout Australia. It was considered by then to be an effective beetle imitation. It's still migrating: I first saw it on a Finnish fly tying site, and I saw that Davie McPhail has a Red Tag tying video out. I used partridge on the wet version because I had some out, but hen saddle hackle is also used. For more on this venerable fly go HERE.

"Directions" by Joseph Stroud

             "In the Valley of the Nidd, Yorkshire" by Edmund John Niemann, Photo by Museums Sheffield

                                              How weary, stale, flat, and unproiftable
                                                        Seem to me all the uses of this world 
                                                           — Hamlet

Take a plane to London.
From King's Cross take the direct train to York.
Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,
then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,
a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,
and soon you'll be on the moors. There's a pub,
The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room,
you can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculier.
For a moment everything will be all right. You're back
at a beginning. Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire country,
into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country.
You'll walk for hours. You'll walk the freshness
back into your life. This is true. You can do this.
Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,
you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,
the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,
you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,
cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking,
making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.

"Directions" by Joseph Stroud, from Of this World. © Copper Canyon Press, 2009.

"To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick

Hampsthwaite Church Cemetery, England

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attain'd his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

 As you, or anything.

We die

As your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer's rain;

Or as the pearls of morning's dew

Ne'er to be found again.

"To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick. Public Domain.