FENCEROWS...The Basement Box
By John Luthens
I kneeled with the box under the overhead glare of the single hanging bulb, with the bulb swaying slowly and shadows dancing across the cold concrete. Fly rods stood in those shadows. Waders hung by hooks and cast booted silhouettes. Nets, knives and tackle boxes overflowed the shelves where I had pulled the fly box from its hidden sleep.
Maybe it was left in the basement by accident. In a small cabin in Douglas County, only a roll cast away from some of the finest trout streams in the state, as I pawed through fishing gear on a tackle-holding shelf; it might have been nothing more than chance that brushed my hand across the small box in a tucked-away recess.
The fly box was well used; dented black steel with a clasp latch, and set through the top with rows of fine air vents. It was as if something inside could be kept alive for countless years with only a breath of air. The clasp worked held tight like a good clasp should and opened with the gentlest touch.
Stretching over both halves of the open box was tied art, clipped in rows and held by dull-chrome tabs in arrays of fly fishing glory. The flies were intricately wound and hackled; feather-tailed, soft-winged, with twists of color like a tumbling stream in the early morning sun.
Now, the fly tying craft has always eluded me. My thumbs are more suited for vagabond hitch-hiking than turning out creations on a tying vise. I also lack the discipline to slowly blend together the right combination of hooks and hackled bodies. Alas, my patience often amounts to the length of a chewed and stubby pencil.
My mantra has always been- If I can’t tie ‘em, I’ll buy ‘em. The creed has occasionally yielded a trout, but more often simply takes a strike at my wallet. And now here was a whole trove of flies that I lucked into, enough to last a season. If it’s free it’s for me- that’s my other mantra.
The flies in the box were far above the stock that I normally lay into. I’ll stop into fly shops along my travels, picking up one here and there, occasionally drifting into expensive streamers and weighted nymphs, but invariably I degenerate into the dime-store variety of fly bins.
A thought occurred to me that maybe I held a box of great value, something that was worth real money, something that I shouldn’t tie onto the end of a leader at all-maybe something that should be put away in a vault as a hedge fund for the children’s college fund. I liked the idea but lacked access to a vault. I brought the fly box home and sat it on the top shelf of my basement desk, simply trading one basement storage system for another.
The flies warmed the bench (I mean the shelf), accruing value from an aesthetic standpoint, while I worked the best possible magic with the lower-class variety. I caught fish through the season; bluegill, bass and trout-I fooled them all. But I often wondered how much better it could be with the box in my fishing vest instead of sitting idle.
I’d occasionally open the box and leer at the contents, especially on dark nights, and especially when the season ended, when snow flew and thoughts of trout fishing lay drifted and dormant. Something needed to be done. The box held my attention, held a value over my other flies that a genuine Picasso holds over a reproduced print. You didn’t have to be an artist to know the difference, but only an artist could illuminate what the difference was- A fly tying artist to be exact.
I phoned up Jerry Kiesow, naturalist, writer, outdoor photographer, fly fishing teacher and a heck of a good fly tying artist and nice guy all rolled into one. His fly fishing columns in OWO are always one of my must-reads, and as luck has it, he also lives in the area.
I occasionally run into Jerry on Sunday mornings in the church parking lot. Jerry and his lovely wife attend the early service while my family rolls in for the late one. We meet in the middle and swap stories. Jerry’s are entertaining enough that I usually end up running into the service in the middle of the opening hymn.
In fact, I believe the pastor would not allow us both in the same service, not to mention the same pew. The constant rumbling of fishing would overshadow the sermon until our wives would be forced to lead us by the ears to the back of the church like unruly children.
“Hi Jerry, its John,” I said into the phone. “I have an old box of flies I’d like you to critique. It’s for a story I’m writing.”
“I might be able to squeeze you in,” said Jerry. “It might not be till tomorrow or the day after. I’m pretty busy.” -Silent Pause- “What are you exactly expecting from me?”
I thought about it for a moment. Did I need a pawn shop appraiser, a sympathetic admirer-maybe I just wanted to show the box to someone, not to mention there was a foot of snow on the ground and I was getting an early case of spring fly-fishing fever.
“I guess I’m not expecting anything,” I said.
“Perfect, come right over,” said Jerry. “I’m working on stuff in my basement workshop and I’m not that busy after all.” That’s how the fly box ended up in the third basement.
Jerry looked at the flies, inspecting them on his fly bench, which held more material than many fly shops I’ve been in. “That’s a Royal Coachman, you can tell by the wings, and these are bivisibles, with parachute-style hackle. They can be fished either wet or dry. Hey, that one is a Hornberg- it’s made with partridge feathers and was designed in Wisconsin There’s an interesting story behind it, but I can’t remember exactly what- I think I have it in one of these books over here.”
Soon we were into his collection of books: Gordon MacQuarrie, John Voelker, and many other outdoor writers that spanned generations before us. We reminisced over forgotten stories from every book cover. Then we were looking into Jerry’s own fly boxes. One thing led to another. I forgot about my own box.
Jerry stoked the woodstove. We dove into his archery equipment and black powder rifles. We talked photography and fishing and hunting. I don’t know how two hours slipped by so fast.
As I was leaving, I remembered the box. I picked it up off of Jerry’s basement desk. “So what do you think about it?” I asked.
“It is a collection for trout, definitely trout,” he said.
“I don’t believe I will ever use the flies,” I said. “They’re old. I don’t even know if they will float right anymore. I guess they’re more of a conversation piece than anything.”
“You know that if you use steam on them, they will shape right up and float like new,” Jerry said. “Trout season is right around the corner.” I said goodbye and walked out of an artist’s basement with my fly box.
As a matter of fact, I believe I’ve had enough of basements for a while. I got the official appraisal that I wanted and now I’m in the kitchen. There is a boiling tea kettle on the stove with steam rolling out the top spout. I still have half of a fly box that needs a steam bath.
I don’t think it was an accident at all, when I first found the fly box on the dark basement shelf. I believe now that the box was put there with a fell purpose.