Matching the Hatch… sort of...

Matching the hatch… sort of. With apologies to Ernest Schwiebert



Bergman Plate of Dry Flies from 'Trout' and antique British rod with Hardy Bougle'.

 

Author’s note:
The following piece is a tongue in cheek approach to our human foibles and fly-fishing. Ernest Schwiebert wrote the bible on trout stream entomology and fly patterns, Matching the Hatch, and Nymphs, which contain great illustrations by the author, tales about fishing the bugs in storied places, and as scientific a study of Mayflies, Stoneflies, Caddis, etc. that ever has been undertaken in our sport. However, I have meet anglers on my journeys that were literalists, and like biblical literalists, often took things to a less than rational end. As many bugs as there are in nature, do we need every one in our fly box?

I had spent the last days of melting snow seated surrounded by books on the couch, and engrossing myself in the historic writings of the sages of fly-fishing upon aquatic insects, hatches, and flies to imitate them. Halford poked out from under a pillow. Skues resided lower down on the floor, where his nymphs plied the depths above the weeds of empty coffee mugs. Perched on the table were Flick and Gordon. Schwiebert rested neatly next to an ionic column candleholder higher than the rest. Swisher and Richards propped up each end of a stack of dirty dishes. Strewn over the lot were the efforts of the past weeks: nymphs and dry flies of all variety of styles, sizes and materials. This trout opener would not find me unprepared for any possibility.

Several weeks later all the lore and knowledge gleaned from those books stored in my cluttered brain, and my stream bag full to the breaking with the carefully crafted bits of entomological fur and feathers further to tempt the trout, I found myself on the banks of my favorite local stream. I sat and watched as several small brown trout ate some bugs in the riffles above me. I caught one of the tiny insects in hand, and muttered importantly to myself with a new air of wisdom, “Paraleptophlebia size 16 mahogany dun.”

I sorted through my boxes, now carefully labeled and arranged, and located one of the new exquisitely tied upright winged duns I had recently completed. I attached it to my tippet and crouching low, approached within casting range of the riffle and let out a long loop of line with an aerial mend, the fly dropping onto the water above the hungry fish and tantalizingly bouncing down to the waiting trout while riding high on the current. The first fish rose to look at the fly, and then calmly turned up its nose at the offending entrée, and ate a real bug. The next half-hour saw me change my fly down to a size 18, and then to a comparadun version, and then to an emerger, all without interesting a single fish. I caught another natural fly, and compared it to my imitations. If the famous Schwiebert himself had drawn and tied these flies, they could not have been a more exact simulacrum, down to the gray wings, precisely colored and ribbed body, and three tails. I could barely tell the difference until the real one flew off in a hurry to join its brothers and sisters and left me muttering imprecations.

I proceeded up the stream and around the next bend to see if the fish here would be a little more accommodating, but met with the same fate. One trout about a foot long swam over after eating one of the dainty mayflies and casually looked at me from underwater as if to say, “Give it up mister, we aren’t having any.”

Then I heard a splash and chuckle. A man was standing in the next pool and playing a fish. He was dressed in an old Elmer Fudd hat and wore a dilapidated mackinaw jacket. He was using an old sawed off hockey stick as a wading staff. As I watched, he released a nice trout and immediately hooked another one.

“Nice fish,” I called out. “What fly are you using?”
“Usin a brown one mister,” he replied. “Them trout are eating little brown bugs, so I use one of them brown flies to catch ‘em.”

He showed me the fly he had caught the fish on, and I was amazed and appalled all in the same glance. Here was some grievous sin against all those aforementioned great authors and fishermen whose writings and detailed studies of trout-stream entomology and fly-tying had haunted my slumbers these past weeks and months. It seemed to be tied on some old bait or worm hook. For a body it used an old brown rag, and the wing and hackle were twisted out of some giant brown chicken feather. It looked like something my neighbor’s dog spewed up on my doormat a few years ago after eating a dead pigeon and having a go at a heap of coffee grounds in the garbage can for an aperitif. The proportions were so far off, and the hook so much bigger than it should have been, that it seemed a parody to call it a fly. Then the old Elmer Fudd clone whisked his bent fly rod forward and the fly landed and disappeared in the swirl of another hungry trout. I went back to the car where I kept an emergency bottle of bourbon, and attempted save what I could of my own sanity.

