Part the first: A malaise of history
Adventures and thought journeys all have beginnings, even if
sometimes we have to trace them back to their source like following meandering
braids on our rivers. Our thoughts and reflections are often like our waters,
changing with every bend in the channel and never flowing straight.
This small journey began with the re-reading of Ernest
Schwiebert’s book one of his two volume ‘Trout’; specifically his excellent and
scholarly work on the history of fly-fishing. I had progressed to the chapter
detailing the period of the middle ages in England and the famous ‘Treatyse on
fysshyng wyth an angle’ by Dame Juliana Berners from 1496 when some chore or
another distracted me. Later that day I was looking at an online video of
fly-fishing, and something began bothering me. It was same theme I have written
about from time to time: the ‘new’ world of fly-fishing and how somehow the
reverence, the history, and the art have become whitewashed with a drone-like sameness.
Every angler wears a flat brim ghetto ball cap, and except for color variation
in gear, look like clones of each other. The flies were all ‘tactical’, with
jig hooks and tungsten beads. They looked like miniature Christmas tree
ornaments.
Now I shouldn’t look at things that bother me, but often it
is so prevalent that it is unavoidable. I saw it on the water a week before
when the clone army visited a stream I was fishing, and I got a look at the new
tactics. What was cool to them looked to me like a group of Shriners riding
about on miniature motorcycles, each dressed the same and running in circles on
the river. I stopped to talk to one, and somehow got on the subject of flies,
and proclaimed that we had a lot to be thankful for in the writing of Ronalds
and others. “Who” he asked?
See, that made it worse, for now not just the art was gone,
but so was the history…
And that was what was finally bothering me: the utter
eclipse of the history of the sport by runaway modernism driven by identity and
marketing, with a dose of poor attention span and lack of curiosity thrown in
for good measure. My inner peace was not at one, not flowing evenly.
History is important to me, and it should be more respected,
studied and cherished, if not even acknowledged more in our sporting… in my
opinion. I just had to add those last three words, because we all have
opinions, and one of mine, for what it is worth, is that if we don’t know where
we have been, and how we got here today, we face the danger of a lack of foundation
to guide where we are going… thus the jig-head ‘flies’ and desire to compete by
catching more fish than anyone else, and prick every lip in the river to prove
something to ourselves and others that should not even have to be proven.
Peeking back into Schwiebert, I looked at his excellent
illustrations of Berners’ flies and had a moment of epiphany. History. I would
go back in time once again…
I am no stranger to this, with a degree in history focused
on ancient and medieval history, I had also been an avid medieval
recreationist, fighting battles in armor, making armor, leather boots, doing
illuminated manuscripts, embroidery, Celtic knotwork, etc. back in the day.
So this would be my revival of a sorts, a cleansing of my
soul of disturbances and corruptions. I would purify and free myself by tying
and fishing simple medieval flies.
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| My medieval flies with materials and montage |
I had the picture in my mind as I sat down at the vise. I
rooted through old boxes of detritus and odds and ends, and located a box of
antique wet-fly hooks in size 12. Then I opened a box filled with dyed wool.
Years ago I had purchased a large square of merino wool from Royce Dam, noted
fly-tyer who passed away this spring, and had undertaken to use old Veniard
dyes to color them. I dyed up dozens of patches in every hue in the rainbow,
and also dyed the kitchen sink, parts of the floor, my hands, and even part of
the toilet. I had enough wool dubbing for an army of a hundred tyers, and a
cleanup project with bleach and scrubbing. No experiment is ever without its little
mishaps.
These English flies of the late 15th century were
a ‘departure’, at least historically, from the standard silk-bodied flies in
use at the time. I put ‘departure’ in quotes because our understanding of
history is often like a team of one-eyed, myopic, opinionated professors trying
to describe a picture with only seven pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in front of
them, and the other 93 missing. No doubt, wool-bodied flies had been in use in
regions where wool was abundant in Europe. After all, one used what one had
from sheep sheared and birds falconed or fowled. There were no catalogues, or
rather very few mass printings, since the press had not yet been on the scene
for all that long, having been just invented in 1439, and dedicated mostly to
religious subjects. Even Herter’s didn’t have a catalog in the 15th
century, although old George might have claimed that he was around at the time,
obtaining silk cuttings from ancient tapestries for dubbing mixes, or trading
for Carolingian period French daggers (East German surplus) which he would pawn
off as the greatest hunting knife ever… but I digress…
I then located some silk floss, and a large package of
various small patches of soft-hackle hen, rock partridge and grouse feathers,
and was ready to go. The flies are as simple as they get, and that simplicity
seemed in keeping with the cleansing process and journey. Floss is tied on,
wool dubbed and spun on, the silk ribbed through, and two simple wings attached
at the head, reversed or not. Three materials and a hook became an elegance in
miniature, a subtlety of classic beauty without any baroque attributes of flash
or flair.
I spun up three variations: a fiery brown fly with yellow
floss ribbing and a mottled brown soft-hackle hen wing, a yellow fly ribbed
with olive and receiving a dun wing of hen, and finally, a dark olive fly
ribbed with black and using mottled grouse for the wing.
I was set, and as I made plans for the next day’s fishing, I
assembled a bamboo fly-rod, and furled leader, and placed the flies in an old
metal spring Perrine fly box.
