Fips-Mouche is over and Team USA concludes this year’s World Fly Fishing Championship with a best ever eighth place finish . Overall winner was the Czech Team, with New Zealand and France as the 2nd and 3rd place finishers.

But it’s the “unsung hero” of the US Team that needs the love, some nameless fellow sitting in a stuffy hotel room tieing flies for everyone else. All them heroic anglers popping champagne corks, and the fly tyer is left to toil in obscurity. I sure hope one of them stalwarts brought him a cheese sandwich from the buffet.

It’s an old story – “Jocks take the Prom Queen to the dance”, but the bespectacled guy that helped with the Chemistry final is dateless and forgotten.

In 2005 Loren Williams from New York was chosen as the first fly tier on Team USA. He traveled to Sweden to participate. Prior to leaving he tied over 1,000 flies based on intensive research on what his team members would need. Weather conditions just prior to contest demanded all new patterns which had to be identified, designed and tied…

…Loren has subsequently decided to try out for the team as an angler for the 2006 Championship in Portugal.

I can’t find any mention of this year’s tyer but imagine his predicament; a weeklong trip to the finest trout water on Earth, and if he reaches for a rod, his hand gets slapped…

I couldn’t do it – and I love my country more’n most…

If some fellow burst into my hotel room exclaiming, “Bob says the Wooly Buggers have a tiny bit too much yellow, needs more lead, and wants 3 dozen right away!” I would pull on my vest and retort, “Tell Bob he’s a prima donna and him and his tailing loop can park it where the Sun don’t shine..”

Indentured servitude always was a contract for seven years dozen – and once on the water it’s always been Everyman-for-hisself, no?

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