Matching our little concoctions of fur and feather known as ‘flies’ to what the trout are feeding on is a great and important part of the game of fly-fishing. An elementary knowledge is necessary at least if one is to have any chance of fooling a wily fish with a morsel of food that instead has a sharp surprise hidden in plain view. When Mr. Trout wants a certain bug, he wants that bug only… or the theory goes… If he orders a grilled tuna sandwich with basil, feta cheese and dill mustard, and he instead receives a hamburger, nine times out of ten he will dismiss the offending sandwich in preference for his original order. In the remaining instance, he will eat the tablecloth, the hamburger and the waiter. There are times he may be so finicky that he will refuse every morsel of food not to his liking. Wrong size, wrong color, and wrong species… or right everything, but take it back to the kitchen anyway just to be irritating. This gourmet and selective feeding tendency has led to the study of fly-fishing entomology. Dozens of excellent books have been written on the subject, and if the reader ever has a case of intense curiosity or a need to cure insomnia, I suggest reading a few. One will learn in detail all the Latin names of the insects, their preferred dwelling places, their size, their life cycle with pictures and drawings of each of these, their color, their behavior, time of hatching (season – month – etc.) preferred time of emergence, sexual habits ( Hendricksons prefer blondes), and everything else one can read with interest and then forget or get helplessly muddled when on the water.

This entomological knowledge leads to a greater and more intimate understanding of the relationship between trout and their food, or just to more fish for the enlightened angler. At least in theory, because if we dare take the full-monty of fly patterns necessary to match the hatch on any stream in a given season, our poor brother of the angle would spend all his time seated on a rock by the stream sorting and indexing his flies and never wet his line. This is also known to the wise men of the English chalk streams as ‘Sporting Restraint.’

Our angling friend sees the fish feeding on the surface wildly and consistently one late August morning and, according to his acquired knowledge, (not his eyes) he postulates that the fish are feeding on tiny Tricos or Tricorythodes for those partial to the Roman vernacular. However, if we take this to its illogical conclusion by following these guides to the letter, we would need to identify if the bugs are Tricorythodes peridius, T. stygiatus. T. texanus, T. albilineatus, T. allectus, T. atratus, T. explicatus, T. fallax, T. fictus, T. minutus or possibly even… could it be… Tricorythodes absurdium?

In the long run it really doesn’t matter because any size 22 to 24 blackish sparse spinner pattern would mimic most all of these, and most importantly, as we remind ourselves after noting we are due for a visit to the ophthalmologist soon, we can’t see the tiny bloody things anyway.

I once knew a fine gentleman who tied up a couple of dozen of each of these flies in the nymph, dun and spinner stage. He waded into the water with his thousand flies and sinking into the muck on the bottom of the stream, was never heard from again. We miss him, but his hat, stuck on the bottom of the stream now marks a fine pool of trout.

Knowing the taxonomy of the bugs in general is certainly helpful, but when taken to extremes can become annoying, like the gathering in the back of the hall where the old fishing club holds its meetings, and when on any given evening after a meeting and a pint or three of beer may be heard more bad Latin then a prep school symposium on the translations of Caesar.
If you find yourself inserting ‘Ephemerella Subvaria’ into every other sentence as an affectation in order to seem wise while using a bad fake British accent, then you may become the guy at your company holiday party standing in the corner alone next to the potted plant and holding an empty glass.

We inherently want to know the reasons things happen. That oh-so-human character that leads us to study natural phenomenon and attempt to explain it. It is the character of curiosity that makes us human, brilliant, and flawed all at the same time. For always are we convinced that our new theory is the correct one. We propound that the sun revolves around the earth, various mythical beings created us and rule over our lives, that bad smells cause common diseases, and the best cure for that is by bleeding, personality and character is easily read by feeling the shape of the skull, bodily humors, etc. Certainly that is enough to make us shyly wince at our latest attempted explanation of why a trout likes Elmer’s fly and not ours. Wanting to know, however, has lead us to Gordon and Marinaro… to the great Catskill flies, and to the thorax variations. Wanting to know led anglers like Gary LaFontaine to don scuba equipment and discover that caddis emit gas bubbles that glimmer as the bug ascends, and many other discoveries and innovations that make our little sins committed on the stream so much more successful.

But… however scientific or grand our discoveries that lead to better bits of fur and feather, there is still the mind of the trout to contend with. To get to know the trout, we must get to think like him, and once in awhile after a particularly long day in our waders, even to smell like him too.
Perhaps feeding trout are like people ordering pizza. From across the room we know that they are eating pizza, but what kind? Is it a dun-variant pepperoni, or a spent-wing spinach and pineapple deep dish? There are so many crust and topping variations that the mind boggles at the possibilities. We can only make educated guesses by observation. Don’t take that to extremes either, or you might be like the guy who tasted some Blue Wing Olive mayflies to see why the trout liked them so much. I hear they went nicely with a light chardonnay.

Why trout refuse one fly and eat another that is better to their liking for some unseen reason might be explained by a guy watching the local football match on T.V. while drinking beers and eating a bowl of chips. He keeps subconsciously reaching for the chips and crunching them into his mouth again and again with about as much thought as capable in a trout brain the size of a pea, but when he accidentally reaches a bit too far and gets into the bowl of milk duds his wife placed there before Christmas, he hastily rejects the offending round ball out of instinct, and belching loudly, reaches for another beer instead.

