The Dry Fly E-Book

Conrad Voss Bark

• Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 137

Beschreibung

The dry fly has long presented a design challenge to the angler. In the early 1900s, the best fishing minds, most prominently Halford, applied themselves to creating perfect replicas of the natural insect which would sit high on the water surface. Then came Colonel Harding and his watertank. This lead to the theory that trout do not see flies as we do: therefore dry flies should be tied to create the right impression, as seen from a trout's underwater perspective. At different times in history, the arguments have raged: colour and shape have gone in and out of fashion, the importance of outlines and silhouettes have waxed and waned. New ideas have embraced attempts to hide the hook, to turn the fly upside-down, to make it always land the right way up, to suggest 'ghost wings', to make it unsinkable, and so on. Men like Halford, Harding, Skues, Lunn, Marinaro, Wulff – and more recently Goddard, Clarke, Patterson, Jorgensen – these men and many others have introduced significant changes to the way we tie flies and to our understanding of how trout perceive them.They have been responsible for such flies as the Adams, the Funneldun, the Bi-Visible and the Upside-Down fly, which have had a lasting influence on the sport. In this book, Conrad Voss Bark reveals the turbulent development of the dry fly throughout the twentieth century. In his usual lively and incisive style, he brings an important aspect of angling history to life.

Leseprobe

THE DRY FLY

Progress since Halford

Conrad Voss Bark

v

CONTENTS

Title PageColour Plates IntroductionAcknowledgments1. The Looking Glass World2. Ghost Wings3. The ImpressionistsThe AdamsBi-visibleBlue-winged OliveOrange SpinnerDavid Jacques’ BWOPeter Lapsley’s BWOThe Parachute FlyEspersen’s BWOCaddis Flies - see Sedges and Caddis FliesCaenisGoddard’s Last HopeSkues’ CaenisCul de CanardDaddy LonglegsThe FunneldunGold-Ribbed Hare’s EarThe Winged GRHEThe Unwinged GRHEThe GreenwellThe HumpyThe Iron BlueGreene’s Iron BlueSkues’ Iron BlueHoughton RubyDark WatchetLane’s EmergerLeckford Olive DunLunn’s Olive DunLunn’s ParticularThe Big MayflyGrey WulffShadow MayflyGoddard’s Mayfly: The Poly May DunGoddard’s Mayfly Spinner: Poly May SpinnerMick Lunn’s Shaving BrushAlston’s HackleBlack DrakeFore and Aft MayflyMicroflies: Large Dark OliveMedium Olive DunBlue-Winged Olive DunSpent Olive / Olive SpinnerEmergersMidgesMidge EmergerBlack Duck FlyBlagdon Green MidgeThe JanusBlack HackleOlive QuillOrange PartridgeParachute FliesParachute AdamsThe PeacockPheasant TailPoult BloaThe Red QuillThe Sedge and Caddis FliesG&H Sedge (Goddard’s Caddis)Little Red SedgeThe Bighorn CaddisThe CapererElk Hair CaddisPalmer SedgeHoughton SedgesLane’s Trimmed Hackle SedgesSparkle DunSparkle SpinnerSuper Grizzly EmergerTerry’s TerrorThe ThrelfallUpside-Down FliesWylye Terror4. Six OF THE BESTBibliographyAppendix: Successful Itchen FliesIndexAlso published by Merlin Unwin BooksPlatesCopyright

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COLOUR PLATES

Plate A Sparkle Dun, Duck Fly, Blagdon Green Midge, Caperer, Black Gnat, Beacon Beige, Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear, Micro Orange Quill USD Dun, Adams, Threlfall, Brown Upright, Houghton Ruby

Plate B Shadow Mayfly, Alston’s Hackle Mayfly Poly May Dun, Grey Wulff, Poly May Spinner

Plate C Silver Sedge, Houghton Black Sedge, Terry’s Terror Elk Hair Caddis, Houghton Orange Sedge, Winged Caperer Little Red Sedge, Humpy, Palmer Sedge, G&H Sedge

Plate D Winged GRHE, Suspender Midge, Iron Blue Dun Super Grizzly Emerger, Greenwell’s Glory, Lunn’s Particular Leckford Olive Dun, Blue-winged Olive, Lunn’s Olive Dun Dark Watchet, Orange Spinner, Pheasant Tail Last Hope, Parachute Fly, Funneldun, Janus

1

INTRODUCTION

With due deference let us record how much we owe to our ancestors: to begin with, Ogden of Cheltenham and Foster of Ashbourne. They tied the first dry flies, at some time around the 1840s and 50s. Thicker bunches of hackles gave them a longer float than the standard wet fly patterns. Then there was Pulman of Axminster who first called a floating fly a dry fly. He explained that if the trout were taking insects on the surface of the water he ‘would take a dry fly’ from his box and put it to the trout. The phrase ‘dry fly’ caught on.

