I once worked at a bakery and noticed how often the bakers would throw out perfectly good treats or send them home in a box with me at the end of my shift. I certainly didn’t complain, but it always confused me. These were items loyal customers would undoubtedly pay good money for. One day, I asked the owner and head baker why she kept tossing them. “They aren’t right,” she would admit, dumb-founded at her own stubbornness. After further prying, she said, somewhat embarrassed, it was her loyalty to “the code.” I accepted her answer and later came to understand that most humans are not in-herently born with a code. Codes are learned and developed over the span of a lifetime—through heartbreak, loss, panic, joy, connection and moments of deep shame and embarrassment. “The code” is a list of rules that cannot be broken, no matter how extraneous the circumstance. Those bakers were artists and, like any good artisan, maker or craftsperson, their list of failures often superseded their list of accolades and ac-complishments. When I first moved to the Florida Keys, I worked in a fly shop that was opening in Marathon and had the great pleasure of working with one such artisan: Jillian Tisdale. What fasci-nated me about Jillian immediately was her fasci-nation with tying, testing and talking about knots, specifically for big tarpon. A petite blond woman with a penchant for the puzzle that is knot tying, she was only a kid when she first worked the muscles that tie her knots today. As a child, Jillian and her father would take an annual birthday trip to Red Lobster, where he would ask her to crack open his crab legs for him. With delight, Jillian made precise, delicate cuts and cracks to earn the crab meat for her father, working the ligaments with enough force for each to break clean, but not so much that the shell tarnished the meat. Every once in a while, her father would reward her with a bite for her hard work. He asked her for help because she liked to do it, but more interestingly, because she was damn good at it. Jillian’s been working that muscle ever since, even after her father passed on. Those moments in the corner booth at Gainesville’s Red Lobster eventually fueled the essence of her passion to live and breathe Florida Keys flyfishing. Jillian lives in the deep chasm of tarpon fishing, where she chases what oftentimes can never be caught. • LEFT • “Jillian finishes a Bimini Twist as she rigs a new tarpon leader on a sunny day in the Keys. We happened to hit everything just right— great weather, great guide and tons of fish pouring by all day. It was one of the best days of tarpon fishing I’ve ever had.” Photo: Kat Vallilee THE FLYFISH JOURNAL 079
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.3: Page 79
