Fishing Flies. Smalley

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      One of the most apparent and widespread developments in American fly tying has been the increasing use of flies that do not imitate real flies. “Fly fishing” has come to mean, to most people, at least, the use of a fly rod and fly line to cast something we still call a fly but might imitate anything from blobs of stonefly eggs to a baby muskrat.

      Paul Schullery, American Fly Fishing: A History, 1987.

      The fishing fly greatly predates the fly-fishing rod and heavy fly-fishing casting line. Until the eighteenth century artificial flies and baits were both used on the same rod and line. These early flies were attempts to imitate the flies that hovered over water and that, when they landed on the water’s surface, were preyed on by trout. So when the angler spotted a trout (or other fish) rising to take real flies from the surface, bait tackle was cut from a fine horsehair line and an artificial fly that had some passing resemblance to the real one was knotted in place. Often, in these bygone days, the angler might take a bag of fly-tying materials to the waterside, and use them to produce an imitation of the type of fly the trout were eating as they watched. The fly could not be cast as we can today with the use of heavy fly-line – for the horsehair line was not weighty enough. Instead the fly-fisher used the breeze and a long fishing rod to dap or dib the fly on to the water’s surface. That most (if not all) fishing flies back then were designed to match real species of fly is borne out by the writings of anglers in those far-off times (see here).

      A further step in the development of the modern fishing fly was taken in the tying of fishing flies that did not imitate flying insects. Instead, other stages of aquatic insect life cycles were imitated: nymphs, larvae, pupae and, most recently, that remarkable and very short-lived stage, the emerger. Once that step had been taken, then it was logical to imitate other subsurface aquatic trout foods: crustaceans such as shrimps (scuds) and hog-lice (sow-bugs), water snails and fish fry. If these creatures are acceptable as flies, the argument continued, why not tie flies that imitate larger fish or frogs to catch predatory species such as pike and largemouth and smallmouth bass? Go one step further, argued those anglers who lived by the shore. So a huge number of bait-fish imitations were concocted for catching species such as striped bass and bluefish, some very special shrimp imitations for catching bonefish, and crab imitations for casting to feeding permit. All these imitations – though far removed from a mayfly or stonefly imitation – we still call flies.

      When a fly-fisher sets out to catch a fish, the important two questions usually are:

      Such questions are irrelevant when it comes to catching species such as salmon, sea trout or steelhead, for they do not usually feed on their return to the river from their oceanic feeding grounds. It is true that sometimes such fish can be seen taking some sort of food and that they can sometimes be caught on food-imitating flies. To catch these fish, special flies have been designed that arouse aggression or curiosity. For example, in the autumn when cock Atlantic salmon are nearing the time to spawn, a fly with a lot of orange in its dressing is often most effective (see here). Because shrimps and prawns turn some shade of orange when they are cooked we often refer to these flies as shrimp flies, but the salmon does not take the orange fly because it resembles something that it ate out at sea. It takes the fly because its vision is most sensitive to reds and oranges and because, with its high level of testosterone, the cock salmon is highly aggressive at that time of the year.

      It is important to note that through the almost four centuries that flies have been tied for catching salmon, they have always been called ‘flies’, even though they imitate nothing living, and certainly not real flies. Because the salmon fly is usually not designed to imitate what the salmon is eating, some fly-fishers may prefer to call it a lure. This takes us into a second category of flies, for, besides feeding, most fish use their mouths to investigate what is, for them, new, and to attack intruders. Look at a range of tarpon flies, for instance (see here). Many look nothing like the lesser creatures that tarpon eat. Yet, when fished in front of a tarpon, the tarpon looks and responds by giving such a fly a good chew.

      Two large categories of flies may be taken by the fish as imitation food or as lures. These are streamers (see here) and poppers (see here). Some streamers are quite fish-like, so they may be taken as food. Others look nothing like something that has lived. Poppers, bobbling across the water surface, may suggest a meaty frog or injured bait-fish to a hungry largemouth bass or pike. But both streamers and poppers might just as easily be taken because they lure the fish to take out of curiosity or aggression.

      Traditionally flies are ‘tied’ or ‘dressed’. They are not ‘made’ or ‘constructed’. The tying or dressing involves fixing the materials that go into the fly’s construction – traditionally hair, fur and feather – onto using nothing but thread. The majority of flies are still tied in this way. However, glues are increasingly being used in fly construction, and some flies are constructed, not dressed. One of the most primitive examples of this is the Wake Lure used to catch Atlantic sea trout in their natal rivers in the dead of night. This ‘fly’ simply consists of a piece of cork from a wine bottle, cut and trimmed to shape, lashed to the top of a hook shank. Painted a nice colour, or embellished with a couple of feathers, it’s still just a bit of cork tied to a hook! The Wake Lure originates from the 1930s (see here). Today similar flies are being constructed from deer hair or wool, that have all the properties of Rapallas and other wobbling plugs to catch saltwater species and pike. Cast them out and retrieve quickly: they dive and wobble from side to side in a way that predatory fish find so attractive.

      There are some fly-fishers today who believe that fly-fishing should be solely about imitating real, winged flies and that to fish with ‘flies’ that do not (such as streamers, poppers and saltwater flies) is not fly-fishing but fishing with a fly-rod and line. Those controlling the fishing on some English rivers are perhaps the strictest, with ‘dry fly only’ or ‘maximum hook size 10’ rules. They are entitled to their opinions and to set whatever rules they want on their own waters. But does it matter? After all, fly-fishing and fly-tying for most people is a way of escaping for the day-to-day job of earning a living, of feeding the family, of maintaining a home. It is not about politics, argument and rules.

      FLY-TYING MATERIALS