The other day I came across a brown leather wallet that was designed to hold flies for fishing. Somewhere along the line I had placed it inside a Purdy’s Chocolates box – apparently for safe keeping.
Stamped on the outside of the wallet, in small gold letters, was the name Wheatley of England. Wheatley has long had a reputation for manufacturing fine quality fly boxes. Inside were half a dozen hand-tied, bucktail streamer flies made with real polar bear hair. According to the note that I wrote and placed in the box, they had been tied some time back in the late 1950s by one Florence Cox of Vancouver. Also in the box was a photocopy of a column by outdoor writer Lee Straight, dated July 15, 1960. Straight wrote for the Vancouver Sun. He was also a close friend of Roderick Haig-Brown.
According to the article, Mrs. Cox lived in New Westminster – on Edinburgh Street to be precise. She tied flies that were sought after and highly prized by anglers in the Vancouver area. Hers were the type of flies that were kept under the counter, only to be shown to a select few – those in the know or anglers who were considered ‘worthy.’ Mrs. Cox was short in stature, standing a modest five-foot, three-inches or so in height. She was one of 14 children. She grew up in Rudditch, England, a town rich in fly fishing history and learned to ‘dress’ flies at the age of 15 as an apprentice at the famous Alcock’s of England.
Mrs. Cox was a well-known fly tier in her day. She would have been pushing 90 years old back in the ’50s when these particular flies were purchased. All six flies are in relatively good shape considering they were tied more than 50 years ago, and appear to have been used at the most but once. The knot from the leaders they had been tied to are still intact on several of the flies. There are three red and whites, a pale green and white, a mauve and white, and one that looks to be a streamer version of a Mickey Finn. All were tied with a silver tinsel wrap, dyed buck tail fur and white polar bear on #2 sproat hooks for salmon fishing.
Reading the article and looking at Mrs. Cox’s flies in the leather Wheatley wallet, I could just imagine some angler walking into a tackle store somewhere in Vancouver back then, dressed in a brown Harris tweed jacket and beige cotton trousers, sporting a wide brimmed felt hat that looked uncharacteristically “soiled” for the rest of his attire. He would be well known to the shop owner and clerks.
“Hi there,” he might say, “I’m heading up onto the Cowichan River tomorrow morning to do some salmon fishing – got any of those special bucktails?”
The shopkeeper would glance over at one of the clerks and nod. The clerk would then reach down and, from underneath the counter, bring out a wooden tray with an assortment of exquisitely tied polar bear bucktail streamer flies.
“You mean these?” the clerk would ask, presenting the tray as if it were the crown jewels.
“Are those the ones,” he pauses in mid-sentence to feast his eyes, “tied by Florence Cox?”
“Yes, sir” replies the shop-keeper. “These are the best polar bear streamers you can buy – at any price.”
The angler does not even ask the price. He knows they are worth their weight in gold when the fish are biting.
“Have a good day on the water,” the shop owner says as the angler rushes out the door.
I think it would only be proper to have the six streamers mounted in a shadow box frame, with the name Florence Cox on a little brass plaque at the bottom. After all, they are worth their weight in gold.