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3. A bit of my experience

Here are the masters that attended:

Back Row: Lance Hidy, Bob Kern, Ray Tucker, Chris Stewart, Bill Shuck, Bob Dietz, and Tim Didas.
Front Row: William Anderson, Allen McGee, Jim Slattery, Mark Libertone, John Shaner, Vicki Shadlock, Doug Duvall. Photo by Jim Krul.


Here's Jim Slattery and I. They were taking so many photos of us we felt like superstars.


This was an extra bonus. That is Joe Fox, Jim, Mary Dette and myself at Dette's Fly Shop. Joe is Mary's Grandson.

It was Great,

Mark

Thanks, Mark. For those of us who couldn't attend, this peek into your trip is a treat. Glad to see you looking well and having fun.

Mark,

Now here we go!

I was wondering when you would get home and post something. It must of been a great trip for you. I know you are suppose to smile for the camera, but I bet you wore that smile for the whole weekend. :) It's good to see that your friend Jim make it as well.

Good stuff, man! I wish I could of been there,

Spence

I was thinking about you this afternoon. I was invited by some friends from a local TU chapter to visit a fly shop that had unfortunately gone under...We were given a couple hours to pick over stuff and everything was half off...I loaded up on hooks...:) When my wife heard about the trip, before I headed out, she said, "Like you need more stuff, mister!" It wasn't a shop that had been in business for long so no great accidental finds of pre-offshore Hardy's or anything like that...:)

Hi,
Yes the trip was great! Our tying exhibition at the museum was a smash. We had great crowds, and met many fly fishermen interested in these flies and their history. Lance is Vern "Pete" Hidy's son. He had tons of stuff from his father and Jim Leisenring. Many original flies of these two men were there with him. I got to thumb through Pete's fly book and look through his personal notebook to see all the wonderful materials and information he collected. Lance is compiling a new book that will use all the old material from original books plus many new photos of materials and artifacts he has. He is also featuring modern flymph fly tiers, myself included.

As you see, we had a good bunch of tiers, there. The line up included Allen McGee who is author of a really nice book Tying And Fishing The Soft-Hackle Nymphs. John Shaner is a rep from Hardy and Greys and he gave a great PowerPoint on soft-hackles-history and use. Jim Krul, Museum, director said he'd never seen such a great turn-out.

William Anderson has a great site on these flies as well: http://www.williamsfavorite.com/ He is a super fly tier and also will be featured in Lance's book.

When Jim Slattery and I came together it was like the meeting of Leisenring and Hidy. We were like Brittany Spears- there were so many cameras clicking.

Later, I met with Jim who was staying with Joe and Mary. Mary is the last of the great Catskill based fly tying team of her dad, Walt, and mom, Winnie. They are part of Catskill Fly Fishing History and are enshrined at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. Joe is Mary's grandson and a pretty good fly tier as well. (Spence-I must confess, I purchased two great pieces this weekend- a beautiful Pale Watery Dun hen neck and a Coturnix quail skin from Joe. Nice stuff. Also picked up 3 spools of Bennichi 12/0 tying thread. It's really fine, but strong. (Hans uses it a lot.)

It was a great time and good medicine.

Bad medicine-maybe- but I started a new chemo regimen yesterday. They had to switch medicine as the first stuff wasn't doing it's job. Dealing with new side effects. Maybe I'll loose my hair-but as you can see from the photos, their isn't much to worry about.

Mark

Mark, so I guess no one was using a dubbing loop tool during the event. :-)

Jim always lectures me about using my dubbing loop tool instead of using my knee and Pearsall's thread to make the body.

I am glad you guys had a wonderful time and I trully hope and pray the medicine rids you of the cancer.

John,
There was a good number of people demonstrating using the Clark's dubbing block for spinning bodies. Jim did demonstrate the pant-leg technique as he interpreted it from Leisenring. Good stuff!

Mark

You got to buy something, right! ;)

I may have told you this story before, but my wife and I were in Italy in 1996. Her cousin was, for two terms (ten years total) the president of the UN's World Food Program...she's a professor at Syracuse, your old haunt, these days...The headquarters is in Rome. One night I was joking about trying to find some Bennichi thread while I was in Italy and the next day her staff was calling around Rome trying to find some place where I could get some...I think they are actually from the north around Milan where the fashion industry of Italy is...

I did get a cool Swiss Army knife out of the visit with the UN's World Food Program's logo on it. :)

I second John's remarks, mister...I know you don't much like talking about your struggles over the past couple years, but for those who know, this story of yours and the chance you had this past weekend has given us a great deal of joy...If I had the deciding vote, I'd say it was the best damn report all year on old TroutNut! :)

Hang in there pal! Yours and my hair has been heading south for the past two decades...In the mid-90's when my nephew and I had season tickets for the junior Wings...A friend of mine admitted that he would look for my bald spot to find us in the lower bowl at Joe Louis...Oh well! What can we do? ;)

Spence