Fishing Flies

Hook: Size 9.

Thread: Silk M2.

Tails: Cock pheasant tail herls, not dyed. ‘Ends of whisks should be 1 ½ inches from eye of hook.’

Body: ‘2 (298A) + 2 (298) + 2(226). Thickness behind hackle, about 8/100 inch. Taper to half this thickness.’

Rib: Fine gold wire.

Outspread wings: Cut from hackle H2 (including plenty of brown markings). Total spread, 1 ½ inches.

Hackles: Four turns of N behind wings, and four turns of N in front. Maximum width across shank, ¾ inch.

Eyes: ‘Unnecessary.’

Wardle & Davenport ceased production and so today we have no idea what M2, 298A, 298, 226, H2 or N were, we cannot obtain them, and Dunne’s flies will never be tied again.

More recently, a material called Swannundaze, which was highly recommended in the 1970s for forming the segmented bodies of larvae and nymphs, has vanished from the fly-tying scene (see here (#ulink_f81d7225-b122-54b5-be44-9495676e2a95)).

Many fly-tying recipes in this book include synthetic materials, such as Krystal Hair and Poly Yarn. It is likely, should such synthetics disappear from the market, that reasonable alternatives will become available.

TIP: One of the greatest pleasures in fly-tying is to gather materials for nothing. It may be a road-kill, or some distant aunt may have a fur coat that she wants to get rid of, or the local game dealer may have some rabbit or deer skins that he doesn’t want, or a shooting friend may have a bag of mallard or pheasants that need plucking, or the family next door may have some hens and an aged cockerel with the most superb grizzle hackles! Never say no! Rub borax into skins and the cut ends of wings to prevent fungal and bacterial growth. If you are unsure that the material may hold parasites (e.g. feather mites or moth larvae) that could ruin a fly-tying collection, put the item in a plastic bag, knot the bag and put it in the deep freeze for a month. Store all natural materials in sealed plastic bags.

Often recipes require dyed fur or feather. Dyeing your own materials is good fun, provided the kitchen remains undyed! And when a colour is required for a tying recipe, consider a blend of material that gives that colour. For instance, if medium olive fur is needed, mix the fur from two or three sources (such as hare, rabbit and perhaps a synthetic) so that there is variety in texture. Perhaps also mix in a little yellow or red or orange to break up the flat tone of the olive. For a good example of this, see JC HATCHING BUZZER, see here (#litres_trial_promo).

DO WE NEED SO MANY DIFFERENT FLIES?

The answer is, of course, no! This Encyclopedia contains the tyings for nearly 250 different dry flies designed for catching trout and other fish that take insects from the water surface. By varying size and, sometimes, colour/shade, it would be possible to use one pattern to match several species of real fly, so from the practical fishing point-of-view, the 250 could become over a thousand flies in the box. If it were essential to carry so many imitations, the hatch would be over before a fly was cast! In The Floating Fly (2008), Malcolm Greenhalgh described just eleven different dry and emerger patterns that, he argued, would catch any fish eating any insect floating at the surface of any river or lake anywhere in the world! Seventy-five years earlier, Edward Hewitt listed ten dry flies (five winged and five hackled) in Hewitt’s Handbook of Fly Fishing (1933) and added: ‘Personally, I would not want any more patterns of dry flies than the above … Don’t get a raft of patterns. They are not necessary at all [his italics].’ Ray Bergman (in Just Fishing, also 1933) agreed, noting that: ‘I think it is possible to get along with half a dozen [dry fly] patterns ranging from [sizes] 10 to 15.’

Life would, however, be incredibly boring if we tied and carried only a few patterns that we knew nearly always caught fish. Most of us do carry our favourite flies, the ones in which we have lots of faith. But we do enjoy tying and trying new ones. The worst scenario would be the discovery of the Holy Grail, the fly that catches every fish it is cast to. For then there would be no need to tie or carry any other fishing fly, there would be no challenge, and it would signal the end of fly-tying and fly-fishing.

THE PRESENTATION OF FLY-TYING RECIPES

There are two main ways of presenting fly-tying recipes.

The first is to list the parts of the fly in the order that they are tied in. So if the wing is tied in first, it appears after hook and thread detail, whereas if the wing is tied in last, it appears at the end of the recipe. This way lacks uniformity in that the order changes depending on what fly is being tied.

The second is to consider the finished flies (shown in this volume as photographs) and to list all the parts in order beginning with hook, then thread, then tail, body, rib, hackle and so on. In seeking to present the recipes in a clear uniform manner, this method will be used throughout this Encyclopedia.

PARTS OF A FLY

Hook: This may be one of several types (e.g. wet fly, dry fly, nymph, streamer, low-water salmon) and sizes. Some flies may also be tied on double and single hooks, tandem mounts, and tubes or Waddington shanks to which a separate hook is fixed. Note that often there may be restrictions as to what hooks may be used on particular stretches of water.

Thread: The ability to use thread well marks the difference between a good tyer and a poor one. The great tyer Terry Ruane used to say that, for the fly-dresser: ‘the hook is the canvas, the thread the brush, and the materials the paint. A good artist is one who can use the brush.’