But would they work….
Part the second: The anachronism goes forth
The day dawned sunny and cold and I decided to wait until
the old thermometer hit 45 degrees and the afternoon sun had time to heat up the
water. I fortified myself with medieval tea (cheap English Tetley’s), and a
strong dose of hot soup that had been the fridge since the 100 years war. (more
like two-weeks, but it was a bit old for vegetable soup…) I threw the gear into
the car, and hesitated a moment looking at my old 13th century
sugarloaf helm I used to fight in, and after musing a moment, thought it might
be a bit shiny and bright for the prevailing conditions, and also might land me
in the local asylum if anybody saw me fishing in it. I donned Dad’s old Irish
hat instead, and placed a few of the new (old) flies in the band of tweed.
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| Not quite appropriate... |
The water was in spectacular condition: clear as a bell and
with good flow, but the sunny skies made this upstream effort with a wet fly
and no indicator kind of a leap of faith. I selected the olive fly, tied it on
and began fishing anyway. I was lacking in control of the fly in its drift and
had no contact at fifty feet distance, and the sun prevented me from getting
closer. That and the splashy rises and midges in the air led me to switch to a
dry and fish properly for the conditions. I caught a few fish and missed more
by the time I finished the run and walked upstream to the next piece of water.
I again tied on the medieval wet, and after it got ignored through the rises,
clipped it off again and went with the midge dry. Perhaps this experiment was a
bit silly after all. Five hundred year old flies might be pushing it, even for
me.
I continued to fish up the runs taking the odd fish on long
casts in the clear water, and considering it a successful venture anyway since
catching wily trout on long casts and light tippets using size 22 dry flies is
an accomplishment any day of the week, even though it was not my mission this
particular day.
It began to cloud up a little to the south with dark gray
cumulus legions advancing slowly, but the sun in its evening waning was still
lighting the water. I should have known what was happening before it happened.
A fish turned on my midge and ignored it. Rises were still sporadic, but my fly
was now the strange ugly kid with warts that nobody talks to. Then I spotted a
fly that seemed to be a little different than a midge. The clouds in the sky
triggered a clearing of the clouds in my head as I realized I was in a light
hatch of tiny blue-winged olive mayflies. Switching flies, I hit a nice
ten-inch brown full of color that took down the tiny olive with an audible
smacking of the chops. Then the wind picked up and I ran out of water as the
sun crept behind the trees. No more risers. I had a bit of a walk back to the
car, but since it was the witching hour and owls were beginning to announce the
coming hunt, and the light was now fully off the water, I decided to put the
olive and dun medieval fly back on and swing it downstream in the classic wet
fashion dating back to the dawn of the angle.
It was like a bomb went off in the water. The biomass of
hatching olives were still present as emergers, even if the few hatching adults
were blown off the water. The trout were cruising just under the surface
picking off the swimming nymphs. I looked at my fly in the water and a light
bulb went on. The soft hackle wing folded back along the curved
semi-translucent wool body like an emerging wing of dun or gray to match the
overhead clouds. The fly looked perfect as it swung, and I was unprepared for
what was now happening. Every cast was tapped by fish, mostly not hooking
themselves, splashing on the fly, bumping it and eating it too. I began to pick
up fish on every other cast, mostly little punters, and I made my way
downstream, taking a large step between each cast across and down the river.
The technique was as simple as the fly was. It was working!
When I got to the pool I had the most faith in, I
immediately hit a slightly nicer brown and landed the lip-hooked olive diner
with a smile. I thought, “Well, I did it!” Enough was enough, just time for one
more cast or two…. After all, the old now chewed up medieval fly had just
landed more fish than the rest of the day put together…
The fly was struck as it turned the corner and tapped again.
Thinking it a small fish pecking at the fly, I twitched it in the water and was
surprised when it was jolted down, and the fly line was yanked out of my hand
as I set the hook and the reel began playing out line. The fish ran down the
length of the run with the old Orvis 1980s CFO reel protesting its age with a
grizzled gravelly complaint. What had I hooked? The flash of honey and butter
in the water as the fish turned to run back upstream made my jaw drop. It
fought like Jack Dempsey, all dogged and bruising as a brown trout should be,
and put a heck of a bend in the cane rod. When I landed it, I marveled at its
colors. This guy was the big honcho in the pool, all one foot plus of him. He
fought out of all proportion to his size, and crowned the day for me. I felt
the clouds clearing from my soul, and the sun winked its last rays through the
pines and hills, as the cleansing melted off the concerns and I clipped off the
fly. I had done what I came to do. Prove that a simpler world can exist, and
that something used in the middle ages could still catch fish, and even do a
better job of it than all the rest of the day’s efforts. A blob of shredded
wool on a hook with a torn up scraggly wing twitched and swung looked like a
bug to him. All the technical innovations were absent in the fly. There was no
hype, no noise… it was pure.
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| Five hundred year old flies still work! |
There was one more pool to go before the car, but I had enough
of a good thing, and never re-tied. In that moment, it struck me. Restraint.
Dame Juliana wrote about restraint and moderation along with
her flies, methods of building a rod, and angling back in 1496. That and a new
appreciation of history and simplicity went with me into my sleep picture as
the night coolness descended and I dreamed of trees, and otters, and old flies
come new again.
I was healed.
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