Perhaps sometimes it might be O.K. not to know.
Sometimes the best thing to do might be to put our fly in the water…

Four anglers go fishing on a trout stream. One is a Catholic priest, one a philosopher, one a physicist, and the other the village idiot.
The priest walks on the water and asks the lord to choose him the right fly. He has absolute faith in the resulting choice.
The philosopher sits down on the bank and begins to contemplate the epistemology of bug knowledge.
The physicist starts examining and measuring the speed of the current, the roundness of the rocks, and the specific gravity of the water.
The village idiot puts on a fly and casts it into the water. In ten minutes he has limited out, and is back at his hovel cleaning the fish and stoking the fire to cook his dinner.

A silly little parable until we realize the poignant fact. The village idiot was the only one to actually place his fly in the water! As I tell beginning anglers, Pick a fly appropriate to the fish and conditions, tie it onto your leader, have confidence, and put it into the water. Those thousand flies in your boxes can never catch a fish, only the one in the water can.

That is not to say that an intimate knowledge of trout stream hatches and life cycles is not important, it is just that it is only one element of the game. Presentation and reading water being equally important among others. Your fly may be a perfect imitation of the bugs on the menu at the Cordon Bleu trout stream, but we also have to get them to the trout. I don’t know any epicurians of my acquaintance that show up to dine at the Ritz, and just read the menu.

Speaking of menus…
One thing stands out among the fly boxes of some of the best trout anglers I have ever had the pleasure to wet a line with. They use general patterns and a few more specific ones. General patterns match a number of insects of the same species… like the Adams, Gray Fox Variant or Hare’s Ear. One fly can manage a hatch of a size to either side of the imitation, and when this doesn’t work, then out come the specialty flies. When the trout are feeding and finicky, then we have to get fussy too.
Bob Blumreich, one of Wisconsin’s trout sages says (my paraphrase) “Flies should be suggestive of the real bug, but not exact. Exact imitations often don’t work as well as something that is the right color and the right size, but suggests the bug to a trout brain.”

Look at Al Troth’s superb pattern, the Elk Hair Caddis. Does it look like a caddis? Not unless we have a severe eye disorder or drank way too much scotch, but it does SUGGEST the size and shape of the bug with its tailless and tent-winged profile.

There are instances where one needs to carry a file cabinet of flies to be prepared. Still-water fisheries and spring creek trout are notoriously fussy, and often have a buffet of tasty morsels available to them. When this happens it might also help to have a psychiatrist as a fishing partner. The fish can be on emergers first and then switch to the duns, and then ignore both for something you can’t see. Meanwhile the largest spinner fall you have ever seen is occurring and the trout don’t care.

Since the preponderance of water I fish for trout are spring creeks, I tend to carry a lot of flies with me. I used to use a vest, but got tired of constantly having to rummage in the pockets, and decided to utilize a stream bag instead. Then I reorganized all my flies by species and purchased several more boxes to store them in. As a result, I was both more organized and disorganized at the same time. Instead of rummaging around in pockets for boxes, I now rooted around in my shoulder bag for them, usually dropping a few on the ground from time to time. The bag was heavy too, causing my shoulder to hurt and slump, so I moved the strap to the other shoulder, causing that one to slump equally as bad.

Back on the stream, you fumble with your flybox while extracting a pattern and dump the whole shebang into the river, following it downstream with loud splashing and many cries of dismay, while every one of the artificial flies gets ingested by a trout smacking its lips for more. Your buddy asks from downstream which box you dropped. “Caddis box,” you answer, and then watch with horror and fascination as he ties on a caddis and collects all your flies one by one by hooking the very fish that just chowed down on your chum smorgasbord, and after carefully removing your flies from their lips, hands them back to you with a wink. This is called in better-educated circles “Matching the Catch.”

Maybe old Elmer knew something after all…
Maybe sometimes less can be more…

Funny, but if you contrast the approach of great authors and anglers such as Art Flick and Ernest Schwiebert, one may view the two great schools of thought, those of general suggestive flies, and of perfect imitations. Thankfully, this sport is big enough to allow for both. If the minor studies in entomology cause both clarification and obfuscation at the same time, we may remind ourselves that making things far more complicated than necessary for most people in the spirit and intent of explanation is one of the great aspects of this little hobby of ours. For some of us, knowing the Latin name of the bug, its sex, and exact size and color might add something to the game we play with the trout, and others of us might not care at all, preferring to fish a little olive bug when that is what the fish are eating.

So next time you run across someone sitting on the bank deep into study of a copy of the epic seven volume tome “Naturalis Insectora Stupendium,” and searching through his ten drawer chest fly box, you might want to have a few brown rag flies handy to give him. You may be doing him a favor.

A couple of spring patterns

Although these flies can and are tied more sparse for lower water situations, here I tied them more full for spring spate flows in March and April.

Will Taylor Special varient and the Blue Bear. Both Canadian Atlantic Salmon patterns.

The Blue Bear is pictured as tied with krystal-flash, but I substituted peacock sword.

