Kitabı oku: «Fishing Flies», sayfa 3

A DOZEN EARLY FLIES FROM SWITZERLAND

In 1558 Conrad Gesner of Zurich published a large tome called Historia Animalium, the fourth volume of which was De Piscum et Aquatilium Animatium Natura, or Of Fish and of Aquatic Animal Life. He began his section on fishing flies with: ‘Certain skilful fishers fabricate diverse kinds of worms and winged insects from the feathers of birds in various seasons of the year …’ (trans. Andrew Herd). ‘Worms’ probably included all subsurface forms including larvae and nymphs. As in the Treatyse there were twelve patterns for catching trout and grayling. They lacked names, but were tagged to the months in which they were most effective, the first for each month being a grayling fly, the second a trout fly.

APRIL

Body: White [thread or wool?].

Wings: Whitish feather from the partridge belly.

Body: Red silk.

Wings: Red cock hackles.

Head: Green [thread?].

MAY

Body: Segmented black and white by twisting together black and white thread before winding down the hook shank [see DARK WATCHETT, (see here); FOOTBALLER MIDGE PUPA, see here].

Wings: Varied (i.e. hooded) crow back feather.

Head: Blue.

Body: Red silk and gold [tinsel?].

Wings: Red cock hackles.

Head: Black.

JUNE

Body: Green ‘from the feathers of the breast of the wild duck’ [which are brown – were these wound round the hook shank?].

Wings: Dark heron tail.

Body: Blue silk and gold [tinsel?].

Wings: Partridge underwing coverts.

Head: Yellow.

JULY

Body: Blue silk.

Wings: Hooded crow belly feathers.

Head: Black silk.

Body: Green silk and gold [tinsel?].

Wings: Yellow feathers.

Head: Blue silk.

AUGUST

Body: ‘Feathers of a crane’s wing’ [herl?].

Wings: Partridge.

Head: Green silk.

Body: Peacock herl, ‘bound with a golden feather’ [was the golden feather palmered as a body hackle?].

Wings: Back feathers of hazel hen.

Head: Yellow silk.

SEPTEMBER

Body: Blue silk.

Wings: Feathers from back of hooded crow.

Head: Red silk.

Body: Yellow and red silk [twisted, as for the first fly for May?].

Wings: Ptarmigan.

Head: ‘Dark’.

When Gesner wrote his fly patterns, the Treatyse flies were in their pomp in England. It is clear that Gesner was unaware of the Treatyse flies, and that authors in England, up to and beyond Izaak Walton, were oblivious of Gesner’s work.

ITALY’S VALSESIAN FLIES

The Sesia River flows from the Piedmont Alps of Italy. It has long been a great trout and grayling stream. So it is not surprising that it is one of the earliest centres of world fly-fishing and fly-tying, with its own special style of fly named after the valley, Valsesia, also published as Valasesiana. These flies have been traced back to 1570, 74 years after the Treatyse was published and only twelve years after Gesner’s great book. Dr Nicola di Biase considered that they were fished much earlier (Grayling Journal, Summer 2007). The flies provided by Dr di Biase to illustrate her article show the flies to have a wound hackle, making them similar to the softhackles North Country style (see here), but (assuming that they were really tied that way in the sixteenth century) predating them by over a century. The hackling is, however, much heavier, and the hackle is forced forwards by several turns of thread immediately behind it. This method of hackling gives the fly more ‘kick’ than the conventional spider as the fly passes through turbulent mountain streams.

Different tyings of Valsesian flies were not, it seems, given different names. This was probably because tyers used what feathers were ready to hand, and what matched the real flies that the trout and grayling were taking. The following are three examples.

Body: Purple thread.

Hackle: Snipe upper wing covert.

Body: Orange thread.

Hackle: Brown speckled partridge.

Body: Olive thread.

Hackle: Starling neck.

SOME EARLY FLIES FROM NORTHERN SPAIN

The Danish fly-dresser Preben Torp Jacobsen was invited by Spain’s president General Franco to dinner. After dinner Franco, who was a great fly-fisher and angling bibliophile, showed Preben his vast library. Among the collection was a hand-written manuscript, dated 1624, by Juan de Bergera, and called El Manuscrito de Astorga. Preben had photographs of the manuscript made and then, with a team from the Spanish Association for the Fly and Salmonids, produced a limited edition consisting of a facsimile of the original and translations into modern Spanish, French and English. Unfortunately a fire subsequently destroyed part of Franco’s library, including the original manuscript.

