Old School Techniques
- This topic has 10 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated Mar 31, 2008 at 7:58 pm by
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I wanted to start a new post focusing on the non-extreme aspects of fly fishing. There has been some discussion about this recently here on the board.
Last week I hired a guide to teach me the traditional English wet fly technique. He was an old guy who grew up in the Catskills area and has been fishing wet flies since childhood. He was a very calm and slow speaking guy and chose each word carefully. Before we started fishing we spent a great deal of time talking about how to tie a wet fly sparsely, use silk, minimal wraps, two turns, I took notes. Then he talked about the importance of a long 10′ or longer rod because it helps to make the important mends. Then the cast and swing and the very very slow twitch of the fly. I spent like 4 hours learning all the “little” things that make this technique successful. More than once he said, “be patient.”. We caught fish when I never expected there to be a bite. For the first time I (seriously) I saw the benefits of being patient when fishing, or at least the rewards. Best money I’ve spent in a while.
So anyway, I have been fishing this week on my home waters. Last night I was in my float tube in my usual spot and there were others around as well. I used only a little “red” wet fly and the traditional swing and made slow slow approaches. The use of red dressing on a small fly is still foreign to me because the green caddis are hatching. I had a blast and quit counting fish after about 15 or so, even landed two 12-13 inchers (for that water a good size). Three different people came over to me and asked me what the hell I was doing since I was the only one catching fish in any numbers and the technique was so very different. My point – It is not always necessary to be a “bad-ass” fisherman. Find something that works for you, learn it well, catch fish. Over the years I have found that my style is actually better suited for medium-fast casts and slower deliberate approaches (on the river that is, not saltwater and not streamer fishing). Being successful is the best end-game.
I have to say that sometimes revisiting the past is about as extreme as it gets. Fishing wet is “bad-ass” and extreme in itself.
Lets get real extreme with it. Break out the wool, canvas hips and a long bamboo stick. That sir is “bad-ass” when you are catching more than the rest. We learn from the past but then with a blind eye forget it because something new comes around. The sport of fly fishing is one of the only sports I know that puts history back in the equation.
I commend you for breaking new ground by learning something thought of as a dead art.
“The past, present and future” is a motto that most fly fishers live and breathe even when “Present and Future” is the only part that main stream society understands.
For those of you who are really serious about learning, understanding and trying out some old school techniques, I would encourage you to explore the 100s of public domain fly-fishing and angling texts that are downloadable from the internet. Google Books, The Internet Archive and Books.live.com all have extensive libraries of pre 1923 texts available in PDF format. Most are either British or American texts and you’ll be surprised how many are really fun and useful reading. Use the search terms Angling or Fly fishing to generate the most hits. A local fly tier and I are always looking up some old fly, tying it and seeing who can catch the most fish with them. Its not surprising that 100 year old flies still work.
http://www.archive.org/index.php
http://books.google.com/
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?scope=booksMike, that is brilliant. Thanks. I am very interested to read some of these prints. I have also been collecting a reading list of more modern authors but many of these older texts are used as the general reference anyway. Also, I didn’t know about these links – there is a lot of good information out there for free.
Also, it sounds like you have some good knowledge about fishing the older patterns and finding that they indeed work well.
Neal,
Bear in mind that this will get addictive, especially if you like to read. I have about 400 titles on my bookshelves and another 200 on my laptop. That’s the beauty of the public domain PDF texts. You can read books that would be way too expensive and rare to drag around on an airplane. If you read enough of the 19th century British and American texts, the first thing that will dawn on you is that fly fishing really started out as no kidding fly fishing where live flies (mostly May flies, Stone flies and large Diptera) were hooked up and dabbed over rising fish. Artificial fly fishing evolved from Natural fly fishing and you’ll find both terms used in comparision in alot of early texts.
The other thing that becomes clear from reading older texts is that basic techniques haven’t really evolved much in the last 150 years. Evolutions in fly materials and fishing equipment are really what enabled the biggest changes in the last 150 years. But in my experience, most of what angling writers today call the latest and greatest technique is merely a rehash of something anglers were doing (albeit within the limits of their equipment) 150 years ago.
Finally, and this is what I find most entertaining about the older texts, are the HUGE cultural differences and similarities between fly anglers 150 years ago and today. They fished to KILL, we fish to CATCH. But in between those two extremes our movtivations to fish and reflections on fly fishing are pretty much the same as theirs were 150 years ago.
Have some great reads.
I heard a quote the other day and I think it was by Faulkner it goes something like this: “There is no future just the past happening over and over again”. I think there is a lot of truth in that statement. Methods come in and out of fashion but its rewarding to accept the discipline of another era especially if it works really well. The pleasure of a bent rod is timeless!
Mike,
Could you suggest a couple of old titles to start with that you found really interesting?
Thanks,
Jay
Mike,
Could you suggest a couple of old titles to start with that you found really interesting?
Thanks,
Jay
Tough to chose but here are a few titles with links that I found fun to read:
Fishing in American Waters – Genio Scott (1875)
http://www.archive.org/download/fishinameric00scotrich/fishinameric00scotrich.pdf
My Angling Friends – Fred Mather (1901) (Think John Gierach in 1901)
The Jolly Angler – March (1833)
http://www.archive.org/download/jollyanglerorwat00marciala/jollyanglerorwat00marciala.pdf
The North County Angler (1817)Wet Fly Fishing Treated Methodically – Tod (1903)
The last three British titles are just a small sample of what’s been published from that Island.
Hope you enjoy them.
Mike, could you please explain how to use this service. Your links for .pdf files just take me to Google books and most of them are not .pdf and are missing pages. Thanks in advance.
Jay,
I re-did the Google links so you’ll be prompted to download or save the file. However, anytime you are at Google Books, just search for the Author or Title and the book should come up somewhere in the list.
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