The Will Taylor Special comes from the Miramici River, and according to the best information available to me, was originated by Boyd Dunnett.

Both flies have bodies spun of dyed wool. I kind of like the green I got by mixing a bit of chartreuse with kelly green.

A Few Flies, or it is a long winter…

First up is the Bloody Mouse.

Tail is sable, wing is skunk, and the body is made from segments of grizzly soft hackle and fiery red SLF.

Next up is the famous Atlantic salmon bomber style fly The Green Machine.

I tied this one more like a traditional bomber.



Next, a cross between a Rusty Rat body and Cossboom with a green wing I call the Highland Rat.

Next, A sort of experiment in orange, yellow and green.

And Last, my attempt at a married wing Irish style Thunder and Lightning. Dressing per Alcott.

The Marmalade Skies

I recently obtained some dyed coyote hair from a friend. (Thanks Dave!)

The guard hairs were just crying out with wild colors, so I sat down at the vise and answered the call of inspiration. The idea was for a winter fly I could fish on a light sinking poly-leader. I wanted this fly to have calling power.

I actually liked the first result, which is often rare. I have a whole box of reject ideas; things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but when they came to fruition, looked like cat pee. That would make an entire article there; things that didn’t quite make it.

When posting this fly on a tying forum, I wondered aloud what other names people would come up with. Marmalade Skies was a clear winner. Lucy in the sky with diamonds…



Dressing:
Hook: 2/0 Bartleet


Tip: Fine oval gold long


Tag: Burnt yellow floss


Tail: Four peacock sword barbs tilted upward to meet wing


Butt: Black ostrich


Ribbing: Med. Oval gold followed by small ovel gold


Body: Rear in front of butt, six to seven turns of orange floss, Orange Angorra Goat mixed with hot orange SLF remainder


Body Hackle: Claret neck


Wing: Four peacock herls under yellow dyed coyote. Orange coyote over.


Collar: Doctor blue followed by kingfisher blue


Head: Black

I have a suspicion that the early spring fish in dark cold water may like this.

* Note: No hallucinogenics were consumed in the conceptualization nor the realization of this fly. Is that a flying purple monkey?

The no-hitch Stealth Bomber

A while back, I posted a picture of this fly, and some of you wondered if I had fished it. New designs and prototypes are fine as art, but until actually tested in river conditions, they are an unknown quantity.

So, this fall I did fish the N.H.S.B. Here are my conclusions.


The fly works as designed. The bare hook at the rear anchors it, and the radically tapered head pushes water. I did not need to place a hitch on it, although I have no doubt it would work with a hitch just fine. I did not catch anything on it, but that is my fault. I only used it a couple of times, once in a run that was most likely fishless, and the second time as a comeback fly for a fish that chased and boiled.


The action of the fly was solid, but after around an hour or so of being in the water, it had a tendency to sink into the surface film. All I had to do was squeeze out the water and it worked for a further half-hour or so before becoming waterlogged.


As graded by the harsh professor:


Aesthetics: A

Design: B+

Performance: C+


Definitely a fly for faster water. Works well in riffles. Works fine in glass water too, unless waterlogged.


And there we have it. From concept to vise to river.

Some tips from the tying bench

There are so many good books out there on tying that I am reluctant to add my mediocre voice and skills to the chorus, but most articles and books focus on patterns and materials and are light on advice.



I am not a great fly-tyer. Period. However, I do spend a bit of time at the vice, and over the years have learned much from my own mistakes. In do tie enough that friends often pick errant pieces of feathers and fur from my clothes. I now smile ruefully at the flies I tied in years past, and showed to colleagues. Some were good, some bad, and some downright ugly. Some very accomplished tyers looked at my flies and said, “Hmm… this fly should catch fish.” As time went on, I realized that this was a catch-all response to avoid tearing the fly apart and discouraging the tyer. As an obsessive perfectionist, I am rarely satisfied anymore with results, but do realize that to ere is human.



So, permit me to bore you with a few select generalized tips from the vice and bench. (Far from definitive…)



1. Know your skill level, and do not attempt to tie patterns that are far beyond your skills. Trying to tie full-dress salmon flies when you are struggling to get a pheasant-tail nymph down can lead to frustration.

2. Use a vise that you are comfortable with. No need to break the bank, just use what you have until your skills outgrow the vise.

3. Use good tools. Your wife’s old craft scissors just won’t (pardon the pun) cut it. Good tools make tying a joy. Bad tools just lead to more frustration.

4. At the beginning, practice with cheap hooks and second-grade materials. Practice technique. Don’t waste that floricon bustard until you know what you are doing.

5. Have a plan when you sit down at the vice.

6. Try to tie four or more of the same pattern at one sitting. Try to make each one a carbon copy of the others. This builds consistency and proportion.

7. When tying a fly, work for correct technique at each step. If you are having trouble mounting wings, then practice the wing until you get it right. Don’t just tie six flies with bad wings. This teaches nothing.

