Last spring, while making observations in my field book for Science on the Fly—a nonprofit that partners with anglers to sample their watersheds—I noticed a barn swallow, hanging lifeless from a tangled fly, 25 feet off the ground from the underside of a bridge. Its body is still there as I write this over a year later, and it’s a source of frustration. What I’ve come to realize is that we, as anglers, can be better about retrieving our lost flies and leaving eyesores and hazardous objects around our watersheds.

Admittedly, I wasn’t doing too much about it up until recently. In the wilderness, I always try to practice Leave No Trace principles, but sometimes that would conflict with the fishing. I didn’t want to spook fish or ruin a hole to retrieve a snag. If it was a fly that I broke off, I put effort into getting it back. But for flies lost by others, I’d only retrieve the obvious in-your-face tangles or the ones within an arm’s reach in trees. If they were in fishable condition, even better.

There is a spot I used to love to bring friends fishing for their first time. Just behind the fishing hole, two tall conifers shimmered like Christmas trees with Yellow Sallies, Mayhems, Copper Johns, parachute Adams, San Juan worms, indicators, split shot and tippet. My friends could fill their first box of flies by simply picking from the trees. But after seeing the swallow, my enthusiasm for free flies turned to disgust. All I see now is a generous bunch of lazy anglers who deserve a big lump of coal this year.  

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