Astorga is a small town not far from Leon in the Cantabrian Mountains. The rivers there have some very good fishing for brown trout, and it was to catch them that the flies in El Manuscrito were designed. The flies include in their dressings some of the most interesting wild birds to be found in Spain (such as pin-tailed sandgrouse and little bustard) and some very special hackles from cocks bred only in this region. These ‘Coqs de Leon’ are still available and, though expensive, are amongst the best material to use for tying upwinged fly (ephemerid) dun and spinner tails. There are two main types of Coq de Leon. ‘Indios’ are plain hackles, varying from the near white palometa to the blackish negrisco. ‘Pardos’ have a blackish centre (list) and coloured edges which vary from the creamy transparent crudo to a very dark grey corzuno, sometimes with black speckles.

El Manuscrito contains 49 different dressings, four of which are given here. Three are confusingly called Negriscos (they imitate a dark midge called enaguados), the fourth is one called Bermejo Crudo. Note that we do not know how these flies were tied. Hackles were then solely feathers and may not have been wound round the hook as we today wind hackles. However the last fly has one feather used as ‘a wrapping’, which presumably means that it was wrapped (i.e. wound) as we would wind a hackle, in which case, it seems likely that the others were not wound, but simply tied in. This is also suggested by the last of the four flies, where one feather was tied ‘on top’ of another. Whatever. The following tyings are one person’s interpretation.

NEGRISCOS (FOR JANUARY AND FEBRUARY)

Thread: Grey.

Body: Dark silvery grey silk.

Rib: White silk.

Hackles: Two very dark blue dun.

NEGRISCOS (FOR FEBRUARY AND MARCH)

Thread: Black.

Body: Black (linen) thread.

Hackles: Two extremely dark (almost black) blue dun.

Head: Fawn and white thread.

NEGRISCOS (FOR SUNNY DAYS IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH)

Thread: Black.

Body: Black (linen) thread.

Rib: White thread.

Hackles: Two short barbed negrisco hackles.

Head: Black.

BERMEJO CRUDO (FOR THE SECOND HALF OF MARCH AND APRIL)

Thread: Purple-red.

Body: Tying thread.

Rib: Blue and white thread.

Hackles: ‘It has a light blue dun negrisco [hackle]. Then a very fine textured pardo [hackle] that is not golden yellow; on top of the latter a kingfisher’s [feather]. Then another negrisco [hackle] identical to the first one. As a wrapping [wound hackle?] two turns of a bright vermilion [hackle] from a muladar cock.’

NOTE: Preben gave a footnote to the effect that ‘muladar’ meant dung, and that it was believed that the dung from mule stables gave cocks a very particular shade.

HOW TO TIE A FLY

In a small volume called The Secrets of Angling, by J. D. Esquire (1620), its author John D. Lawson gave us a fly that is of interest.

The head is of black silk or haire, the wings of a feather of a mallart, teele, or pickled hen wing. The body of Crewel according to the moneth for colour, and run about with a black haire: all fastened at the taile, with the thread that fastned the hooke …

This indicates that the first part of the fly to be tied in after the hook had been lashed to the horsehair tippet is the wing. The next contributors would tell us more.

WALTON, BARKER AND COTTON

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) has been called ‘the Father of Angling’, but as a fly-fisher he is disappointing as his classic The Compleat Angler (1653) added little new to what was already on record with regard to fly-tying and fly-fishing. Two Englishmen who did make a major contribution were Thomas Barker, who published Barker’s Delight or the Art of Angling (1651), and Charles Cotton, whose Instructions How to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a Clear Stream appeared as a supplement to Walton’s fifth edition of 1676. Cotton knew Walton well enough to have built an elaborate stone fishing ‘temple’ (hardly a hut!), called ‘Piscatoribus Sacrum’, in Walton’s honour by the banks of his River Dove. Barker also knew Walton, so it likely that Cotton and Barker also knew each other and discussed their books during the writing.

Barker pointed out that there were two categories of flies when it came to trout fishing.