8. Learn about thread tension and length of thread. This is an overlooked and critical aspect.

9. Learn about materials: how to work with feathers, wrap hackle, fold collars, mount the feather without a bulge, etc.

10. Study proportion in your flies. Divide the hook into halves, thirds, and quarters as necessary. Start the fly in the proper place and finish it without crowding the head.

11. Learn to tie in materials with a minimum of thread wraps. Using thirty wraps where four are needed leads to unsightly bulges.

12. If you make a mistake, undo it, and start again. Since the canvas of a hook is so small, mistakes tend to domino on each other and end up as a mess at the front of the fly.

13. Tie with a picture of a perfect completed fly in front of, or near you. Refer to the picture often.

14. Use the correct hook for the fly. Learn about different hooks and hook terminology.

15. Learn to dub properly with different materials.

16. Instead of using pre-made body wraps, make them yourself. Spin a dubbing loop of flashy seal substitute. It is amazing what one can do with a dubbing loop and blended materials.

17. Challenge yourself by tying flies just a bit harder. This is how you get better. Don’t go too far though. (See #1)

18. Take a tying class. However, first make certain that the instructor is not just a good tyer, but also a good teacher. Otherwise, the class is just a tying demo.

19. Fish with your flies. See how they move in the water. See how they float or sink, test the durability. If they fall apart quickly or unravel, something is wrong.

20. Once you have some competence, be creative. All the flies in existence started this way. Let inspiration be your wings.

21. Tie a bit every week. Long dry periods tend to decay skills.



If I had to pick one thing to tell new tiers, it would be to develop solid technique with materials and thread. Solid technique builds a foundation. Once that foundation is built, one can look at a fly in a book and instantly duplicate it.



Above all, have fun. Catching a fish with a fly you tied yourself adds a new dimension to the sport.

Traditional Skunk

Meet The Skunk.

The prevailing theory is that this fly originated on the North Umpqua, but the exact original tier is a matter of debate. Wes Drain is mentioned. It is one of the original flies used for steelhead in the Pacific North West.
This fly, once very popular, has fallen out of vogue and was eclipsed by the Green Butt Skunk.

I tied this one according to a number of different sources. The fly is usually tied with a black chenille body, but the original may have used peacock herl.
So, I started with a dyed golden pheasant tail. The body is peacock herl and black ostrich herl spun together with fine silver oval tinsel. The wing is polar bear.

I was priveleged enough this fall to see and touch some actual 3/0 to 5/0 skunks purchased directly from Joe Howell's flyshop on the North Umpqua.

The Golden Demon

Another very fetching pattern

The Golden Demon was a British Empire pattern discovered by Zane Gray in New Zealand, and popularized by him through steelhead fishing in the 1930s.

The original version has no dubbing, but I added a turn or two of seal.

I also reinforced the bronze mallard wing by using an underwing of blackbear.

Irish Shrimp

Introducing the Irish Mourne Shrimp.
I found this fly along with others in a copy of Fly Fishing and Fly Tying (UK) from Sept/Oct of 2000.
The flies are designed to pull fish from slow flows with hackles that pulse. Hmm... sounds like something that can work on some of our slow-water reaches, and provide a possible alternative to leeches for those of us that are into classic flies. The oval tinsel body provides plenty of flash, while the schlappen segments and gold pheasant tail should provide movement.

I actually fished this fly on the Kooskooskie for a day, and it did pulse quite well, and had great presence in the water. I also fished it on my local river two years ago, but got it caught in a tree, and decided that was enough of that!
But this year, with dedication to the floating line, and trying to solve the problems associated with soft water and low flows with classic flies, I pulled it back out and fished it.

They are rather easy to tie.

Morne Gold Shrimp:

Tail: Several full feathers from golden pheasant in various colors
Rear body: Med. Gold oval tinsel to half point followed with four or five turns of orange schlappen.
Front Body: Med. Gold oval tinsel to front followed with four or five turns of black schlappen.
Wings: Jungle cock turned upright.
Head: Red
Hook: Should be heavy enough to actually sink the fly.

This series of Irish shrimp flies may actually be the grandfather of our General Practitioner pattern.

Some new and old flies.

Some new and old flies.

Here are some of the flies I have been using with the floating line in the Midwest when conditions allow.
Clockwise from top.

Lord Byron:
This fly originated due to the desire to create a fly that had flash and calling power without being too bright or gaudy. After I tied it I recalled a line from George Gordon - Lord Byron’s She walks in beauty
“And all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes…”

This has become a go-to fly in low clear water

Dressing:
Hook:    AJ size 3
Rear 2/3 of body is gold mylar ribbed with small oval gold tinsel. Gold tag at butt.
Front quarter is peacock SLF.
Hackle is dyed red gold pheasant, and the wing is black bear.

