The video is blurry and the caption tells me it is 11 years old. The Good Doctor’s hairstyle hasn’t changed, but it seems his beetles have. A bit. I tie the originals anyway.
They look enough like the beetles I emptied out of my pestle and mortar set. I was about to make a mutton curry, and the tools of the trade sit under the light we leave on in the kitchen at night. So if you want beetles, or if you are making a curry; its best to empty the stash from the mortar. It is a wooden set which I bought from Kubela stores two decades back. They are aged, and emit a bouquet of rich spices.
The beetles glow gold under the lamp on my tying desk, and I decide they are a little more shiny than the carcasses that lie beside them, so I give them a stroke with a brown permanent marker.
It does dull them, but some copper tones won’t go away; like the memory of the bottle label with the kid’s bikini pulled down by a pup to reveal the extent of the tan.
Some things aren’t cool any more. Like tanning, the original beetle without rubber legs, hairstyles and eleven year old videos that only ever got 400 views.
But the glow of a copper tone lives within, like the soft warm light from a fly-tyers lamp. I note that I am tying under the same lamp as Hans was in that old video. I note that the trout are still eating copper beetles. My Pestle and mortar still work, and so will the beetle, even though I replaced the hackle with biot legs.
Kubela stores isn’t Cabelas. It won’t ever have a website, and is still there, with bicycles and pots and bags of mealie meal. Last week I used that new, fangled Perdigon material from Semperfli to rib my Pheasant Tail Nymphs, but my curry recipe hasn’t changed. Nylon is ousting fluorocarbon for a comeback, and trout may yet be cool again.
Last night’s curry was superb by the way. It’s the same old recipe from way back.
Leftovers heated up for lunch today were even better.
I can’t wait to try the beetles.