Now 58 years old, Claudia MacPhee has been tying flies for more than 20 years. “My husband was out of town on a job for three months. He had all
this fly tying equipment laying around the cabin. So I got the books out and the first one I learned to tie was a Tom Thumb caddis emerger. By the time he came home, I’d tied hundreds of patterns.”

Throughout MacPhee’s house, on the walls and hanging from lamps, even on the t-shirt she wears, images and nick-knacks of fish are everywhere. Along one wall is a large aquarium that houses several dozen live guppies. “I just love fish,” she confesses.

As MacPhee leads me through her home, a wood stove-heated massive log cabin with rooms that spike off from the main living space, I note the tongue-and-groove woodwork that forms the multi-angled cathedral ceiling, which she and her husband built in 1982. Her husband, now a retired surveyor, did even the most complicated work himself, never mind that he wasn’t a trained carpenter. The couple’s craftiness was also vital during the years they spent living in the bush, running trap lines many miles from the nearest telephone or neighbor.

MacPhee does not hesitate to reveal the secrets behind the unusual, yet natural materials that she uses to make one of her pike fly patterns. “The feathers are from the Pekin chickens I raise. I dyed the feathers red, just like the wool I used for the body. I spun the wool myself from dog hair,” brushed from her own dog, of course.

MacPhee has found fly tying uses for many things on her four-acre Yukon property located in Tagish, a town of only 400 residents. Even the pike fly’s wings come from an unusual source; the tail of a red squirrel her dog recently killed. MacPhee ensures that nothing in this harsh landscape is wasted.

Her office is a small room off the central cabin area. The desk is
cluttered with the tools and materials of her trade. MacPhee has
developed many of the patterns she uses after hours of experimenting on the river and lake behind her cabin catching monster lake trout.

“I tie very sparse flies. If you really want to catch fish, you need
very little.” She leans toward me and says conspiratorially, “The
fish don’t care about all that extra stuff.”

Despite MacPhee’s initial self-skepticism, her flies have been hot items since day one. “I didn’t think much of them, but he (MacPhee’s husband) did.” They were so good that right away she was able to sell more than 100 flies. Now she sells over 6,000 a year, mostly to a fishing store in neighboring Whitehorse and another in Skagway, Alaska.

From the common angler to retail stores, the loyalty of MacPhee’s eclectic clientele is remarkable. Several Yukon outfitters that run lodges and remote fly-in camps rely solely on MacPhee’s custom-tied flies to satisfy their high-paying customers. Last summer I had wonderful success catching arctic grayling with one of MacPhee’s simplified bead head sinking flies. A friend of mine refuses to use any flies other than those tied by MacPhee. Above all, it is the care she takes in tying each fly and how long they last after the hook has dulled that her customers appreciate.

On the wall behind her is a white plaster of a paris head painted with face markings that one might expect to see on a Borneo warrior. Atop the head is an unruly mass of wiry hair several feet long. “That’s musk ox hair,” explains MacPhee as she lifts it off the head. “I use the hair for pike lures sometimes. My son made the head and it just seemed natural to store the hair on top of it.”

The long guard hairs that MacPhee uses to cover the animal’s soft underwool is called qiviut ( kiv-ee-ute). The musk ox shed the qiviut which is then collected and spun by the Inuit of northern Canada for clothing. The fiber is naturally waterproof, softer than cashmere, and eight times warmer than wool. MacPhee spins her own qiviut for use in some of her flies in place of beaver fur, which doesn’t shed water nearly as well.

When I arrive home later that day, my calico cat is asleep on the couch. Despite all the years that she has been my pet, a thought occurs to me for the first time; what kind of fly could I make with some of
her hair?

MacPhee can be contacted by sending mail to:
Claudia MacPhee
PO Box 52
Tagish, Yukon
Y0B 1T0
Canada