Orange Racer:
This fly originated in 2003. It headlined a TV segment I did on steelhead flies. I put it away for a few years, and would take it out once or twice to look at. Then this spring I actually fished it. It swam and tracked well in the water, and pulsed with life. Its extreme taper towards the front gave it its name. Credit must be given to John Shewey, as the fly was inspired by his golden greed.

Dressing:
Hook AJ 3/0
Rear half is fine oval gold tinsel wrapped tightly forward. Front half is hot orange angora wool and hot orange SLF blended and twisted into a dubbing loop.
Hackle is orange schlappen. Collar is of long dyed orange teal flank and orange dyed guinea fowl.
Wing is goose. Orange over crimson, reversed and tented.
Head is red.

Gold Demon: Traditional
Note: LOVE this fly.

Black Racer: A takeoff on the orange racer in black. Body is peacock slf and black angora this time.
Gadwall tied in as a loose throat completes the fly.


Unnamed black fly:
A fishable fly with the contours of a racer, but with less labor and materials. Good in low flows as well.

So far I have been lucky that none of these have gotten snagged in the back of a zombie salmon. If they ever do, I guess I will be going for a ride.

Also, please forgive the photography. I got a new camera (Waterproof this time) and am just learning its ins and outs. It also survives being dropped. Wish I could say that about myself!

Old Green Rag

The Old Green Rag:

Lest we forget that fish have tiny little brains, and that despite all our time spent tying the perfect quill Gordon or blue charm, they often will behave quite contrary to predictions, and eat pine needles off the surface, or repeatedly strike the nail knot on your leader but not your fly.

Dan Landeen printed this story in his excellent book Steelhead Fly Fishing the Nez Perce Country (2006 Frank Amato Publications)
It was told to Dan by Dale Knoche, a longtime friend of Jimmy Green
I will paraphrase here. If you want the whole story, buy Dan’s book!


An old man walked down to the water on the Grand Ronde, struggling with each step to get over the cobble. He had an old bamboo rod that had seen a lot of use.

A couple of casts in he hooked a steelhead. He was a bit shaky on his feet, so Dale offered to help him land it. He replied that he could manage. He landed the fish and after a couple more casts hooked another steelhead. This time the man was pooped, and accepted Dale’s offer of assistance.

When the fish was landed, Dale took a look at the fly the old man was using, and asked him what the heck it was. “Old green rag” was the reply. It was a piece of an old green woolen shirt simply wound about the hook. The old man said he had taken hundreds of steelhead on that fly, and that it was all he ever used.



The reason I like this story is that it takes us all down a peg or two. I like to offer pretty and traditional flies to the fish out of respect and art, but they would be just as likely to hit just about anything. Just reinforces the concept that having confidence in the fly is 90% of the battle.

Some flies of the summer runs

Some flies of the summer runs

I love to fish classic Dee flies. They have a grace and charm unequaled in the world of flies. Dee flies are large winter dress flies tied on very long hooks, so application as a summer fly is limited. The solution is to reduce the fly. Here are three Dunt Dee flies. Two have white wings and one a more traditional turkey wing. I used dyed black golden pheasant feathers for the hackle, and wound in forward of the dubbing as one would in a hairwing. The reason for this is that with a shorted shank hook, it is difficult to place materials without becoming over-dressed. You know… overdressed! Like wearing a suit, three T-shirts, two rain jackets, and a top hat crowned with a sun-visor. Summer flies should be dressed lightly. The dubbing for the bodies is Angora goat and SLF blended, twisted in a dubbing loop, blended again, and wrapped forward. The hook is a size 2 salmon iron.

Then we have the muddler. A number of years ago Royce Dam, 1994 FFF Buszek award winner for lifetime achievement in fly tying explained to me what was wrong with most all commercially tied muddlers. A muddler is a simple pattern designed to ride in or just below the surface film imitating some sort of small baitfish. To achieve the effect of a baitfish outline, deerhair is spun to form a head. The original muddlers were fairly lightly dressed, but in subsequent versions the deer hair began to be packed tight in several stages to form a tapered head. Deer hair floats. Additional deer hair increases floatation. What the modern muddler did was to effectively become a sort of mini Dahlberg Diver. In order to sink the fly, tying companies added weight.

Royce told me that the original muddlers had a single turn of deer hair for a head, and were NOT trimmed. One had to very carefully stack the hair prior to setting the head, and then carefully make just one single flair and spin of the hair. The resulting muddler sort of pushes water while being free to sink if a heavy hook is used. I tied this one more as a waker on an Alec Jackson hook. I have been using this fly for awhile to test it, and it seems to perform as designed. Thanks Royce!

A plethora of flies

I have been feeling guilty that I am not tying classic flies as much as fishing lately, but then in rooting through the piles of gear I found this box that I haven't opened in awhile. Holy flies! I guess I will start having to use these. This is just one of three boxes like it, and doesn't include the full fishing fly boxes and piles of scattered flies all over the classic angler's little refuge and study. Jeez.

