Are there any other Fly Fishers here? what about Fly tiers?
I used to fly fish and tie poor looking flies.
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Still pay my SDAC subs, but haven’t been out for a couple of years. My fly tying box is padlocked….and I think I’ve lost the d@mn key!
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I learnt to fly fish from books and practice (on a field) at about age 12-13, and did some every year fpr about 10 years. My original rod was split cane, from Woolworths(!), then with a matured endowmentI bought a new one, hollow fibreglass, but actually not as good as the Woolies one. I still have the glass one, and flies and a couple of reels loaded with line that I haven’t used for 45-50 years as I haven’t had the heart to throw out, thinking one day I’ll have time to pick up again - though I doubt the line would be any good now. But I never fished for “sport” (not cnvinced there’s anything sporting about hooking a fish), eating everything I caught unless too small. And I’ve never tied a fly.
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J R Hartley?
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No! The name Crabtree rings a bell?
That’s the one!
I think you may have missed the joke. 
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So it seems! What dd I miss? I recalled the TV ad nothing else. Googling now tells me it was fictional, and that there was later a book on fly fishing authored under that pseudonym - a more than two decades after I learnt.
My introduction was Izaak Walton, followed by Crabtree.
Before I could actually go fishing I had a task. My uncle moved jobs and was in digs, his landlady was clearing out and gave him a six foot long wrapped bundle. She reckoned it had been there since the early 50s. Inside, half a dozen split cane rods, three wooden reels and canvas rolls of hooks and flies. Crash DIY course in silk whipping of joints and rings, regluing some fungus damaged sections, varnishing. Sadly the summer holidays ended before I mastered fly tying.
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