The first were what he called ‘palmers’; they had a cock hackle wound or palmered down the hook shank. These have almost disappeared save for a group of flies known as Bumbles. They are still tied and used to catch, mainly grayling, in the rivers of that part of England fished by Cotton (Staffordshire and Derbyshire). Two examples are the GRAYLING STEEL BLUE BUMBLE, see here, and GRAYLING WITCH, see here. They have also survived as trout flies in the loughs of Ireland and lochs of Scotland: examples include the GOLDEN-OLIVE BUMBLE and ZULU, see here & also here.

Charles Cotton, in a portrait from the frontis of The Compleat Angler.

The fishing hut, called Piscatoribus Sacrum, was built by Cotton in 1674 for a visit by Izaak Walton. It is on the bank of the River Dove, in England’s Peak District.

The second class of trout fly were winged flies and are still major trout flies today.

Now let us consult Cotton as to how to tie these flies and for some specific examples. It is important to understand that Cotton, like Walton, wrote in a theatrical, lyrical style. He had two actors, one playing the part of the expert fly-fisher (Piscator), the other the novice who has come for instruction (Viator). First of all, Piscator must show Viator what materials can be used to tie flies, and in those days the fly-fisher took a huge bag of silks, fur and feather, some exotic and expensive, to the waterside so that the real fly being eaten by the trout could be imitated.

PISCATOR. And now let me look out my things to make this fly. Boy! Come, give me my dubbing-bag here presently; and now, Sir, since I find you so honest a man, I will make no scruple to lay open my treasure before you.

VIATOR. Did ever any one see the like! What a heap of trumpery is here! Certainly never an angler in Europe has his shop half so well furnished as you have.

Piscator then gives Viator a verbal slap and points out that every item in his bag is indispensable. What would Viator think about our own twenty-first-century collections of ‘essential’ tying materials.

But then Cotton takes us through the tying of a fly. No vice …

PISCATOR. You see, first, how I hold my hook; and thus I begin. Look you, here are my first two or three whips around the bare hook; thus I join hook and line; thus I put on my wings; thus I twirl and lap on my dubbing; thus I work it up towards the head; thus I part my wings; thus I nip my superfluous dubbing from my silk; thus fasten; thus trim and adjust my fly. And there’s a fly made; and now how do you like it?

VIATOR. In earnest, admirably well; and it perfectly resembles a fly.

And what modern category of fly has a body, upright wings and no hackle? Why, the most effective category of dry fly, the hackleless dry fly (see here, and here)!

Four of Cotton’s flies have been selected to show the two styles, palmers and winged flies.

GREAT-HACKLE [a palmer], the body black, and wrapped with a red feather of a capon untrimmed; that is, the whole length of the hackle staring out …

WHITE HACKLE, the body of white mohair, and warped about with a white hackle-feather …

The artificial GREEN-DRAKE then is made upon a large hook, the dubbing of camel’s hair, bright bear’s hair, the soft down that is combed from a hog’s bristles, and yellow camlet, well mixt together; the body long, and ribbed about with green silk, or rather yellow, waxed with green wax, the whisks of the tail of the long hairs of sable, or fitchet [polecat], and the wings of the white-grey feather of a mallard, dyed yellow …

Cotton then tells how to dye the mallard feather yellow. That fly would catch any trout eating large duns anywhere today.

WHIRLING-DUN … is commonly made of the down of a fox-cub, which is of ash colour at the roots next to the skin, and ribbed about with yellow silk; the wings of the pale grey feather of a mallard.

CHETHAM’S STRANGE CONTRIBUTION

James Chetham published his Angler’s Vade Mecum in 1681, five years after Cotton’s contribution to The Compleat Angler. His flies are very similar to Cotton’s, but he insisted that, in addition to what the trout sees – what it smells or tastes like is also important.

