I recently reread Tom Nixon's Fly Tying and Fly Fishing for Bass and Panfish. I remember taking this book out from the library when I was a boy in the 1970s. I was just getting interested in fly tying, and this was one of the first books I attempted to read on the subject. I say "attempted" because, like most fly tying books of that era, they contained vague instructions and horrible line drawings that were supposed to clarify the techniques described. I returned the book with a sense of being more confused than ever. Fast forward to the present day with forty years of fly tying looking at me in the rearview mirror; I breezed through the book in a couple of evenings. What mystified the ten-year-old boy made perfect sense to me now.