There were many others in the late 1700s and the mid and early 1800s who realised that the trout often took a floating fly before it sank. They made a point of trying to do this: Stewart of Edinburgh, Sir Humphrey Davy, George Bainbridge, Francis Francis, and boys 2of the Winchester School’s fishing society. They whisked the soaked wet flies through the air to dry them before they made a cast.

The first complete description of the dry fly that we have, the design of the flies and the way they should be cast, came from David Foster, the Ashbourne tackle dealer and guide on the Derbyshire Dove. He kept notes of his dry fly system which were not dated but were probably written between the 1840s and 60s or early 70s. They were edited posthumously by his sons and published in 1882 as The Scientific Angler. There, precise in every detail, was the dry fly as we know it.

David Foster, the first to define the dry fly as we now know it

The wet flies of that time had very little hackle because the hackle was supposed to represent the legs of the insect. Foster didn’t accept this. He made his hackle ‘ample and full to assist 3flotation’. He goes on:

…with the duns the wings must be full and erect, or ‘cock up’ as it is sometimes designated, so as to admit the fly [with the full hackle] to be comparatively dry for some little time, when, becoming saturated, a few backwards and forwards whisks of the line and rod should be given before the next cast again. This is repeated whenever the flies become saturated as by so doing the trouble of repeatedly changing the lure is greatly lessened.

That last sentence is his reply to Pulman of Axminster who, in his book The Vade Mecum of Fly Fishing for Trout (1841), recommended changing the soaked fly for a dry one when the trout were feeding on the surface. A fly that would float much longer without being changed was Foster’s answer. He goes on to say

The dry fly system is… by far the most scientific and artistic way of alluring trout or grayling, and well-fished streams will yield more and heavier dishes of fish to it than any other method or system of angling whatever.

But the most remarkable thing about Foster which has been overlooked by other writers, such as Waller Hills, is that he emphasises that the artificial fly must be regarded from below rather than looking down on it from above when the fly is being designed and tied. In this he was far in advance of the views of Halford and Marryat who only tried to get close imitations of the natural insect and never considered looking at their flies from below, from the trout’s point of view.

One cannot help wondering why Halford and Marryat did not pay tribute to Foster for his work on the dry fly. When Foster’s book was published Halford and Marryat were carrying out their own researches on the Test. Foster’s book was reviewed in the angling journals and would have been in the library of the Flyfishers’ Club 4 of which Halford was a member.

Frederic M. Halford, who established his famous dry fly code

It was curious that Halford never mentioned Foster. There may have been many reasons; he was too busy, he hadn’t heard of Foster’s book, it was not written by Foster but by his sons, they may have exaggerated their father’s theories. It could have been any of these reasons.

Halford’s first book, Floating Flies and Flow to Dress Them, was published in 1886, four years after Foster’s. It was a remarkable book in every way and rightly praised. It insisted 5upon a rigid discipline and the closest possible imitation of the natural insect, even to the colour of its eyes. All his flies - there were a hundred dressings - were designed to float, and on the whole they floated better than any previous patterns. They can still be seen in the library of The Flyfisher’s Club, beautiful little things, and how important were the delicate bodies, made of quill to help flotation.

Halford’s relationship with Marryat was, to begin with, that of a pupil to a teacher. He met Marryat by chance in 1879 and was at once aware of Marryat’s greater knowledge about flies and fishing. Marryat was once described by Edward Grey, later Viscount Grey of Fallodon, as being ‘the best trout fisherman in England’. Marryat was a retired Indian Army Officer who spent most of his time fishing the Test. Halford frequently went to him for advice. They became friendly.

In 1880 Halford took rooms at Bossington Mill at the end of the Houghton Club water of the Test, with the intention of studying the river flies and their matching artificials. He asked Marryat to join him and after six years’ intensive work by them both, Halford’s first book was published. He asked Marryat to be co-author as Marryat had in fact done a very large part of their research but Marryat refused. No one knew why he refused and Marryat himself never said. They merely parted and there was no explanation.

They had been together in close company for six years and over such a time they had got to know each other well and it has always seemed to me that Marryat gradually began to dislike Halford’s dictatorial attitude to the dry fly. As Waller Hills remarked in his A History of Fishing for Trout:

…[Halford] considered that the dry fly had superseded for all time and in all places all other methods of fly fishing and that those who thought otherwise were either ignorant or incompetent.

6We know that Marryat did not take that attitude. A fly box of his which I once saw in the library of The Flyfishers’ Club contained the kind of wet flies that Skues would have used before he tied his nymph patterns. In other words, Marryat liked to fish the dry fly but he was no purist and would fish a wet fly from time to time if conditions demanded it, if the trout were feeding under water on the ascending nymphs.

Halford was becoming an ultra purist; that is, he would not put a fly to a rising trout until he was certain that the trout was feeding on the hatching duns. This was one reason why he gave up using the Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear which he suspected was being taken as a hatching nymph. In other words, as someone said, the hare’s ear wasn’t dry enough.