Next folow Ointments and Receipts which I have read and been informed of, by several knowing Anglers … they’ll not only allure, but even compel Fish to bite … Take Man’s Fat and Cat’s Fat, of each half an Ounce, Mummy finely powdred three drams, Cummin-seed finely powdred one Dram, distill’d Oyl of Annise and Camphor four Grains, make an Ointment according to Art; and when you Angle anoint 8 inches of Line next to the Hook therewith …

FRENCH CONNECTION

By the beginning of the eighteenth century French fly-tyers were producing flies with a similar structure to those made in Britain, though often the body was of plain silk whereas the British school mostly used dubbed fur for their bodies. These French artificial flies matched closely real flies. Louis Liger gave several examples in his book Amusemens de Champagne (1709), reprinted in 1714 as Traite de toute sorte de Chasse et de Peche. The following is typical entry:

Dans le mois de May ils en fonte une, couverte aussi de soye, maise elle est de couleur rouge, et avec de filets tirans sur l’or: la tete en est noire, et on y joint les plumes rouge d’un capon.

This fly is an excellent imitation of the many species of upwinged fly spinner that have red or red-brown bodies.

TROUT FLY EVOLUTION INTO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

During the 200 years following the publications of Barker and Cotton, three different styles of trout fly became established. The first was a winged fly that was an attempt to imitate real flies. This and the second style, the ‘buzz’ fly can best be seen in Alfred Ronalds’ The Fly-Fisher’s Entomology, which was first published in 1836 and was still in print in a new edition as late as 1921. His book was also the first to have fairly good illustrations of both the natural fly and corresponding imitative fly. The following are typical examples.

Plate 1

Plate 2

Plates from The Fly-Fisher’s Entomology, showing some of the earliest coloured illustrations of real and artificial trout flies.

STYLE ONE – THE WINGED IMITATIVE TROUT FLY (SEE PLATE 1, LOWER-LEFT FLY)

Example: Little Yellow May Dun

Hook: Size 15.

Thread: Not given; presumed yellow.

Tails: Two whisks from a dun hackle.

Body: Pale ginger fur from the back of a hare’s ear.

Rib: Yellow silk.

Hackle (Ronalds called this ‘Legs’): A light dun hackle lightly dyed yellow-green.

Wings: Drake mallard lightly dyed yellow-green.

STYLE TWO – THE BUZZ TROUT FLY (SEE PLATE 2, SECOND FLY FROM BOTTOM)

This was a fly with a palmered body hackle, like the Palmer flies of Cotton (see here). The term ‘made buzz’ indicated the palmered hackle.

Example: Marlow Buzz

Hook: Not given; size 12 suggested.

Thread: Red.

Body: Black ostrich herl and peacock herl twisted and wound together.

Wings and legs: ‘Are made buzz with a dark furnace hackle.’

STYLE THREE – THE NORTH COUNTRY SPIDER (ALSO CALLED THE SOFT-HACKLED WET FLY)

Two Yorkshire men were instrumental in establishing this style, Michael Theakston, author of British Angling Flies (1853), and Francis M. Walbran, who edited a later edition of Theakston. This style of fly was later catalogued by T. E. Pritt in Yorkshire Wet Flies (1885), reprinted the following year as North-Country Wet Flies. These are still often fished today, on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Antipodes – they are therefore described more fully here.

Spider wet flies have the simplest of bodies, often just of tying thread (silk), perhaps with a wisp of dubbing, and they have only two or two and a half turns of a soft hackle; a few also have very slender wings . They therefore suggest a fragile nymph or a waterlogged adult fly close to the surface.

Plate 8 of Pritt’s book includes six that are not included in the later section on North Country Spiders, and they have been included here to illustrate this style of trout fly.

OLD MASTER

Hook: Size 14.

Thread: Ash coloured.

Body: Tying thread, wrapped over with heron’s herl.

Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Woodcock underwing covert.

STONE MIDGE

Hook: Size 15.

Thread: Ash coloured.

Body: Tying thread, dubbed sparely with heron’s herl.

Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Pewit’s [lapwing] neck, breast or rump.

Head: Magpie herl.

GREY MIDGE

Hook: Size 15.

Thread: Yellow.

Body: Tying thread.

Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Woodcock breast.

Head: Peacock herl.

KNOTTED MIDGE

Hook: Size 15.

Thread: Ash coloured.

Body: Tying thread, dubbed heron herl.

Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Back of a swift or a martin, or pewit shoulder.

Head: Magpie herl.

SANDY MOORGAME

Hook: Size 15.

Thread: Dark brown.

Body: Tying thread.

