“Tie one on” for the trout season ahead.

Winter’s a perilous time if you’re a well-feathered chicken–for there are people out there to fear other than those from KFC and Tyson.

A small but eager army of ‘fisher folk’ is ready to indulge their winter vices and a chicken’s scalp-lock figures in their plans.

Flytiers get busy at this time, turning to their vises–not vices, the sinful ones, but hook-clamping vices that hold fly hooks so materials can be wound around them. Such materials often include hackle feathers from the necks of rooster or hen chickens.

Winter’s cold, icy weather makes the warmth of the indoors and a need to restock fly boxes with varieties of flies a good time to turn to this ‘vice.’ Fly tying keeps fishing interest high until the inland fishing season reopens in spring.

Michigan’s professional flytiers are some of the best in the country, but many anglers have taken up fly tying as a hobby; their output, if not as large as a pro’s, is still suited to fooling wary trout.

There are “schools” of fly tying styles–classic patterns tied by early masters for specific streams, and still tied today in the same way. The old-time flytiers of the Au Sable, often guides, created patterns to imitate certain hatches of mayflies, caddisflies, and stone flies that caught trout a century ago. They still do today.

These old masters in turn taught later generations to tie their fly patterns. The late Bob Smock (featured in this magazine a few years ago) specialized in tying dry flies. Other tiers were generalists and tied wet as well as dry flies. Top tiers of today, like Jerry Regan, Dennis Potter, or Bear Andrews, still tie the classic patterns, but they also tie patterns using newer materials and hook styles that have created classics of the current era. As in all art, methods change with time, but the classics remain because of proven results.

Not all fly-fishermen tie flies, but many take it up at some point. Two ways to get started are taking classes, often offered through fly shops, or sitting and learning from another tier in an apprentice manner. Both ways get you on track to engaging your winter vise.

This scribbler started tying at age 12, when a fly tying friend offered to let me sit in on his classes. I became as hooked on fly tying as any fish later hooked on my own flies. (My best customer was my father, who increased my allowance in relation to how many flies went into his boxes.)

Dad began his fly-fishing for trout in Michigan waters. There he got used to Michigan fly patterns. In later years, when living in the Southwest, he said he wouldn’t go fishing anywhere without “Adams” flies in his box. That pattern was born on Michigan’s Boardman River in the early 1920s, originated by Mayfield flytier and guide Len Halladay. He named it for one of his fishing clients, an Ohio attorney named Charles Adams. It is regarded around most of the trout fishing waters of the US as the “must have” pattern.

As in all trades or crafts, flytiers have a vocabulary of their own. The newcomer will learn terms like hackle, herl, ribbing, hair wing, up wing, down wing, butt, floss, dubbing, tinsel, fur, whip finisher, hair stacker, hackle pliers, wing burner, spun hair, paradun, nymph, emerger, drake, soft-hackle, midge, Palmer-tied, and other phrases not in the ordinary lexicon of non-flytiers.

Not all fly flingers are dry fly purists. Certain wet fly patterns can be, and often are, as effective in fooling wary trout as dry flies. The dry fly purist will wait for the notorious hatches of late spring and summer. Wet fly-fishermen don’t wait–and fish all year since trout feed more often underwater than when hatches are on top. A well-rounded tier soon learns to tie both dry- and wet-fly patterns, and goes fishing any time of the season.

As to those assorted chicken parts, it’s the feathers, not the meat, that is pricey. A good #1 grade dry fly neck can cost as much as $100, #2 or #3 grades, proportionally less, but never quite cheap. But, a good neck can hold enough hackle to dress several hundred flies–which in some cases can be a tad pricey themselves, if store bought. Fly-fishermen who learn to tie their own flies save money over time, and never have to worry about having to see their banker if it is time for a major replenishment of their fly boxes as opener looms.

Well, the ‘Hawk of Winter’ is back as blizzards beget shut-in days. Perhaps it’s time for you to indulge in a winter vise—your chance to “tie-one-on” for the trout season ahead.