After reading this entry some of you may claim or call me a ‘cheap skate’. Hey, in my opinion, I’ve been known to be frugal (aka being resourceful and thrifty… yea, thrifty!) Never mind all the scrap pieces that I cut away as I tie a fly and have the thought “Should I save that to use later?”. Never mind all the shopping bags – paper and plastic that take up space in our closet/s. Never mind the Pole Barn full of stuff that I claimed when my father passed away in 1990 and have never, ever, used. Let’s not be too hasty to criticize as I’m sure at the very least SOME OF YOU can relate or at least think about your situation and can come up with something that you probably should not have saved and it takes up space in your dwelling.

Ok, enough, so I have one of these situations here (at least one that I’m willing to share with the rest of the world). We like to get some take-out food from a local restaurant and it is accompanied with a pickle! They make the best sub sandwich in the county as of July 2024 in my opinion. Pastrami Joe’s in Marshall, Michigan – a nice little restaurant that you should check out if you’re in the neighborhood.

Well they have been accompanying their excellent sandwiches with a dill pickle since I can remember. They use to use a sandwich bag that the pickle was neatly placed into and then – these WERE the kind of bags that had that ‘fold over’ feature in the bag (versus a zip-lock type) – you get the idea right?

Well, some time ago they started to put the pickle into a bag that has the zip lock feature to close it. Only, the bag has this really nice slender, long shape to it. I’ve seen various fly tying materials sold and stored into this sort of bag in the past. For instance, have any of you bought some Z-Lon or various yarns used for posting parachute flies and the material is in a long-ish slender sort of bag? I have!

So, when we started to get pickles accompanying our sandwiches – wrapped in long-ish, slender zip-lock closable bags, I took notice! I said to the better half “This would be perfect for storing Z-lon into!” I have a bundle of it at the place in Slate Run that NEEDS a home in a bag and I think the bag/s came to me. I think these bags have sought me out and presented themselves as a solution to a problem I had – storing a loose bunch of Z-lon in amongst all the others neatly stored Z-lon. No longer will there be Z-lon shame or ridiculing of the ‘bagless’ one from all the other neatly stored Z-lon!

So, I have taken these perfect little bags, quantity 2 to date, and have proceeded to wash them with a high concentration of dish-soap and thoroughly rinsed them out – at least a couple of times. But the darned things still have the faint wiff of dill pickle!

So, if the trout can smell really well and they DON’T like pickles, next spring when I tie some parachutes with this particular Z-lon wing, I should not get any pictures of fish caught on the ‘Pickle-fly’ I suppose. (but my goodness am I having a hard time throwing these things away!)

If you are a fly fisherman and a fly tyer, I’m betting you can relate. Since we’ve been tying flies we never look at a plastic bag, packaging material on a kid’s toy, a piece of yarn or ribbon from a sewing kit quite the same as we did before!

Oh, and if you are wondering what that thing is above the bag, it’s my attempt at trying to make cicada wings. THAT will be for another time if they turn out alright. Otherwise…

Till we see each other again,….. UB