Of course guides, if you fish with them, can eliminate a lot of the guesswork—not to mention any time, before or after a day’s fishing, you might otherwise find you need to spend at the vise.
But I trust I’m not alone when I mention how pleased I am when a guide opens one of my fly boxes, inspects the flies, and plucks one out with an expression that reads, “Hmm, I like this.”
And there’s a lot more at stake when you venture out on your own.
The biggest challenge most of us face, however, with trying to tie flies while traveling, or while on the road, is how to compress the myriad tools and materials we use at home into a small but comprehensive road kit. The one thing we’re all pretty sure we don’t want to do is tear into our usual bench or tying station, removing this and that from whatever sort of organizing scheme we’ve worked so hard to cobble together in the first place.
The problem is not unlike the one faced by boatbuilding sailors, or sailing boatbuilders, who try to equip their bosun’s and ditty bags with enough tools and materials to perform small repairs, while rejecting the temptation to bring supplies to rebuild a stove-in hull or refashion a broken mast. No, you don’t need tools and materials to tie every mayfly that has ever been seen west of the Rockies. But a small assortment of hooks, the basic tools, and a couple of hackle necks and assorted feathers and furs could come in handy.
All of which brings me to the Marco Polo Fly Tying System by C&F Design, maker of some of the best fly boxes money can buy and, lately, for those of us who like to tie on the road, a compact tool kit and materials bag second to none. I won’t go through the details; my job is not to write ad copy. But having come upon this exquisite travel vise and matched set of tying tools, I’m happy to report that if you happen to be someone who likes tying away from home, and you like to tie with the best tools money can buy, you probably can’t do better than the C&F Marco Polo Vise and Tying System.
But it’s not about the money.
Gray’s angling editor Scott Sadil shares many of his thoughts on flies and fly tying in his latest book, Pacific Coast Flies & Flyfishing.
