THE OUTDOORS : Flies by Night : Polly Rosborough Works Late Hours to Tie Up Loose Ends

CHILOQUIN, Ore. —  A full moon has slowed the fishing along the Williamson River. The trout have been feeding in the moonlight--kindred spirits to Polly Rosborough, who says he’s a night person, too.

“I don’t own a TV,” he said. “I wouldn’t have one on the place because it would interfere with my working hours.”

He lives alone in a mobile home tucked into the pines behind Judy Carothers’ Williamson River Anglers gift and tackle shop about 30 miles north of Klamath Falls, Ore., along U.S. 97 on the north side of the river.

Rosborough swears the Williamson is as good as any fly stream in North America, and who is to argue with a man who has been tantalizing the trout there with his own hand-tied flies for more than 60 years?

At 86, his life is tied up in two books, a few nostalgic pictures on the walls, a small back room filled with sacks and boxes of tying supplies and an eight-legged, solid oak rolltop desk. It’s there that he has produced the countless thousands of masterpieces that are scattered throughout the world among anglers and--more recently and more profitably--collectors.

“If I find anybody fishin’ with these, I’ll take his chewin’ tobacco away from him,” he said, showing some exquisite samples. “These are made to look at.

“There’s no difference. I tie ‘em all the same quality. But if they’re made for displaying for collectors, I want ‘em to stay that way. If they want a dozen of one pattern to fish with, I’ll tie ‘em--but they won’t cost ‘em as much.”

Rosborough and a handful of other famous fly tyers are happy to pocket the difference because in the last five years their craft has emerged as an art form.

“There weren’t any of these fly shops then (when he started tying flies),” Rosborough said. “You went into a store and they had a set list of flies, and the biggest part of ‘em were all imported from England. You could buy ‘em 15 cents apiece or two for a quarter. Can you imagine what those fly tyers were making? About two bits an hour.”

Forty years ago, Rosborough wasn’t doing much better. On one wall of his mobile home is a framed copy of an old advertisement, listing his flies for 50 cents each.

“A number of years back, this guy wanted me to tie this 50-(fly) series,” Rosborough said. “He had ‘em framed.”

Rosborough was astonished. The man sold the whole frame of flies for much more than Rosborough could have sold them for individually through local shops.

“You know what I’m gettin’ for those now?” he asked. “Three dollars apiece.”

Now Rosborough has an arrangement with Fred Latour, a retired cabinet maker in Lolo, Mont., who pays him $150 for a set of 50 flies, frames them and sells them to collectors.

“He has sold a half-dozen at $700-$900 apiece,” Rosborough said. “I get 15% of that on top of the $150, so I’m gettin’ $5.50 for every fly I tie. So you can’t blame me for lettin’ the stores here go to hell.”

In mass-production mode, Rosborough ties six flies of a given pattern in 45 minutes.

He used to be faster but said, “I don’t have the stamina any more.”

He’s just happy that he lived to see the golden age of fly tying.

“You don’t have to hunt orders anymore,” he said. “It’s nice to be famous in your own time.”

Perhaps nobody has been tying flies as long--certainly very few as well--as Ernest Herbert Rosborough.

“And I didn’t start tying until I was 26. All of the tyers that were tying when I started are gone. I’ve developed about 60 of my own patterns--streamers, steelhead, bucktails, wets, dries and nymphs.”

To the knowledgeable eye, each one bears his signature.

“One thing is they’re (tied) left-handed,” Rosborough said. “Unless they’re tinsel bodies, they’re bound to be fuzzy. You develop a finish, like the finish on a Mercedes is better than the finish on a Ford. It becomes a trademark. I can pick my flies out of a thousand other tyers.

Rosborough is best known for his simulated nymphs which, contrary to a dry fly, are designed to work beneath the surface where there are larger fish. In 1965 he wrote a book, “Tying and Fishing the Fuzzy Nymphs,” which is in its fourth edition and regarded as a standard for serious fly fishermen.

In the book, Rosborough explains how to tie a certain fly. Despite a limited formal education, he is an amateur entomologist and knows all of the scientific names for insect patterns.

“I’d been winding rods and fly fishing since 1922,” he said. “I started fly tying because I have a scientific, inquisitive mind. I’m not satisfied with the status quo. I’ve gotta always try to improve something.

“So when I couldn’t buy the flies to imitate the insects here or to last more than two or three fish, I was in the barber shop one evening and (the barber) said, ‘Why don’t you tie your own?’ ”

Rosborough took the advice and either found or built the necessary tools.

One was an adjustable stainless steel vise handmade to Rosborough’s specifications. He had 60 made and has sold 40 for $150--far more expensive than a standard tyer’s vise.

But, Rosborough said, it’s the “fastest vise in the world.”

Rosborough hasn’t had a bad life for a kid who left home when he was 16 and has “made my own way ever since.

“I never had any money all my life. It was just a case of waitin’ for the next payday.

“But in the last five years, since I’ve been sewing these sets, I’ve built up $14,000 in the money market, $3,000 cash in the bank, and I’m gonna get a $3,000 royalty check about the 10th of this month from the book.”

After leaving his home in the Arkansas Ozarks in 1919, Rosborough worked his way around the harvest and logging camps of the American and Canadian West, picking up his nickname along the way.

“Polly, (like) the parrot, ‘cause I was always talkin’. It’s been a good trade name.”

He settled in Chiloquin and was married once, for 13 years, but a lot of water has flowed down the Williamson since. On the walls of his work room and his parlor are old photos of a young girl with a serene and serious face.

“That young lady there was the finest fly tyer I’ve ever seen,” Rosborough said. “I started her working when she was 18, and she’ll be 40 her next birthday.”

Her name is Carol, and Rosborough taught her to tie flies.

“We were deeply in love. I was 47 years older, or we would have gotten married. I didn’t have the heart to do it because I felt it would destroy her. Her father and grandmother would have raised hell.

“I let her go to find somebody that would love her, give her children, and I couldn’t have asked for greater success.”

Rosborough has hundreds of friends, including the entire population of Chiloquin (750). He works daily from noon to 9, except when he finds time for fishing or prospecting.

“I never give myself a day off just to goof off,” he said.

He also is an amateur mineralogist, with high hopes for a recent silver find in the Oregon Cascades.

Next year he will be recognized in a calendar featuring 12 of the top American fly tyers. As a pioneer of a distinguished profession, he someday will be elected to the Fly Fishing Federation Hall of Fame, his name revered forever.

“That is the most valuable thing I have,” he said. “We’re just beginning to be appreciated.”