Two new fly designs

Getting back to the subject of tying and fishing classic flies for steelhead, here are two new fly designs.

The first is an unnamed Spey/Dee fusion inspired by Bob Blumreich, a Wisconsin fisherman, guide, and expert dresser of classic flies.
I used bronze mallard wings in a Spey style, while the throat and butt are more of a Dee style. The hackle is dyed black blue eared pheasant, followed by dyed red golden pheasant, followed by dyed blue guinea fowl. It is designed as a clear water winter fly.




The second fly is designed as a waker. A modification of the bomber, it exposes the hook gap more, and has a more forward profile. The butt is of peacock herl, the body black dyed deer hair, the wing is black bear, and the hackle is dyed red golden pheasant. I added the hackle in order to have a little contrasting color and provide movement.

When all is dreary...

I was going to fish today. I even put on all the undergarments and carried my bag to the car. The temperature was 35 degrees. It was snowing, and a strong upstream wind was blowing. Combined with the low water and no fish, I chose to stay in my apartment, drink hot cocoa, listen to Bach's b-minor Mass (Solti-Chicago) and tie bright things on a dark introspective day. While being moved to tears by possible the most sublimely beautiful music ever written I came up with this. The upper photo is of a more formal approach, while the lower constitutes a fishable and quicker approach.

Intruders

They are big.
They are scary.
They are intruders!

Ed ward invented these things while inspired by absinthe...or something. They have great motion in the water, are highly visible, and attract steelhead in winter and spring. They look like giant mutant squid/shrimp in the water. Given all the invasive species in the great lakes, I should call these 'invaders'. They are also a whole lot of fun to cast. The first time I tried to throw an intruder it was with a windcutter. It was way too much like work, and often didn't turn over at all. The problem of casting these things was solved with the modern Skagit line, and the compact Skagit line. I went out yesterday to test one of these combinations. I customized a Scientific Anglers Skagit line by cutting it back from 33' to around 27'. This reduced the weight of the line without a sinktip to @ 520 grains. The line started out at 600 grains. Add the sink tips and it weighed over 700 grains! 520 was more like it. It cast quite well. Not quite as nice as the new Airflo compact Skagit heads, but pretty close. The intruder just went along for the ride. The bass liked it, even if it didn't have a hook. They just munched on it's feathers.
I made the line for use on my Fly Logic 1308. A rod that I used to love for dry line, but since has become my rod of choice for heavy sink tip work. The line will also work on the Echo 1409.
I wrapped 10-15 wraps of .020 lead wire onto the front third of each of these, but will have to wait until winter or high water to see if they sink. I did get a little crazy with all the materials and color blending. They are around 3 inches long.
I can't wait to see if they work.

recipe: (for the pinkish ones)
2" plastic tube of your choice
10 to 15 wraps of .020 lead in forward portion of body
Silver oval tinsel for tag.
Dubbing ball in front of tag. Orange or reddish. I blended my dubbing.
6-10 strands pink, purple and gold flashabou in front of dubbing ball.
6-8 strands of orange and 6-8 red ostrich herl.
Two turns of teal or mallard flank dyed pink. Two turns of teal or mallard flank dyed orange.
Body consists of trilobal dubbing or your choice in pink. Webby grizzly hackle over and medium oval silver tinsel ribbing.
Front portion: 6 strands of pearl flashabou followed by 4-5 long grizzly dry fly hackles, followed by two turns of teal or mallard flank dyed pink and two turns of teal or mallard flank dyed red.
Collar is 6 strands of peacock sword. Head is peacock ice dubbing followed by red thread.
Optional are lead or real eyes or cone heads, which work better than the lead, but spoil the symmetry of the fly.

They are not delicate. Fish them while listening to Mahler, not Bach.

A Lady

Meet Lady Caroline. She is named after Lady Caroline Elizabeth Gordon Lennox, Daughter of the Duke of Richmond Charles Gordon Lennox. The pattern most likely was devised by ghillie Geordie Shanks,and is first mentioned by Kelson.

Although the tendency today is to call anything cast with a two-handed rod a 'spey fly', the true spey flies were fairly drab and sparse.

The Lady Caroline is the most famous spey fly, most likely due to it's wonderful coloration and regal name.
I used to fish this fly a lot, until I started losing them on rocks. They are just too pretty to sacrifice to the rock gods.
This one is tied by hand blending olive and brown wool for the body. The ribbing is flat gold followed by small oval gold. The hackle is genuine imitation blue eared pheasant.

I have to replace the photo with a better one.

What a mess...

