CDC Emerger

I sit at the tying station on the kitchen table in my small apartment, where I’m surrounded by a chaotic assemblage of boxes filled with flies of all sizes and colors and in need of reorganization. I have paused to listen to the wind outside. Every gust buffets leafless branches dancing wildly in front of a window framing a darkening gray sky. Another year of fly fishing is nearing its end. I ignore the organizational task at hand and become reflective.

My sixty-first Thanksgiving and Christmas are fast approaching. I think back through the years as I reach for a little box of Blue-Winged-Olive fly patterns, open it, and remove one particular tie, a turkey-biot emerger tied with CDC. It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, I could tie such a tiny thing. These days, I walk around with cheater glasses from the dollar store — one pair for close up and one for distance. Such a diminutive tie once did not seem too small, which leads me to think back to the holiday dinners of my youth.

Growing up, I gave no thought to scale — the size of one object in relation to another. One’s sense of scale can change with the passing of time. I was raised in a small house filled with two parents, four siblings, a sister-in-law and nephew, a dog, a cat, tropical fish, a turtle, and an aquarium filled with garter snakes. Not until I moved away and returned years later one Thanksgiving holiday did it occur to me to wonder at my mother’s sorcery, fitting all of us around that table in our tiny kitchen — well, all of the humans and the dog and the cat. Perhaps this explains why she loved to dress up as a witch for Halloween. The fact is, my mother’s holiday magic was because of her organizational skills developed through trial and error over the years of producing a successful dinner for such a large family.

I suppose tying a fly is just like cooking a dinner. First you start by organizing the parts of the recipe and begin adding the ingredients sequentially until you have a finished meal for a fish. Mastery dances with repetition, and together, creativity blossoms.

I return my attention to the boxes of flies scattered around me and the small emerger pattern resting between my fingers. I would like to share with you how to tie it — how to cook it, so to speak.

Begin by placing a size 16 dry-fly hook in the vise. Attach a fine olive thread a little behind the hook eye and wrap it back, stopping at the bend. Select an olive turkey biot and tie in the tapered tip, oriented so the more opaque side leads as you wrap the biot up the shank. Advance the thread three-quarters of the way up the shank and wrap the biot forward, creating a raised, segmented ridge. Tie off the biot and snip away the excess. That’s the abdomen.

Next, at the three-quarter position on the shank, tie in a grayish CDC feather so the tips face the rear, extending back long enough that later, you can fold it over a ball of dubbing at the thorax, creating a wing case and a post wing. Then dub the thread with olive dubbing and wrap a ball, being careful to leave room behind the eye to tie off the CDC. Pull the CDC feather forward, up and over and in front of the dubbed ball and secure it, creating the wing case and leaving a length of CDC wing posting forward and up at an angle. Raise the wing, tie off the thread at the eye, and cement the head, avoiding getting any cement on the CDC. Tease some of the hair fibers from the thorax, creating legs, and you are done.

This pattern can be adapted in size and color to imitate many different kinds of mayflies. It is a very simple recipe, one cooked up at a fly-tying station resting on a small kitchen table next to a window in my little apartment, harking back to all the wonderful meals served up in my mom’s tiny kitchen years ago.

— Andy Guibord

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