My screenname is Lestrout. Think that has anything to do with fishing? I've been flyfishing since 1958, several years before I picked up pipes for the first time. But I had my first cigars before any of that (when I was 5 YO). I chose my boarding school based on the proximity of the fishing, which was on campus.
Tying started about 1969, with a kit my brother gave me. Now I have more fur and feathers than all but a handful of tackle stores (actually, I can think of only one on the whole planet - Bob Marriott's in CA). So you guys can't blame my OCD on my piping. I saw my first Renzetti vise at Jack's Tackle when Andy R was still working on the prototype in Romansville PA before he moved to FL. Up to then I was flipping from one brand to another, mostly pseudo-rotational types. The Renzetti design was mindblowing, and my mainstay for several decades has been a Renzetti Traveler.
Although my folks lived in Ithaca NY and I considered Roscoe's Beaverkill my home water, I didn't really get any good at trouting by fly till I moved to NC, and I burned up the highways from the Piedmont to the Smokies learning how to think like a trout.
I just got my first trout of the year last week on a spring creek 20 min away - he was rising, so he just had to eat my #24 midge. BTW, if they rise, they ass is MINE! Although SE PA has a surprising amount of ffishing - bass pond 5 min. away, a half dozen trout streams within 20 min - I spend a lot of stream time in NY's Catskills, with side trips to MT, ID, UT, CA, OR, CO and others. It's like pipes and tobaccos - so much _____, so little time. Tough jobs, all of them, but somebody has to do it.
tl and hp
les