A couple of my Hatchless friends, among others, jokingly (I think) chide me for liking to tie and to use small flies, particularly dries, while fishing. I thought I would take the time to explain why I do so and in the process, possibly bring some people over to the dark side, even if just occasionally.

Fishing for me is an escape from my daily life. I’m a stay-at-home dad (SAHD, for short) by choice. I quit my job as a public librarian to be with my children full time, and while I love them dearly, Daddy needs some alone time once in a while. That’s one of the reasons I picked up fly fishing. It allows me peaceful time away from making breakfasts, lunches, and dinners; time away from vacuuming; time away from laundry; time away from resetting the Mac from Mandarin back to English; and time away from helping to brush tiny teeth and wipe tiny butts.

Another reason I took up fly fishing is that I grew up spin fishing for bluegills and crappies and trolling for walleye and salmon with my family. When spin fishing, my dad would always tell us boys to stop fiddling so much with the gear and “just let it sit there a while.” Huge spoons and J-plugs being pulled behind a boat for hours while the sun has yet to come up, or is just going down, is fun in its own way, but I wanted more. More fiddling around. There was nothing wrong with hauling in fifty good-sized perch or especially, twenty-five to thirty-pound coho and chinook. That was awesome. Still, I wanted more.

More what? Well, I wanted to see the fish taking the bait. Okay, then why didn’t we just go bass fishing with poppers? I don’t know—we just weren’t bass fisherman in my house. We viewed walleye and salmon as the best fish and type of fishing. Growing up, I always viewed bass fishing as a Southern sport complete with the accompanying accents. (I am, by the way, a total Southern-accent bigot for some bizarre reason, and that may have contributed to my lack of bass fishing as well. I do tie and use small poppers for smallmouth now.) Seeing a cork bobber dip was as close to seeing the take as I ever got until I began fly fishing, and everyone knows that’s no fun.

Then there is simply my personality. I am a person mired in minutiae. As a former English teacher (seeing a pattern yet?) I automatically analyze everything I see and hear—I always have. I once got the crap beaten out me in my own backyard, practically with my mother’s permission, by a neighborhood buddy for insisting that he enunciate the -gs at the ends of his present participles (I was about ten or eleven). I also am a bit of a gearhead and tinkerer. No other human has worked on my Jeep in six years and I have built everything from the deck attached to my house to my own USB car charger for my iPods and PDA. (I don’t split my own wood or make my own transistors; however, don’t think for a moment that I haven’t considered those.)

Again, what does this possibly have to do with fly fishing, and particularly, dry-fly fishing tiny flies? In my view, there is no point in fly fishing if one isn’t going to tie his own flies, and  again, I want to see the take. To me, a size ten hook is big and a fourteen is perfect.  I have yet to see a bug on the water that is as big as, or looks like, the old hard-sided Samsonite luggage I see some guys tossing. I am also a weight bigot. I absolutely refuse to add split shot to a leader. (Actually, I have done it once or twice, but I felt dirty.) My younger brother, with whom I go steelheading whenever possible, just loves this about me. I do add weight to the nymphs I tie, though I rarely fish them. I’m much more likely to use a hare’s-ear parachute dry than a hare’s-ear nymph.

I guess what it all boils down to is that I just want to see that damn strike so badly that I’m willing to give up catching many fish (and quite likely larger fish) for catching ones that will make me happy. If that means I only get a few eight to ten-inch trout, so be it. (I will resort to weighted nymphs to avoid being skunked entirely, but I’ll be damned if I ever use a woolly bugger again.)

Anyone who thinks a #26 parachute pseudocloeon or a #22 tricorythodes spinner won’t catch a decent-sized trout, I have a test for you: let me stick one of those little bastards into your lip and pull on it. I have a feeling you’d follow wherever I led.