The Importance of Products Usually Used by Women for All Fly Anglers

Yes, people will notice as you stand before the nail polish displays in the beauty parlor or the grocery and drug stores. They won’t say anything out loud, of course. There must be a very good reason you are there: your wife gave you a list or. you’re buying it for a daughter or granddaughter.

You smile lamely on the outside. But inside you’re chuckling up a storm. What would they say if they knew I was buying the Sally Hensen Hard as Nails fingernail polish for myself along with this bright, sparkly polish and am getting ready to get me a big container of Woolite- the kind used for delicate undergarments? What would they say?

I guess you can fly fish without Sally Hensen Hard as Nails or bright sparkly red nail polish or the latest version of the choice cleaner for silks and such. But these products can make fly fishing so much better.

Sally Hensen Hard as Nails fingernail polish actually has two wonderful and important uses:

• • An adhesive in fly tying. Why buy special glue just for tying flies? For a lot less, you can get superior holding strength in Sally Hensen. It is likely I don’t need as much as I use but being of the “if some is good them more is better” school of thought, I use it to glue just about everything that looks like it could benefit from a good coat of glue in my flies.

• • It also helps keep the line guides on all of your fishing rods (fly rods and others that shall remain nameless) from corroding. Often, wrappers (as opposed to rappers) don’t treat the area between the feet of line guides with enough respect. These areas, devoid of a coating or two of good epoxy if they were rods I built, can allow water to pool and eventually cause the threads binding the line guides to loosen thus allowing air in the gap and corrosion begins. Before you know it, you are needing new line guides.

• • That’s not the end of the world but it is inconvenient. Just a good drop of Sally Hensen and you are set. Water can’t get in.

But what about the sparkly red polish? You can use it on your flies and rod as described above. But I have a different idea. When you are going to a fly tying demonstration or class or workshop, mark all of your equipment with a small drop of red finger nail polish so if there is a dispute over ownership of a pair of nice scissors or a boat cushion or a box of hooks, you can point to you red dot and claim ownership of what is yours.

That leaves us with the Woolite. What, pray tell, is it for? Washing fish rags? Nice but wrong. Soaking your fingers to get rid of fish slime? We’ll have to try that out. To get you out of your misery, it is a great detergent for cleaning your fly line. Since it is for delicate items, it is not a rip snortin’ detergent but a mild, slow-working liquid that will not attack the coating on fly line. The coating is everything to good fly line. Mess with it and you have just burned $70-$100+ to buy the good stuff. Just let it soak in Woolite and water (warm works well) to clean the line without destroying it.

Oh, there is other stuff you could use and it is very good. But it is also very expensive. Add the words, For Fly Line Cleaning to the package and the price doubles (or worse). You can use these expensive products every 4^th or 5^th rinsing. I’m sure Steve Moore will tell you to get it at the Dollar Store! He may be right!