Stephanie works with her sister, Katie.

The lure of fly-tying

Stephanie Turkal is a lot like most 12-year-old girls in that she spends a good time working away in her mother's kitchen. But unlike many girls her age, she's not putting all that time into learning to cook. Instead, she takes advantage of the lighting and space to tie fishing flies.

When she was just a little slip of a thing, her dad started teaching her to tie lures. Not too long after that, he passed away, but he left her with a solid grounding in the basics.

The Willow Hill girl has taken her fly-tying efforts to the Illinois State Fair twice, and has come home with "Superior" ribbons both times. Stephanie, who is a sixth grader at Yale Grade School, is a member of the Hunt City Country Kids 4-H Club, and competed under the auspices of that group. Before going to the state fair, she'd done well in the Jasper County Fair, too.

"I was just 7 or 8 years old when Dad started teaching me," she says, "and I really took to it. It was something we enjoyed doing together, and he'd been doing it for a long time. He'd learned from a great-uncle in Michigan."

Her mother, Beth, and stepfather, Rick Nethery, both of whom are teachers in Oblong, have encouraged her to continue. Beth bought her a new vise not long ago, in fact. For the uninitiated, a vise is used to hold a hook, while the artisan does various things to it to change it from a plain hook to what, it is hoped, will look like a mouth-watering treat to a hungry fish.

"I've noticed that black, white, brown and yellow are attractive to fish," says Stephanie, who hopes to become a marine biologist someday. She has done much of her testing in

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ponds near her home. "I do quite a bit of fishing," she says, "and I'd like to do a lot more."

While her parents are supportive, as are other family members. Her great-grandfather built her a cherrywood case to carry some of her equipment in, and it has a plexiglass top which enables it to double as a small display case. "I take it with me when I do demonstrations for friends and at schools," Stephanie says, "and there's room under the display space for some of my tools and supplies."

She uses all different kinds of things to make her flies attractive, ranging from bird feathers to chenille to floss to deer hair, and about anything else she thinks will work. After deciding that, the trick is to put something together that will look good to a fish and still stick together when wet.

Stephanie, displays some of her winning flies

"Some of my flies are really simple," she says, "and I can put them together in 10 to 15 minutes. Some of the more complicated ones take an hour or more. I'm thinking about trying a crawdad, and I expect to spend a day on it, because it's so complicated. I'm looking forward to it, though."

She notes that usually, the first step is to clamp a hook in the vise and wrap it with a winding of thread from the front down the length of the shank. "Then you decide whether or not to tie in a feather or two or three, and you wind back. You try to make it incline from front to back, and you want the front of the fly to look like a head. You put glue on it, tie in several knots so everything will hold together. Then you let the glue dry, and give it another coat of glue."

She notes that there are literally hundreds of existing fly designs that have been proven to work, and that there are books that tell how to make them in a step-by-step process. All the sportsman needs to add is dexterity, patience and practice.

"Dad had several books," Stephanie says, "and I use them quite a bit. Of course, you can try different variations to see what might work best for you. You can use different colors of feathers, thread and so on."

She notes that her dad had collected supplies over the years, and that she has "a ton" of stuff to use for making flies. "Dad had deer hair and feathers, which are good for dry flies, because they're supposed to float," she says, "and he'd bought a lot of different colors of threads and other things."

While Beth and Rick are not particularly interested in fly-tying, Stephanie's 10-year-old sister, Katie, is showing some interest. "I'm working with her," Stephanie says, "but she doesn't seem to have quite as much patience as I have."

Stephanie emphasizes that she's interested in more than just flies. "I make all kinds of lures," she says, "including jigs, poppers, spoons and just about anything that I think will catch fish. I use worms, too. If something will catch a fish for me, I'll use it."

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