Andy Dear | Monday, 31 October 2022
Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm
---Earl Nightingale
This week we'll start a short series that explores a few of my now-deceased friend Dr. John Tebbett's fly patterns. John was a rabid Tarpon enthusiast, who fished for the species at an extremely high level for almost two decades, so most of these patterns will be centered around Tarpon/Salwater flies. Having said that, many of them will cross over into freshwater applications for Bass, Pike etc... We'll start off the series with a subset that John called " The Doctor Flies".
John was so successful that he won the Don Hawley Tarpon Invitational in 2001 with none other than Capt. Rob Fordyce on the pole, and several of these patterns played an integral role in that victory. John was incredibly passionate about many things in his life, and, it didn't matter whether it was photography, rod building, dirt bike racing, duck hunting, plastic surgery, flower arranging (yes you heard that right!) or fly tying, he became 110% dedicated to mastering whatever task he was engaged in.
When John turned his complete inventory of fly-tying tools and materials over to my son Jackson, he also included collection of large binders of information he had amassed over the years. Much of it was documentation that was handwritten by him, some of it was accompanied by photographs, and the rest were articles and clippings from various fly fishing magazines dating back to the 1970s. He was INCREDIBLY meticulous in his documentation, not just with fly patterns, but with everything in his life, and this habit, among others is something I have tried to integrate into my own daily routine.
As we go through these patterns, keep in mind that many of these were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, and although they may still catch plenty of fish, they are not as en vogue as they once were among the younger generation of anglers. Regardless, I hope you enjoy seeing a few of my friend's flies. And along the way, I'll try to throw in a few stories that convey his "sense of humor"....although most of them are not fit for public consumption!
Hope you all are having a great week,
Andy
