No. 9 The Spirit Fly - an excerpt from the book Syd Glasso
No. 9. The Spirit Fly. Tied by Syd Glasso circa early 1980s.
In 2018, Charlie Brumwell, Steve Hanson and I were sorting through Ron Grantham's fishing room and in one of the drawers I spotted a small plastic box containing a fly with no documentation and said to my friends "that is Syd Glasso's Spirit Fly." Glasso gave that to Bob Taylor sometime in the late '70s or early '80s.
Ron Schiefke and I helped Taylor's widow dispose of all his fishing stuff. I wondered what had happened to his Glasso flies. Later a friend told me that Taylor sold his fly plate with the Glasso flies to a collector. I assumed that the Spirit Fly was part of that sale. However, I was not surprised to find the Spirit Fly in Grantham's stuff.
On one of our Bella Coola trips a few years back Ron and I were talking about Taylor maybe because it was Bob and I who decided in the early 2000s to return to this river to fish after a fifteen year hiatus. For some reason Taylor's Glasso flies came up and, in particular, The Spirit Fly. Ron confirmed that Bob sold the collection but that he gave Ron the Spirit Fly.
Too, on my last visit with Ron a couple of days before he died, we shook hands as I left, and he was trying to get some words out about his fishing things. I had a hard time figuring out what he said but Ron's wife said he wanted me to help dispose of his stuff. I expect knowing that I would find the Spirit Fly and see that it gets a new good home along with many other of his fly-fishing things.
No. 3 - Orange Heron. Tied by Syd Glasso 1968.
The Blacker Spirit Fly is photogenic and before it moved on to its next home, I took some pictures using a Hardy gut leader package as the backdrop. In his book The Art of Fly Making (1855) written and published by "Blacker, Himself," as it says on the book title page, there is a painting of the Spirit Fly with text opposite
1. I shall name this THE SPIRIT FLY, in consequence of its numerously jointed body, its fanciful, florid, and delicate appearance. Its colours will be found most enticing to the fish, and is the sister fly to Ondine, in "The Book of the Salmon" by "Empemera." (p. 105)
Ron, in another zip lock bag, had a note saying the Sprit Fly was valuable and to look after it. I followed up with Diane Grantham about what to do with this fly. She ended up donating it to the fly-fishing collection of Western Washington University in BeJJingham. Another Glasso-dressed Spirit Fly can be seen on Plate VI, p. 187, in Joseph D. Bates Jr. The Art of the Salmon Fly (1987).
