Best Compliment on Fly Tying

My wife and I were gone for a week to Las Vegas. Our dog was left in the house. The neighbors would come and let him out the screen door for him to "do his business".

Our dog is smart. He can let himself back in using his paws to slide the screen door open. Problem is, he is not smart enough to slide it shut.

When we returned, the first thing I noticed was that the fly in my vise had been knocked "off kilter". Then, I saw on the pedestal base, a number of bird "poops".

Turns out, a local dove had followed the dog into the house and tried to eat the comparadun I had left in the vise!! It was pretty chewed up too.

I always feel complimented when a trout takes my flies, but this was worth washing the pedestal of my vise........

Very cute. Are you sure your dog didn't intentionally leave the screen door open to lure the bird in? The best I've had is a Kingfisher swooping down from a tree behind me and snatching my floating Mylar minnow off the water. He kept it in his beak from about 6 feet before he hit the end of the line and it was snatched out. Jim Smith

I caught a muskrat on the Costilla in the Valle Vidal in NM a couple of years ago. I was watching it cross the creek when it turned, swam about 15 feet downstream and grabbed my hopper. Quite a fight. The muskrat liked it better than the cutthroats did that day.

Joe

Very interesting story's :D

Somewhat related ---- I snagged a flying bat on a River Runt casting plug.

Got in trouble (more than once) as a kid "flyfishing" for bats. Was not the catching of the bats that bothered my grandmother, but rather drowning them in her rainbarrel. Seems she had a problem with bats in her drinking water... Hard to figure that one, eh? (she was Canadian)

My son had a rise from a muskrat on a local lake some years back. I think it scared him a bit! ;) Tippet broke before he had to land it on his float tube!

I have had a number of terns and other such birds take big smolt patterns.

Year before last I landed a very large lingcod and he had something sticking out of his mouth. They turned out to be gull wing tips. I decided I needed to release anything that would eat a gull!

But the best fly fishing compliment I ever got was from Polly Rosborough of "Fuzzy Nymph" fame about 35 years ago. Polly was a foot shorter than I am and he put a hand on my upper arm one day and said "Son, you cast farther, with less grace, than anyone I have ever seen before!"

bats and caddisflies

Attachment 11992

The imitation must be the female.