It was inevitable that during their work capturing insects in the river, mounting them, copying them, discussing their behaviour and experimenting with various dressings, they would get to know each other’s nature and it must have been clear to both of them that they were drifting apart. Halford did the right thing in asking Marryat to be the joint author of Floating Flies and Marryat, aware of Halford’s growing intolerance, politely declined. Marryat was never a critic of Halford. He remained silent.

So Halford has all the praise for the Red and Blue and Ginger Quills, the Grannom, the Black Gnat, the Silver Sedges, the Alder and all the rest of these remarkable flies which are so beautifully designed and tied. Moreover, his tactics were extremely sound. He even suggested that there were times when the dry fly could be drifted downstream to a rising trout if it could not be reached in any other way - a tactic that is now widely forgotten by the ultra purists of Halford’s followers.

Halford was the great publicist of the dry fly. Waller Hills, who was highly critical of Halford’s authoritarian views, which we’ve just quoted, nevertheless has written the best summary of Halford’s influence and achievement: 7

…two tendencies are apparent. The floating fly has spread far beyond its original territory. When he first wrote, it was the common but not yet the universal practice in a limited area: the chalkstreams of Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Kent, the Wandle, Hertfordshire and Buckingham streams, and the limestone streams of Derbyshire. Speaking generally (and without reckoning such outlying areas such as the Driffield Beck) Derbyshire was its northerly and Dorsetshire its westerly boundary. At his death [in 1914] it had spread over all England, over Scotland, Ireland, parts of France, Germany, Scandinavia, America and New Zealand, in fact it was practised by some fishermen in most places where trout are to be found. It must not be imagined that wherever it went it conquered for that was far from the case. But it won its way on rivers where trout sometimes run large, such as Tweed or Don, and particularly on Irish rivers of which the Suir is one. It has also come to be used more and more on lakes which hold big fish, such as Blagdon or Lough Arrow. And the new sport of fishing it for sea trout has been invented. Altogether, Halford, in the time between his first book and his death [1886–1914] saw its empire spread over a large part of the earth.

True enough. All the same, many men were fishing the dry fly or ‘the floater’ years before Halford, who had begun his fishing life as a coarse angler. A friend took him to the Wandle where he was advised by members of the syndicate there to fish the dry fly upstream to rising fish, a technique known at the time as ‘the Carshalton dodge’.

Ten years before that, Francis Francis had been enthusiastically commending the dry fly in articles in The Field. Halford was caught up in a growing tide of enthusiasm for the dry fly, improved upon it with Marryat’s help and eventually led it in the direction we now know. It was indeed a great achievement to establish the dry fly code and to publicise it in those remarkable six books of his 8but the general movement of opinion towards the dry fly by many fishermen began while Halford was still at school. To say this is not to denigrate his achievement as the historian and publicist of the dry fly but to put it in perspective.

Although Marryat’s and Halford’s patterns of the new dry flies were infinitely more lifelike to look at than those that had been in use before, many efforts were made to improve upon them. First was Dr J.C. Mottram who was a most inventive fly designer, pioneering dressings that created the illusion of the natural insect, its silhouette against the light.

He also produced midge pupae with cork bodies and an olive spinner with a bare hook abdomen. His book, Fly Fishing, Some New Arts and Mysteries, was published by The Field, undated, probably in 1915 or 16 during the First World War. It was not the most appropriate moment to produce a largely technical book when most of its potential readers were involved in France and Flanders. Moreover his flies looked a little odd.

Ten years later an aeronautical engineer, J.W. Dunne, who was also searching for the translucent appearance of the dun’s body and wings, painted the shanks of his hooks white and used a kind of rayon floss (cellulite) which became almost transparent when oiled and wet. It worked well but unfortunately the necessary material, cellulite, went out of production. There were other experiments but the tremendous scope of Halford’s books, the precision and clarity of his description of how to fish the dry fly, could never be challenged. This is classic Halford:

Dry fly fishing is presenting to the rising fish the best possible imitation of the insect on which he is feeding in its natural position. To analyse this further, it is necessary, firstly, to find a fish feeding on the winged insect; secondly, to present to him a good imitation of this insect, both as to size and colour; thirdly, to present it to him in its natural position floating on the surface of the water with its wings 9up, or what we technically term ‘cocked’; fourthly, to put the fly lightly on the water so that it floats accurately over him without drag; and fifthly to take care that all these conditions have been fulfilled before the fish has seen the angler or the reflection of his rod.

It is a splendid description of how to fish the dry fly but it misses the crucial point about the fly itself: what does the artificial look like to the trout who sees it not from above but from under the surface of the water?

I suspect that both Marryat and Halford were aware that the trout might find its observation distorted by the water to some extent but they thought that if they made the closest possible copy of the natural insect this would be sufficient to deceive the trout. What they didn’t realise, but Foster suspected, is that the trout saw both the artificial and the natural fly in strange ways which neither Halford nor Marryat imagined possible.