Tag (sometimes called ‘butt’): Small amount of material (e.g. two or three turns of tinsel or floss silk) wound around the shank before the tail. But note that sometimes ‘tag’ means ‘tail’ (e.g. RED TAG, see here (#litres_trial_promo)).

Tail: Represents the real tail in some flies based on insects and fish, but added simply to lend movement in, for instance, modern salmon and saltwater flies.

Butt (sometimes called ‘tip’): At the base of the tail and immediately before the body, this is usually added to salmon flies and some loch/lough/sea-trout flies to add a hot spot that might attract the fish’s attention (e.g. a turn of fluorescent floss).

Body: May be separated in insect imitations into abdomen and thorax.

Rib: Suggests segmentation in many imitative flies or, adds extra ‘flash’ (a tinsel rib) in salmon and other flies. Note that, when tying flies that imitate insects, the novice tyer is urged by the expert to rib evenly so that every segment is the same width. Yet in real larvae, pupae and adult insects, the segments will vary in width!

Body hackle: This is a hackle wound spirally around the body. It may be tied in at the end of the body, wound forward and then tied in at the front. Or, it is tied in at the front of the body, wound back around the body, and then fixed in place by bringing the tinsel ribbing forward through it. Note too that in some flies the body hackle is wound in touching turns (e.g. BIVISIBLES, see here (#litres_trial_promo)), whereas in others it is wound in open turns (e.g. Troth’s ELK HAIR CADDIS, see here (#litres_trial_promo)).

Wing cases: In nymphs. Usually a slip from a feather, tied in on the dorsal surface between abdomen and thorax, and then brought forward over the back of the thorax after the thorax has been completed and legs tied in.

Shellback: In scud/freshwater shrimps. Usually some synthetic strip tied in at the end of the hook shank and then brought forward over the back of the fly just before completion.

Hackle: Wound at the front of the fly. In a false hackle, hackle fibres are tied in, in front of the body or in front of a fully wound hackle (e.g. GOLDEN-OLIVE BUMBLE, see here (#litres_trial_promo)). In a parachute hackle, the hackle is tied in and wound around a ‘posted’ wing (e.g. KLINKHAMER SPECIAL, see here (#litres_trial_promo)).

Legs: In imitative flies. May be a false hackle. Or a feather is tied in by its tip on top of the hook shank, pointing backwards, either before the body (in scuds/freshwater shrimps) or thorax (nymphs) is created. The feather is then brought over the back of the body or thorax and tied in. The fibres sticking out to either side to imitate legs.

Wings: In early flies represented the wings of real insects. Now also means feathers or hairs tied back over or alongside the body in streamers, salmon flies, many saltwater patterns etc. In parachute dry flies and emergers a single wing is tied in first, brought upright and then ‘posted’ with several turns of thread around its base. The parachute hackle is later wound around this posted base.

Topping: Fibres of herl or golden pheasant ‘topping’ feather etc. tied over the top of wings.

Cheeks: Small feathers, e.g. jungle cock eyes, tied in at sides of wings.

Head: Often not mentioned if only of tying thread.

THE EARLIEST FLIES (#ulink_a13e82a9-5852-5eb9-a446-3e641e1d38b2)

The history of fly fishing is so long that we will never know who first had the inspired idea of tying feathers round a hook.

Andrew Herd, The Fly, 2003.

THE MACEDONIAN FLY

The first recorded fly was published by a Roman called Claudius Aelianus in a manuscript book De Animalium Natura in about AD200. The fly was used to catch fish ‘with speckled fins’, which must have been trout. The trout rose to catch flies at the surface of a river then called the Astraeus in what was then Macedonia. Research by Andrew Herd and Dr Gorin Grubil has shown that the Astraeus is now known as the Arapitsa, and it flows through modern Greece. The real flies were known at the time as hippouros and they appear to have had combined characteristics of a midge, a wasp and a bee. Investigations by Fred Buller (in The American Fly Fisher, vol. 22, 1996) into the identity of hippouros indicated that it was either a horsefly Therioplectes tricolor or a drone-fly Episyrphus balteatus.

The imitation of the MACEDONIAN FLY was simple: ‘They fasten red wool around a hook, and fix onto the hook two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattle, and which in colour are like wax’. Or, to give it as a tyer’s recipe:

Hook: Not given; suggest dry fly, size 14.

Thread: Not given; suggest red or brown.

Body: Red wool.

Wings: Two wax-coloured cock hackle points. [Wax coloured? Beeswax is a light creamy-buff.]

It seems clear that fly-fishing is a very ancient way of catching fish. Andrew Herd traced it back as far, perhaps, as the ninth century BC, and showed that by the early Middle Ages (late twelfth and early thirteenth century) fly-fishing was well established in Japan, in Spain, in central Europe and in Britain. The central European school is especially interesting for it produced an early fifteenth-century Bavarian manuscript, translated into English by Professor Richard Hoffmann, and called Fisher’s Craft and Lettered Art. It included flies for catching several species of European freshwater fish, but the way the flies were tied and some of the terms used (for example, ‘stingel’) are not clear in their meaning. Two examples are given below. The resultant flies were tied with a great deal of guesswork!

BAVARIAN CHUB FLY

This is an imitation of a beetle called ‘wengril’. ‘The feathering should be black brown with the silks green and black and around the stingel green and brown.’