The Fly Tiers and Liars Guils: Motley crew of freinds share good times, expertise
By BEN PIERCE Chronicle Outdoors
The one and only self propelled weighted beadhead flashback parachute rubberlegged caddis sucking leach emerger verigated cripple pupae fly.
Rule No. 1: All guild members will be considered either master or apprentice tiers. Apprentices can never question, criticize or show disrespect for masters. Master Tier Rieger will decide when you have attained master status.
So states the first of 15 slightly-revised bylaws governing the motley crew of Belgrade and Bozeman fly tiers known in some backwater fly-fishing circles as The Fly Tiers and Liars Guild.
Founded, by among others, Rollie Rieger of Belgrade, the group meets weekly through the winter and spring in a disheveled hovel behind Rieger’s garage. The walls are cover with odds and ends collected from a lifetime spent fly-fishing. Piles of fly-tying supplies litter two benches surrounded by 16 worn chairs. A tap drilled through the side of an aging refrigerator supplies the beer.
Rieger, a former athletic director and assistant principle at Belgrade High School, relishes his role of supreme status. He sits at the varsity tying table. A treasure trove of fly-tying supplies line the wall behind the Grand Master’s tying bench – dozens of spools of thread, all manner of copper wire, hordes of hackles, feathers, hooks, beads and biots. It’s all been amassed over the course of 20-plus years tying with the guild.
At the junior varsity tying table sit guild members Mark MacLeod of Belgrade, Jeff Rader of Bozeman, Rick Ramler of Belgrade and soft-hackle fly-tying legend Sylvester Nemes.
“I don’t think there are many places like this left in the United States,” Nemes says, “where guys get together and tie like this.”
“There is a reason for that Syl,” Rader replies. “This is damn near a criminal enterprise.”
The whole room erupts in laughter.
The Fly Tiers and Liars Guild has existed as a semi-underground fly-tying enterprise in one form or another for more than two decades. The guild’s motto is Quabdo omni flunkus piscatus … When all else fails, go fishing.
“The first year, year-and-a-half, we’d meet at somebody’s house and go to somebody else’s house the next week,” Rieger said while tying on Tuesday. “But after we started coming down here with a nice warm fire and the fact that we could make a mess and not worry about it, we have probably been tying down here for 21 years.”
That, and the fact that Rieger’s wife puts up with it.
On the door to the guild’s lair in Rieger’s garage is a photograph of its mascot – a self propelled weighted beadhead flashback parachute rubberlegged caddis sucking leach emerger verigated cripple pupae fly … size 22. It’s a wild looking concoction that reflects the guild’s values of ingenuity, experimentation and enjoyment at the tying bench.
That same spirit prompted the group to change its status as a “club” to the classier-sounding “guild” a few years back after some members expressed concern.
“I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member,” said MacLeod, borrowing from Groucho Marx.
The Fly Tiers and Liars Guild is open by invitation only, making it highly exclusive for guild members. Occasionally guests are invited through a friend of a friend when there’s an open spot at either the varsity or JV tables. Over the years members have fallen off and been replaced. Rieger said there’s a core group of about a dozen or so tiers that have been attending meetings since the guild’s infancy.
Everybody brings their own tools with tying supplies provided by the guild. A weekly donation of $4 or $5 is expected to be placed cheerfully in the money jar by all attendees to cover costs and replenish the guild’s cache.
“The beer fund is a different thing all together,” Rieger said. “If you want to drink we charge $30 at the beginning of the season and if the beer runs out we beg for more.”
Tying begins in December and runs through June. The guild assembles a list of flies that members are interested in tying and Rieger outlines a schedule. The tying docket is structured in such a way that fly-tying materials required by one week’s fly transition well to the following week. It is a strategy gleaned over the years that minimizes the amount of necessary cleanup, Rieger said.
The guild starts each season with the big, ugly flies like bitch creek nymphs and wooly buggers and gradually moves toward smaller nymphs and eventually dry flies as the fishing season heats up in the spring.
“It is a learning curve each year,” said Mark Salo of Belgrade from his spot at the varsity table. “As the year progresses we get smaller and smaller.”
Tying starts at Rieger’s place around 6:30 p.m. and carries on until 9:30 p.m. As the night grows old the barbs get sharper and the laughter more boisterous.
On Tuesday, one ill-informed guest journalist brought up the touchy subject of tying-material distribution between the varsity and JV tables.
It’s a sore spot for members of the JV squad.
“It is definitely biased,” Rader said of the perceived uneven distribution and quality of tying materials between the varsity and JV groups. “On a good night we go get Rollie’s dog and invite him down here so we can snip some hair and stuff to supplement these meager materials.”
“There is no equity in this room between the two tables,” Ramler added. “There was a guy from the varsity table (sitting at the JV table the other week). He was looking for materials. He couldn’t find anything. He didn’t know how to tie down here.”
That prompted stringent denials from the varsity tiers – the barbs flying wildly.
“I tell you what, they’re just a bunch of guys that are into fishing and we share that,” Rieger said. “We harass each other unmercifully around here. It’s a lot of good fun.”
Members of The Fly Tiers and Liars Guild exchange good-natured barbs on Tuesday:
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