Two Quotes

“Indeed, if more of us realised how easy it is to make a fly that will catch fish, we should get much more fun out of our fishing.”

“There is something about the self-tied fly that tickles a man’s vanity, and so puts him in the best of good humours; and always there is something fresh for him to discover and experiment with. He begins to find interest, not only in the habits of the fish but in those of the insects on which they feed. A certain knowledge of river entomology is necessary to all those who would follow the higher branches of the angler’s art, and the further we advance the more shall we find it necessary to discard certain shop patterns if we would express our own individual ideas in the rendering of the natural fly.”

Both of these quotes are taken from Golden Days, by Romilly Fedden, which was first published in 1919. (Fedden was an Englishman, and considering his origins, his gender, and the antiquity of the book we must forgive him his Anglicized spellings and his apparent sexism.) I’ve known about this book for a long time, it’s among the revered classics of the angling literature. Out of print for many decades, I’ve never had a chance to read it. But I’d certainly like to. Recently I was fortunate enough to stumble on an article by Nick Lyons about the book and its author, and the above quotations resonated powerfully with me. They touch upon both ends of the fly tying experience, and eloquently express the key issues involved.

For the beginner to intermediate fly fisher, the prospect of tying one’s own flies can be quite daunting. I hear the same protests over and over again. I don’t have the time to tie my own, I don’t have the patience for it, I could never deal with such small, tedious work. Yet Fedden hits the nail on the head with his observation. Most people don’t realize how easy it can be, nor do they understand how much their enjoyment of fly fishing would be enhanced if they were to start tying even a few of the flies with which they fish.

Of course, there is a learning curve to be gotten through. In the very beginning the process learning to manage fly tying tools and materials can seem rather awkward. But anyone with a normal degree of manual dexterity will improve quickly, and within two or three sessions it will start to come easier and easier. Aging and loss of visual acuity can be a handicap as well, but there are ways around that. Good lighting, a background plate, and a magnifier of some kind can make a huge difference. Or one can simply choose not to tackle the tiny stuff but rather stick to larger flies that are both easier to see and to tie. Progress, of course, will be further and faster the more often one sits down to tie. 

Truly, not everyone who fishes with flies is cut out to be a tyer. Yet for those who have any interest at all, there is much pleasure and satisfaction in crafting flies for your own use or to give to friends. Each tyer will hold herself to a certain level of craftsmanship, and this will vary from one individual to another. It’s important to remember that most of the time fish are much less discerning critics of our flies than either ourselves or other flyfishers. A fly with a sloppy head may not win any prizes in a tying competition, but as long as you can get your tippet through the eye of the hook the fly will catch fish.

Once you are making flies that you like the look of, you will soon start tweaking the pattern recipes of other tyers rather than merely following pattern directions cookbook-style. From there it’s a short jump to designing your own fly patterns from scratch. There is no hard and fast boundary between a modified existing pattern and a new one. 

It’s almost a running gag among serious tyers that you can change one material in a pattern recipe and claim to have invented a new fly. In fact all tyers stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, and very little in the craft is truly original. Even so, fishing successfully using what you regard as your own invention is a very rewarding experience. This is true whether the fly is a brightly colored attractor, a somber generalist pattern, or your own interpretation of a natural insect.

And that brings us to the second quote. I have known a number of fly fishers who, as they progress into the middle-intermediate skill level with their fishing, begin to complain about the flies in the bins at the fly shop not being quite what they want. The dressing is too heavy, or not the right color, or they can not find their favorite pattern anywhere. The fly doesn’t float high enough, or it floats too high, or it doesn’t sink fast enough. And so on. My reply to this type of complaint is always the same: if you can’t buy what suits you, it’s time to start tying your own. Another approach is to try to find a commercial tyer or a friend who ties who will do custom work for you. But then you are at their mercy as much as you were at the mercy of the selection in the fly shop. Tie your own and you can always have exactly what you want, whenever you can squeeze out a few minutes to whip up a couple of whatever it is.

Again, Fedden hits the mark. “The higher branches of the angler’s art…” require us to discard fly shop patterns and express our own ideas. My friend Don Douple, a very accomplished fly fisher, tyer, amateur entomologist, photographer, and fly designer, coined a very apt quote of his own: “Most fly tyers don’t copy the naturals, they copy other people’s flies.” And if we seek to match natural insects with our flies we clearly need to develop a knowledge of their morphology and their behavior so that we can render our own interpretation of what we see in and on the water. When you’ve observed first hand the natural insect you want to imitate, and when the artificial you’ve made looks good to you in all respects of appearance and performance, you will fish that fly with greater confidence and effectiveness.

It’s a shame that more of the classic books of the fly fishing and tying literature are not currently in print, for many of them contain timeless concepts from which the modern fly fisher and tyer can learn a great deal. At least a few current writers like Nick Lyons and Paul Schullery make some of them available to us in the form of commentaries and magazine articles. For that we should all be thankful.

--Mary S. Kuss--  
Summer 2008 Issue