The laptop I use to write this column sits on a desk beside an old, boxy suitcase. The case sits open with a fly-tying vise at the ready tucked behind a magnifying light and beside an assortment of tools from fine scissors to bodkins, bobbins, hair stacker and hackle pliers.

One pocket is stuffed with feathers from peacocks, golden and ring-necked pheasants, geese, ducks, and prized roosters. In another awaits deer, elk, bear, caribou and moose fur patches in various colours and shades. Rather neatly in their place sit hooks in a wide assortment of sizes, threads, silk floss, dubbing material, wire and anything else that could be used to tie a fly.

January tends to be down time in the life of a fly fisher, although it doesn’t have to be. In Southern Alberta, when the weather’s right – above freezing – open waters in the Oldman and Crowsnest Rivers offer opportunities to cast a nymph or streamer to trout usually holding at the bottom of pools.

Generally, though, January is a time to prepare for spring, summer and fall fishing by updating fly boxes.

I had fly-fished for 20 years before I started tying. Fishing was pretty chancy – I’d catch fish, but it always seemed more out of luck than skill.

Then, one Christmas, I was given a basic fly-tying kit. My first effort had a length of olive-coloured chenille wrapped around the shank of a ¾-inch hook shank and an orange feather wound sloppily near the hook eye. I had no idea which stage of an insect it was representing. I had attached the materials so loosely they slipped around the hook.

 It was ugly, but it was the first of hundreds of flies I’ve tied over the past 20 years or so.

The real tying started at the Lethbridge Fish and Game Association building on 9^th Avenue S. under the patient eye of Terry Psaltis, who started teaching the art of fly-tying in the ‘60s. This is the first January in at least 40 years Terry hasn’t offered tips on how to get just the right amount of tension on the thread, the difference between hen and rooster hackle, woolly bugger and woolly worm.

“There just didn’t seem to be the interest,” he says, despite some promotion among association members and beyond.

A shame. Terry has a lifetime of knowledge about the art, applied in the field mainly at Duck Lake in Montana, although he’ll use his flies on rivers too. He has also been a regular contributor of flies to auction off at Trout Unlimited dinners.

With his help, I started to tie flies that actually resembled various stages of insects like mayflies, caddis flies, stoneflies and midges fish eat. I also started to catch more fish. His favorite remains “one that catches fish.”

That the Fish and Game “hut” tradition may have ended doesn’t mean fly-tying is not alive and well. The torch may have passed to The Chinook Waters Fly Fishing Club led by Blair Spence and Kelly Oikawa at their regular beer and flies nights at the Wooden Kilt pub.