Well, it’s been a while FAOL. I’ve been away for far too long and today cleaning out some old things brought back so many memories. I’m Nick Nalbone, I was last around here years ago, back when JC was around and this was an awesome place. I remember waking up at the beginning of every week to see the new FOTW and articles. I would get up early just so that I had time to read them before school. That was back in maybe 5th and 6th grade, I think I was 12 when I submitted my own FOTW the Pull Back nymph.
Anyway, I’m now about to go into my senior year of highschool. I spent this past weekend working on college applications. Our AC unit also decided that this heatwave was an ideal time to cut out, so I spent my weekend trying to fix that as well. That got me into the garage, searching around for tools I know I had… once… But what started as a search for the multimeter or some such device ended with me sorting tackle, cleaning and oiling reels, and practicing my casting in the driveway a bit. I realized that my old grumman 15’ aluminum canoe had been sitting up in the garage for far too long. There were cobwebs in the seats with our nets and paddles propped up inside. The plastic baits in my tackle boxes had long since melted and thawed into an unrecognizable lump of synthetics, hooks had rusted, monofilament had turned yellow and brittle, and what was once a perfectly organized array of hooks, sinkers, snaps and swivels had turned into a haphazard mess of sharp points and dulling metals.
One thing remained perfect though, my fly boxes. My dries were still perky and stiff in the hackles, my nymphs still shaggy and “buggy.” Time had not harmed these, even as I neglected them through years as my life moved away from fishing and towards highschool, girls, sports, jobs, and other concerns.
But even though I had neglected fishing for so long, it changed me and my entire life. FAOL was a huge part of that. Everyone here was a role model to me. Some day I wanted to be able to spin a bass bug like I saw them here, or tie a classic salmon fly as perfectly as some of the members here did. FAOL showed me what good people really were. JC and LF, after a few exchanges of tips and my first (unfortunately only) FOTW, I can only assume that the “random monthly drawings” were somewhat rigged. I “won” from them a wasatch tool kit. It was perfect, in a beautiful box with laser etched insect life styles on the lid and perfect foam cutouts for each tool. Everyone here was great to me, from fly swaps and materials trade bins, to meeting some members at an expo in somerset NJ that I dragged my dad to.
I trusted people at FAOL. I was young and naive, but it wasn’t a place that I worried about. Hell it wasn’t a place my parents worried about. And man was I a kid. I forget what my original user name was, but at one point or another I was banned for having my address in a post one too many times. That was tough, not being able to be a part of this community anymore, but it was a lesson I had to learn. I had been warned, and I didnt listen to it and the consequence was there. So thank you for that.
FAOL also was instrumental in my relationship with my dad. We didn’t really do things before fishing. I wasn’t a big sports guy, and we just didn’t really interact as he struggled to save a dying flame of a company he dreamed of starting, burying the family into debt that even now haunts us. I didn’t realize any of this at the time, but I think fishing was spectacular for my Dad. I gave him an excuse to get away from his computer screen, out of the office, away from bills and paperwork. Actually at the time I sometimes thought I was a pain, begging to go fishing this weekend, for the ok to load up the minivan with way too much gear, prep each rod and reel with our first rig for the day.
I would prep everything, load the car, put our homemade blocks on the car roofrack for the canoe, even set the coffee pot for the morning. Then we would haggle over 5:30 or 6:00, when to get up and get going. It was great. We didn’t even need to talk while we were fishing, that was the beauty of it. When we had something to talk about, we did, and when we didn’t, we just fished. Fish like quiet.
I even went through all of my tying materials tonight. I have since moved into my big brothers room when he left for college, and my tying desk became a computer desk. My vises were packed away, and my hackles and furs boxed up. But everything came out tonight. My HMH spartan vise on a pedestal base was still smooth as ever, my renzetti traveler still perfectly balanced and had the same matte finish, beautiful in its simplicity and function-dictating-form construction. I remembered my awesome experience with Conranch hackles, Denny sent me a few extras with an order, and to this day that was one of the most exciting boxes I’ve ever opened.
FAOL and fly tying and fishing taught me about money. I literally learned the value of a dollar hook by hook, tool by tool, feather by feather. I saved up forever to buy my vises or rods and reels. I learned a lot of economics and talked about a lot of things you usually wouldn’t with a 12 year old, but that was all my dad and I had to talk about, it was what he knew, and it was something I could nod my head at and occasionally comment on. I learned a lot about gas prices, global conflict, government, and listening. I learned to listen, to search, to look for what I needed until I found it. I listened to my dad, I listened to the members here. I learned to ask good questions, when I found a problem, I learned to find an answer, or even better, to find someone who could find me an answer.
Even through all of this, I have to say that I have never caught a trout on a fly rod. I’m still looking to make that happen. Other fish sure, but never that mystical trout. I have boxes upon boxes of flies that I have tied, dries, wets, nymphs, streamers, I can tie nearly anything you throw at me. But none of them have caught, even hooked a trout. But that isn’t what matters. Not now anyway. Everything around fishing means so much more to me now. The huge efforts of hundreds of people to breed a perfect rooster, with just the right feather for one single fly to be perfect. The engineering that goes into the vises we use, that hold a hook someone over the age of 50 might struggle to see. A set of jaws that can hold that delicate wire like a bulldogs jaws, but rotate so perfectly, so smoothly, without ever letting that hook slip. That is complex engineering, that is a lot of time and money that goes into something so simple as catching a fish.
So thank you, I owe it to all of you. Everyone I met here supported me. I was young, I was careless and I loved fishing. I was treated like a peer, among all of you, most of you being at least my parents age. You all saw the value that fishing was really worth, and passed it on. I need to get back out on the water, I need to feel that tug of a fish on the line. I won’t ever be able to get that out of my mind, and some of those classic fish stories will be things that my dad and I will share forever, the two of us being the only ones who can verify our stories. (the best fish always come when there is no camera around, why is that?)
Again, Thank you. I’ve learned from you. I hope that everyone here, a community of good people all around can appreciate that.
Lets go fishing.
A good one at that.