![\"pixlr](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/pixlr-fenwick-and-flies.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nPhred\u2019s Phlies<\/h2>\n
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I think I\u2019ve run out of flies to tie.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure that other than a few trout fishing staples like scuds and stuff, I could fish the rest of my life with what I\u2019ve got packed into the many boxes in my room, in my garage, in my vests and in my boats. \u00a0The way this spring has been shaping up weatherwise does not get someone inspired to put a lot of miles on their wading boots.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cWinter is coming\u201d they say.\u00a0 I am starting to think this is really Westeros, we are actually in Winterfell, and any day a horde of White Walkers is going to come over the hill.<\/span><\/p>\n On a weekend like this I still find myself sitting at my tying desk, trying to figure out something to tie up.\u00a0 I was looking for some inspiration and for some reason I got down a stack of fly boxes from a closet shelf, and one of these boxes had some of my grandpa\u2019s flies packed into a compartment.\u00a0 They were mostly cork poppers, but there were a few other things too.<\/span><\/p>\n Since I couldn\u2019t come up with anything I really wanted to tie [alright, I tied up one \u201chare\u2019s ear wooly bugger\u201d, can\u2019t ever have too many of those], it got me to digging up some of his other flies.\u00a0 Some were in boxes, some were in bins.\u00a0 I have his vest hanging in the garage, I crept out there in stocking feet to pull a box out of a pocket that has been living in there for many years.<\/span><\/p>\n The old man was one of a kind.\u00a0 We all knew him as Phred, even though his name was Ray.\u00a0 He was a decent fly tyer and tied way more than he ever used.\u00a0 His materials were either from Herter\u2019s or was stuff he salvaged from something else.\u00a0 He never used a bobbin, didn\u2019t own one, instead pulled about 30 inches of thread off the spool and tied a half hitch after each step to keep everything in place.\u00a0 This was how I learned to tie.<\/span><\/p>\n I know I never saw him use a popper for bass, we did wear the paint off a lot of small poppers on sunfish though.\u00a0 I\u2019ve used a few of these in the picture, they actually work.\u00a0 Really well.\u00a0 Many of you know my love for cork poppers, this is where it comes from.\u00a0 The green one at top left caught about 30 largemouths one day on Gadbolt Lake.\u00a0 If any Camp Fish guys are reading this, they\u2019re thinking, big deal, you could catch bass on your shoelace or piece of gum there.\u00a0 This is true.\u00a0 One time there I rigged my fly rod with three flies and caught three largemouth at once.\u00a0 For some reason back in the 80s this little lake was overrun with 12\u201d largemouth, it was a great place to take kids.\u00a0 And adults.<\/span><\/p>\n The effectiveness of Grandpa\u2019s popper that day was forgotten, possibly dismissed due to the fact you could catch the bass in that lake on anything.\u00a0 Until one day when I was getting prepped to fish smallies on the Mississippi.\u00a0 For some reason my fly box was short in the popper department, but I remembered I had a few of Grandpa\u2019s rat holed away somewhere.\u00a0 Up until that day I was mostly a deer hair popper guy, as the foam poppers never really did it for me, and cork poppers just weren\u2019t readily available and I hadn\u2019t ever gone through the process of learning how to make them.\u00a0 I had no reason to–after all, my mantra then was nothing works better than deer hair poppers\u2026until I ended up with the yellow one in the middle of the right side tied on.\u00a0 After one cast I was like \u201cWTF, this thing pops better than any popper I\u2019ve ever used\u201d.\u00a0 You can see by the scuffed paint that the smallmouth also thought it popped really nice that day.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t long before I figured out a good source for cork popper heads and had the process of making them dialed in.\u00a0 I rarely use any other kind of popper.<\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes I would see an article in Field and Stream or some other magazine about a particular fly.\u00a0 That is how my \u201cHair Frog\u201d came to be.\u00a0 I know there was an article about a \u201chair frog\u201d, and at my request Phred managed to put one together for me.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t look much, or at all, like a frog. There is actually a clipped deer hair body under the wrapped yellow chenille.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never tied it on and can\u2019t imagine a scenario where this design would be desirable. How someone came up with this particular design as a good idea is puzzling.\u00a0 But here it is.<\/span><\/p>\n Another strange design is the \u201cAlley Minnow\u201d. He used to use these things when fishing off the Hudson bridge for crappies.\u00a0 How a fly rod would be the weapon of choice while fishing off a bridge never made sense to me, even back then.\u00a0 I accompanied him on one of these bridge sessions as couple of times, I was probably 6 or 7.\u00a0 We fished at night, under the lights, and he brought a wooden crate for me to stand on so I could reach over the railing.\u00a0 The Alley Minnow is a white bucktail streamer with a head that is made out of a section of TV antenna.\u00a0 I can\u2019t find any reference to this style of fly anywhere, it must have been a short-lived local thing.\u00a0 The metal head really doesn\u2019t add any weight or flash but he was proud of them.\u00a0 I think he liked the design because it gave a good surface to paint eyes on.\u00a0 I am disappointed that I only have a few, possibly the only Alley Minnows in existence.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of my earliest fishing memories is of wading for smallmouth bass and silver [white] bass on the St. Croix.\u00a0 We wade fished around different access points in the Hudson area.\u00a0 A\u00a0bucktail streamer is what we used.\u00a0 Mostly\u00a0white ones, and they were pretty small compared to what most of us use for smallmouth nowadays, maybe 2 inches long. Late summer was prime time for this\u2014the smallmouth and white bass would be chasing shad and easily caught. \u00a0Here\u2019s how we fished\u2014using a vintage fiberglass seven weight fly rod [mine was from Herter\u2019s, Phred had a Fenwick], you made a roll cast with your white streamer, and then retrieved it by steadily raising the rod tip, sometimes in a jerky manner.\u00a0 When your rod tip was just past straight up, you would just make a new roll cast and repeat the process.\u00a0 Inevitably you would get a strike when your rod tip was straight up, and setting the hook was not possible unless you did some quick back peddling.\u00a0 Somehow, we made it work, and while cars whizzed by on I-94 we put a hurting on the local bass population.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"pixlr](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/pixlr-poppers.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"pixlr](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/pixlr-hair-frog.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"pixlr](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/pixlr-alley-minnow.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"pixlr](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/pixlr-streamers.jpg\")
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![\"pixlr](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/pixlr-trout-flies.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"bucktail](\"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/bucktail-jigs.jpg\")
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