"mdk77" wrote in message
ups.com...

Thanks for the advice.

You're welcome.

I am definitely going to take your advice from
"The good news" section of your post. I think a season or two more of
practice will be a huge help. I'll simply tie a wider variety than I
did for this season and go from there. I do notice though that the
flies that "worked" for me didn't make it through the season and I
tied more. The flies that didn't work are still in my boxes and will
probably last me decades........I lost faith in those and simply
couldn't bring myself to fish them after a while.

If your experience follows the normal curve, you'll experiment with tieing
ever more patterns for a few years while at the same time relying more and
more on a few favorites. You will collect an astonishing number of flies
that you will have no faith with, and you will carry them around with you
for the rest of your natural life. This is a sort of penance for taking
pleasure from what is, after all, an unnatural act.

On the other hand, you will learn which patterns produce consistently and
circumstances will conspire to prevent you from ever making/taking enough of
them.

I did have a HORRIBLE experience on vacation. I was fishing on Prince
Edward Island in Canada (in the middle of nowhere) and I had a crazy
hunch that one particular fly would work that day. I hooked a rainbow
that was huge (my heart just about stopped when I saw him). I had him
close enough that I could almost touch him, and he broke my tippet. I
had brought every fly I owned to Canada -- except for THAT pattern. I
really felt sick when other flies simply didn't work that day. I
learned my lesson.

Be prepared for a lifetime of heartbreaks for which the cure is
obvious......and useless.....as conditions will never be the same, and next
time the disaster will result from some other mistake which, in retrospect,
will be seen to have been easily predictable and preventable.

I will NEVER again let myself get down to the last
fly of a given pattern and size. Never.

Heh, heh, heh.

Wolfgang