Beginnings
Everyone has a beginning and mine starts something like this. I was born and raised in New Mexico where my father taught me how to fish but it was only 12 years ago that I fell in love with fly fishing. The sound of rushing water, birds overhead and 20 inch jumping trout of the San Juan River. I knew that I was hooked for life when I hooked up with a 20 inch jumping Brown in the tail waters of the San Juan Texas hole. It’s only been recently that I thought to give fly tying a try in fact it has been just under one year ago since I tied my first fly. It started when my brother gave me a fly tying kit about two years ago as a birthday gift. As I looked over the small booklet I thought this looks too hard to do. So I threw it in with my fly fishing books and forgot all about it. Well this past year as I was going through my fly fishing books I came across the old fly tying kit and thought maybe I should give this a try. So I pulled it out and tried to tie my first fly. It looked as if someone shoved a whole bunch of yarn and feathers on a hook. It didn’t look anything like the picture in the booklet but I kept tying the same pattern over and over for two hours and after several attempts I finally got something that looked like the picture in the booklet.
Well after tying for 2 months I wanted to push my limits a little higher, something more realistic so I tried to tie a realistic mosquito and again I said, “What was I thinking? This looks hard”. Well after trying to tie this thing for two days and no luck I thought to ask a friend Bob Mead how to tie a realistic mosquito. So Bob sent me all the supplies and instructions needed to tie one of these little blood suckers, he also sent me one of his awesome mosquitoes. I took a whole day to work through this pattern and after the day ended I had an extremely realistic mosquito that looked almost exactly like Bob’s. Bob Mead has a lot to do with my fly tying success. After tying for 3 months I was asked to tie for a number of fly tying shows throughout the southwest like The Fly Fishing Show in Denver, Southwestern Trout Unlimited Organizations, New Mexico Trout Organization, and many others just to name a few. It all came through the efforts of Bob Mead, hats off to the master tier. We all learn from each other, building on what the last person has done, inspired by the little crawling flying machines God created, we all call bugs. I now tie 3 realistic flies the beetle, spider and that little blood sucker mosquito.
I also tie over 50 patterns that can be fished throughout the Southwest’s rivers and streams but I specialize in tying midge patterns for the San Juan River in Northern New Mexico. Many of the flies I tie come from building on what other fellow fly tiers have done. Although many of the flies I tie are unique and cannot be found in fly fishing shops like the San Juan Flasher, Brown Emerger and Crippled Mosquito. These flies are very small 30–18 and deadly. All my flies are tested on the San Juan River and surrounding rivers and streams throughout the southwest. The San Juan Flasher has proven to be a very hot fly. In the first 10 minutes of testing this fly out on the San Juan River I landed 8 brown and rainbow trout and was hot all day long. So keep tying and don’t give up! I hope to see you this year if you visit one of the fly tying shows on the southwestern fly tying circuit.
Deward Yocum