This disaster is my flytying area. It used to be a dining area. Now I eat somewhere else. My priorities are a little warped. The reason it is a mess is that is the way I am. A mess. I also detest having to constantly find what I am looking for, so materials are either out, or in large ziplock bags. Tools are stored in drawers and also spill out all over the table. Clippings are everywhere. Maybe this is an over reaction to my father. He was always after me to clean up my stuff, and he himself kept his workbench meticulously neat and tidy. All his tools hung in their proper place on pegboards. With all that organization though, he crippled his ability to work on something. Each time a tool was used it was placed back into it's original packaging and put away. I like to have things handy, so my bobbins, hair stackers, and dubbing loop twister are always handy. Someday though, I really have to organize this better so it doesn't look like the craetive lab of a mad ornithologist.

(The statue is a really large David standing on a plaster column. I am obviously nuts.)

Seeing this mess, it becomes apparent why I am not married...

Summer run fly box

Here is my summer run box. As little Joe said when he saw it, "That is a lifetime supply." Hope not...
The box contains;
Muddler wakers, October caddis bombers, thunder and lightnings, Balmoral variant featherwings, my autumn twilight, black max, black doctors, blue charms, and a bunch of other junk. Three or four of the bombers were tied by LeRoy Hyatt. The rest are all tied by me. The largest fly is a size 2 and they go all the way down to size 10. Those summer fish can be real grabby, so small flies are usually the best. Besides, who wants to cast Christmas ornaments if you don't have to?
I am an obsessive tier, so when I get turned on to a pattern, I inevitably tie too many. Then, when I don't like the pattern, it gets dumped in an old pile of flies that I always intend to organize, but never get to. As far as what I think works in a summer fly, I like dark patterns with a contrasting color somewhere. Usually black is the dominant color.

Of flies and art

I enjoy the aesthetics of fly fishing. A tight loop and elegant cast are like ballet to me, but perhaps the aspect I most enjoy about swinging flies for steelhead are the beautiful flies that we use. Catching a fish on an ugly fly is an insult to the fish. That does not mean that all the flies we use must be traditional and made from exotic feathers from the British Empire. It just means that a fly should be something to look at in itself; ie. a little piece of art.
When I started tying flies, I immediately tried to create the wonderful 19th century patterns I saw in books. Lacking in proper materials and skill, the flies caught fish, but were not something to be proud of. Then after a few months, I met a strange redneck in the flyshop. He considered himself a great tyer, and indeed some of his flies were quite good for what they were. It was just that it seemed so incongruous that this guy who seemed like an extra in the movie Deliverance would be a fly tier. I said to myself "Erik, if that guy can do it, so can you." With that statement of intent, I began a long journey of fly tying which has seen my entire dining area turned into a miasma of colorful dead animal parts, vises, storage containers, and deer-hair shavings.
I am a good tier, but this little region of Wisconsin has quite a few better tiers. Royce Dam called on me in the flyshop once every couple of weeks to show me his latest Atlantic salmon fly creations. Like anything Royce does, they were works of art, but usually sported rather ubiquitous names such as "Leatherneck." Bob Blumreich ties some of the most exquisite traditional spey and dee patterns in the country, and Brandon Luft quickly became one of the finest tiers around. So, I will never be the best tier, but have come to accept that. I did produce two very excellent episodes of Outdoor Wisconsin on traditional salmon and steelhead flies. It was fun, but I was so nervous that my hands shook throughout the filming.
The problem with being a tier is that one has to accept that it is art for art's sake. I probably have over a thousand steelhead flies in boxes. If I were to fish 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, I could never use them all, so some are given as presents, donated to clubs, etc. Mostly I tie them and then look at them. They end up stuck in a fishing hat like everything else.
The process of becoming a decent tier involved one simple rule; accept nothing other than the best you can do in each and every step. This involved undoing things and re-doing them again and again, but I learned from it.

I have become a true believer that the fly is the least critical component in swinging for steelhead. As John Hazel says, "They will take your car keys if they are willing." The most important factors are confidence and the right style of fly for the conditions. Confidence is essential if you are to fish a run thoroughly. You just have to believe. The right style of fly will see the angler not fishing a light wire size 8 low-water pattern in winter flows and cloudy water. Here we should choose big. So the water determines most everything in the fly choice.
I too tie and fish big ugly stuff for winter and spring flows. The bigger the tube and the more materials one crams onto it often makes a difference, even if the result looks like some mutant Christmas ornament.

So my advice to fly tiers is this: just have fun! Catching a fish on a fly you tied is a signal event in the progression of a fly fisherman. Just don't let your creations be ordinary.

Art is in my blood, literally. My mother was an amazing painter and celebrated Wisconsin artist. (WWW.MTH-ART.com)
I never developed the drawing and painting talent that was hers from birth, so I have to express myself and find creative outlets elsewhere. Tying flies helps a lot. So does writing.
Unfortunately, for the most part artful flies are rarely appreciated properly outside the fly fishing community. On several occasions I brought a few flies to family gatherings to show what I was doing, and received inane comments such as "How is that going to make you money?", Do you eat all the fish you catch?", or "My cousin Zeke fishes too, you should talk to him, he mixes a potent stink-bait". I no longer even tell people I fly fish. It is so much easier that way.