The dark side of fly tying
 

Reading the book "The Feather Thief" by Kirk Johnson. In 2009, 20 yr old Edwin Rist broke into a British Museum of Natural History and stole a suitcase full of rare bird specimens whose feathers were worth a fortune to the tiers of classic Atlantic salmon flies. He wanted to tie with a good supply of "authentic" materials and also raise money for his other passion as an accomplished musician. Johnston became engrossed in the crime, tracking down and interviewing all the people involved - Edwin, sellers, byers, tiers, museum curators, etc., - as well as the fate of unsold skins/feathers. No spoiler here 'cause I'm only half way through.

I tied a few such flies many years ago (with legal feathers of course) for steel heading on the coast, ala Haig-Brown, but too much work compared to hair wing flies developed locally.

Very neat story. Not all heists are diamonds and gold.

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Read the book a few years ago and really enjoyed it.

I enjoy tying my flies. Like anything you do for yourself there is the pride factor.
Mine are not award winning but fool many trout.

My dark side is tying too many. A recent chironomid pattern count in boxes and storage bins totaled over 1300, not including blood worm patterns!

Sad thing is that after reading the book I searched eBay for a lot of the protected species and found a lot for sale. The theft was a huge lost to science many species (some extinct) where collected by original African explorers. Timeline DNA and Historical collections lost forever.