And there he is. The mad scientist. Nutty professor. All with respect and terms of endearment. You've probably seen that picture before. I went back into the hardrives to see what pics I had during a visit out to Jim's in 2013 that I never posted. It was then and there were I got my first glimpse of how an innovator works. Jim tied...a lot. He studied his flies, tweaked his flies, and swam
his flies. Then he repeated. He had more flies than I could count and he could ever fish. They were hanging, they were in fly boxes, and they were in bins. Before he passed in 2018 he hooked up a lot of people with materials, hooks, and flies. To return to the laboratory today there is presence you feel when enter that corner. An unfinished fly sits in the vice. There are some of the normal things you find at someone's tying station, and then there are things, plenty of them, that you just shake your head at after you pike them up. Many times I said to myself, "What in the hell did he do with that?"
Lets just pick one thing, airline tubing. He has some. He probably has enough to circle the earth. Now it's pretty much useless to another tyer, but if you decifer Jim's flies, it starts to make sense. And yesterday with Laura's blessing that's what I did. I picked a few off the wall and decoded them. I held materials back exposing the inner core. I searched in the bins to see how he stored the materials, then I would match them up and photograph them. These aren't your, well some actually are, your expensive display shadow box flies, like say those fancy salmon flies, these are utility flies. He tied them and tweaked them to make flies that catch fish. Isn't that the goal? So while the processes may be unorthodox to most tyers, I am learning how and why he did things. So let's look.
The above fly was most likley tied as a demonstration or process fly, a practice fly. A tad colorful for me, but I am sure a pike or other long fish might like to eat it. But looking inside I could see how he used tubing, wire, plastic balls, and cut plastic sheeting, the same material as the Pulse Disc, in it's design.
