The Feather Thief

By: Spencer Seim

In the fall of 2009, I drove 20 miles north to Questa, NM. I was supposed to keep an eye out for my client for a day of guided fly fishing on the Red River. He was driving a Sebring convertible with Illinois plates. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw him sitting there waiting. “I’m Kirk”, he said as he stuck his hand out. I took off my sunglasses and shook his hand. I told him “Your car isn’t safe in this parking lot just sitting here all day, so you’d better follow me to the river.” 

We get to the river, then began putting our waders on. He told me he had recently started fly fishing and he was curious about the fishing opportunities in the area. I asked, “How long are you visiting for?” He told me he was a writer and was in Taos writing for the Wurlitzer Foundation about the work he did in Iraq. Immediately, I noticed the relatively dark subject his mind had been immersed in, so I changed the subject to keep it on the fishing. As we walked along the river toward our stretch, I talked a lot about the watershed, the fish in the area, and what our plan was. 

We toed up to our first hole. I had decided to wait until we were standing on the river to tie the flies on, so I took ahold of the tippet and opened up my fly box. The second I opened it a fly fell out. (I didn’t even see it fall). Kirk saw it immediately and said, “What in the world is that fly?!” I looked down and picked it up. It was a Jock Scott salmon fly I had in my box. I had been swinging it across the Rio Grande the day before in search of large brown trout. I handed it to him and pointed out all the ingredients it took to tie that fly. 

I put it back in my box as I grabbed a small size 22 pheasant tail to tie to Kirk’s tippet. I had him begin casting and drifting that fly through the hole repeatedly. The indicator plunged. Kirk set the hook on a nice 17-inch rainbow. We landed it, unhooked it, and let it swim away. Kirk was relieved to get that first fish of the day, so now he relaxed a bit. I could tell he was absolutely enamored with the fly that fell out of my box. He asked endless questions about the patterns' origins, how are they tied, where are you getting these materials, and lastly, are there other people who are crazy enough to tie these things?! It was then that I introduced him to the whole story of Edwin Rist... 

Edwin was a classic salmon fly tyer who had moved to attend the Royal Academy of Music since he was a talented flautist. He had come up in the news and conversations amongst fly tyers that he had robbed the Natural History Museum at Tring in order to source some of these birds for the community. Edwin eventually was caught but served no jail time. 

Kirk was spellbound. He wanted to know as much as possible about this heist. That evening we went to a local bar for a beer. It was then that Kirk told me he was determined to write a book about this whole story. Seven years later, "The Feather Thief" was on bookshelves around the world. Who would have known that a randomly dropped fly would cause such an entertaining story?