“Boooonniiiieeee,” I called as I rose from my tying station, scissors in one hand and fragment of beef jerky in the other. Boonie the Shop Dog woke immediately and jumped to his feet like a puppy, knowing from past experience what was about to happen. He trotted over to the rack of neoprene waders, where no one ever goes, and hid behind the sun-faded bootfoots hanging there.
As he trotted, that lovely, lovely white tail caught a ray of sunshine that had broken temporarily through the low overcast, and seemed to glow.
Eventually, the beef jerky won out, and Boonie emerged from hiding long enough for me to snip a clump of white hair. Forty seconds later I was securing a perfectly stacked wing on my Skykomish Sunrise. There wasn't a single steelhead within five hundred miles, but I could plan. Besides, steelhead flies were more entertaining than another damn dozen foam beetles for the shop's fly bins.
Planning and entertainment are what slow days in the shop are all about. At Parks' Fly Shop in early June, when the Yellowstone fifty yards away is still running filthy and the overcast might mean rain or snow down in the valley but definitely means snow up high, there's a lot of time for both.
On occasion we'll see only two or three customers all day, and one will just want to use the bathroom.
After the Skykomish Sunrise, I moved on to Bombers. I wouldn't have to chase down the dog for materials to tie them, and since the only fish I've ever caught on steelhead dries are cutthroat out of pocketwater creeks and rainbows in the Yellowstone during the Salmonfly hatch, I figured they might actually prove useful. As I tied in the tail of the first, Phil, one of the other shop dudes, came back in, fighting to shut the door behind him against the blast of north wind, clutching his third cup of gas station coffee of the morning.
Boonie emerged from hiding again, looking as cute and innocent as a fourteen-year-old Border Collie/Blue Heeler mix can manage. "More treats?" he seemed to say.
Phil only patted him on the head, but he looked over at me like he was going to offer me a treat instead. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, grinning.
"I don't want any," I said.
He pulled his hand out of his pocket and, voila, revealed a Super Ball. "I found it in the street," he said. He bounced it to me.
I forgot about tying flies. I go through a Bomber about once every three years, so bouncing a rubber ball across the shop was far more important.
We proceeded to bounce the ball to each other across the shop for the next twenty minutes, pausing once to direct a Japanese tourist looking for fleece to the camping store down the street. The woman looked shell-shocked. Clearly, it was not 38 degrees and spitting rain in Tokyo. We only ended our game because an errant bounce sent the ball flying into the office/warehouse in back, into which clients to our guide service must carry rations when they try on rental equipment.
The ball will be found by archaeologists 3000 years from now excavating a fly shop tentatively dated to the 1970s. Only the fossilized lost Chernobyl Ants they'll find in the ductwork will suggest their theory may have a flaw.
Fun ended, Phil announced he was taking lunch. Boonie went with him, willing to brave the elements on the off chance there'd be a piece of cheese or smoked whitefish in the offing.
What to do, what to do? The cane rod on the rack behind the counter caught my eye. It's a 1970 Orvis Battenkill that never sold, and probably never will. It's never been fished, but it's sure been cast. There was no way I was going outside, but with a handful of old fly line we use to practice our needle knots and the rod's tip section, I could practice my accuracy casting indoors. The framed 5x7 picture of the nine and a half pound brown a client caught a few years ago was as good a target as any, and it is a straight shot from the picture to the far wall of the store, a good distance over which to practice my double hauls.
This practice got old in a hurry. Without a reel, it was too easy to shoot the entire line across the room to puddle against the picture.
Oh well. On the plus side, I'd noticed a few almost empty fly bins on the display while I was casting, including the big ginger X-Caddis that represented the flies that would soon hatch on the Firehole. Time to earn my wages. Actually, time to earn more than my wages, since my boss lets me tie shop flies while on duty.
I got three done before Phil and the dog returned from lunch.
Boonie was still licking his chops. Phil had his latest kitsch creation, a giant Trude made of yarn, paintbrush fibers, and pipe cleaners tied on a shark hook.
So far this season he'd sold two similar flies. The new one was still missing hackle, so it looked like he wanted to be productive for a while as well.
I just wanted lunch.
After I ate, I returned to tying, keeping at it until I had two dozen X-caddises on the table in front of me, enough to fill the bin through at least one good caddis day. Then it was back to tying for myself.
Tired of steelhead flies I might never use and not interested in puzzling my way through a tourist-trap fly like Phil was working on, I decided to make something that might be useful some time in the near future. The only question was what that might be.
"Did you go take a look at the river when you went to get lunch?" Phil said.
"No, didn't see the point. Why?"
"It must be below freezing up high. There river's cleared out a bit -- there's probably eight inches of viz. Want to go out after work?"
Did I really have to answer that? It looked like giant stoneflies were what I needed to tie. Keeping ourselves busy on a slow day in the shop with games and busywork is okay. Fishing --even on a cold, wet day when a handful of fish was all we could expect-- is a lot better than that.