Yesterday, I received a request to tie up some cracklebacks for a very nice customer. While I have tied many of these in my life, it has been over a year since I tied my last one. I tie my cracklebacks and Griffith's gnats on a size 14 hook. In Missouri, they are my favorite dry flies and nothing else comes close to getting into the top 2! Back to my point that it had been quite some time since I tied one of these and the fact that I have been tying a lot of big streamers, well that just means that I had lost my perspective as well as my practice.
The first one that I tied was...less than acceptable. I'm not sharing that picture with you. By number two, I got the proportions right and the head smaller. It was up to the standards. The next few looked just like the second one and I was back.
It dawned on me after the last one that I finished that it's funny how if the human mind doesn't use something that it stores it away in the deep recesses of your brain. From there, it is either lost forever or really hard to access again. For example, I can't remember the name of my first grade teacher anymore because I haven't accessed that information in so long that it has gotten lost somewhere. It must be the same with fly fishing, fly casting, and fly tying then. Once you establish that muscle memory and pattern, you're back! The point is that you better keep fly fishing and fly tying or else you are going to lose your skills, at least temporarily. Now you have a scientific excuse to keep you on the water.
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