Hackle (called ‘wings’ by Pritt): Reddish feather from the back of a grouse.

Plate 8 from T. E. Pritt’s Yorkshire Wet Flies – note that in the 1880s, fly hooks were eyeless.

BLUE PARTRIDGE

Hook: Size 14.

Thread: Blue.

Body: Tying thread, dubbed with a little blue lamb’s wool.

Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Partridge back.

These styles of flies reached maturity in the Victorian era, at the height of British imperial power. As they travelled the empire, so the British took with them the brown trout that they loved to catch back at home – and to catch those trout they took their flies.

Captain G. D. Hamilton first visited New Zealand in about 1845 and he moved there in about 1860 to farm sheep, turning 40,000 acres of virgin country into ‘English grasses’. In his book Trout-Fishing and Sport in Maoriland (1904), Hamilton relates how he stocked the river that flowed near to where he settled in the early 1870s, with brown trout. Ova were transported by ship on ice halfway round the world – with their journey completed on the backs of pack-mules. Others stocked the watercourses of New Zealand with rainbow trout from North America. Some of these stocked fish became migratory, swimming down to the ocean and returning to spawn as sea trout; others migrated into big lakes. The trout grew much bigger in New Zealand waters than they did back at home: ‘It may be taken as a rule that all streams with sufficient water contain some exceptionally large trout, up to 8lb., 10lb., 11lb., and 12lb. in weight.’

Hooks for tying flies were imported from England, but the hooks sent out to New Zealand were not strong enough to hold these big trout. So Hamilton wrote to manufacturers in the then capital of hook-making, Redditch, requesting they make especially strong hooks for him. These, together with the five fly patterns that Hamilton came up with, were all that anyone needed to catch New Zealand trout.

These flies are commonly known as red hackle, hare’s-ear, black hackle, black spider, hare’s-ear spider.

No. 1, red hackle, light-brown mallard wing, yellow-silk body, is the most easily seen when the water is discoloured, and therefore best for use at that time.

No.2, turn of brown partridge hackle, hare’s-ear body, light woodcock wing, put together with yellow silk: A killing fly when the weather is clear and low.

No. 3, black hackle, grouse wing, brown-silk body, put together with brown silk: Easily seen when the water is clear and low, and kills well then.

No. 4, spider, black hackle, tied with brown silk, brown-silk body: Easily seen when the water is clear and low. A good fly to use as a tail fly when the trout are getting into high condition and shy, and when there is bright sunshine.

No. 5, spider, brown partridge hackle, hare’s-ear body, put together with yellow silk: Very killing, when the water is clear and low, among high-conditioned and shy trout. Used as a tail fly this is perhaps the most reliable of the whole, particularly among large trout of 2lb. and upwards.

Colour plate from Captain Hamilton’s Trout-Fishing and Sport in Maoriland, showing his five fly patterns.

A similar influx of fly-fishers occurred into the United States and Canada, though, because they had their own indigenous rainbow and cutthroat trout in the west, and a char that the colonists thought was a trout and that they called brook trout, the introduction of brown trout was later than many other parts of the English-speaking world. The first arrived in about 1880 – the fly-fishers had arrived much earlier. Paul Schullery provides excellent evidence that Richard Franck, author of Northern Memoirs, lived (and fly-fished?) in the United States between 1660 and 1687. Schullery also showed how many others took fly-fishing to the New World and that, until the second quarter of the nineteenth century, most fly-fishing tackle was imported from Britain. But then, because of the vast array of river, lake and saltwater habitats; the far larger number of fish species that can be caught with artificial flies; and a wealth of natural materials available for tying flies – fly-fishing and fly-tying in North America mushroomed. And because fly-fishers in North America have never been as constrained as fly-fishers in Europe (and especially England) by rules about what flies can or cannot be used, they eventually developed flies and techniques that could hardly have originated elsewhere. Can you imagine fishing a sculpin or minnow imitation on an English chalk stream? Or one of Gary LaFontaine’s DEEP SPARKLE CADDIS PUPAE (see here) on the Derbyshire Wye, where the rule is ‘dry fly only’ and even emergers are banned?

Thus far we have looked mainly at flies that imitate insects; flies that are designed for catching trout. Now we will look to some of the earliest flies for catching other species of fish.