Mike Cline
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Randy,
Leonard M. Wright’s Fishing the Dry Fly As A Living Insect (1972) acutally gets a lot of kudo’s in the more academic fly fishing literature but it not that well known. I have a copy and have always enjoyed reading it. Here’s a quote about Wright from his NY Times obituary in 2001:
Mr. Wright’s first book, ”Fishing the Dry Fly as a Living Insect” (E. P. Dutton, 1972) raised the hackles of some reviewers and weekend fishermen.
The sportswriter Red Smith wondered in The New York Times whether its author could possibly still be alive. Surely, Mr. Smith wrote, ”he must have been struck dead for blasphemy, for he had the audacity to suggest that the high priest, Frederic Halford, and such sainted subdeacons as Theodore Gordon, George M. L. LaBranche and Edward Ringwood Hewitt had rocks in their heads when it came to floating a tuft of feather and silk over a trout.”
The Halford gospel, Mr. Smith noted, taught that the fly should be cast upstream and floated down ”in an absolutely dead drift.” Mr. Wright cast down and across and twitched the fly as he did to suggest to the fish that ”here is something alive, edible and defenseless.”
But Mr. Smith tried the Wright method and then accepted, as he wrote, ”what Mr. Wright tells us now –that nothing brings out the essential bully in a trout like a live bug he knows he can whip.”
Fishing the Dry Fly As A Living Insect is probably a title you want to read at least once.
One of the most interesting Drift Boat anchors I’ve seen was being used by a guide out on the Yakima River in Ellensburg, WA several years ago. This homemade anchor was well suited for the river and could be quickly adjusted to add or subtract weight depending on the current flows. It was nothing more than a 1″ x 9″ X 1/4″ piece of steel with seven 1/4″ holes. Each hole had a screw bolt attached with the middle one reversed to tie a line. To each of the other six screwbolts were used to attach a length of chain. In heavily flows, more chain was added, in low flows, just a few were needed. Very innovative. Here’s a quick drawing from what I remember.
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.
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.
I looked at the kayaks: SOT and Sit inside. They would be a lot easier to transport and my kids love them. My hangup is losing my lunch, fly rod, net, camera and everything else when it tips over. 😮 They don’t seem to be the stablest platform around. I guess it’s all a trade-off. I saw a couple of kayaks that have the stabilized platform or maybe as my kids say, dad needs trainin wheels for his boat. 😉
Having spent many hours in float tubes and rented pontoons on both lakes and rivers here in the South and out West, I reflect on my decision to get a Kayak last year as one of the best I ever made. For a year, I fished in a Liquid Logic Manta Ray 12 (SOT) in both lakes, open saltwater flats and up to class III white water. Stability was never a problem and the advantages greatly outwiegh any disadvantages. My fishing experiences improved significantly by abandoning my bassboat and fishing from a kayak. Here are my pros and cons
PROS
- Point A to B travel is the fastest possible without a motor. Kayaks beat tubes and toons anytime and moderate wind (up to 15 knts) is not an obstacle.
- Extensive upsteam travel in moderate flows is relatively easy, while nearly impossible with tubes and toons.
- Upstream wadiing with a tethered kayak is much easier that with tubes or toons because they don’t track well
- Kayaks are extremely stealthy and can navigate extremely shallow water. (Tubes can’t) and toons are not as stealthy
- Kayaks will actually hold a lot of gear, whereas tube and toons are more limited.
CONS
- Weight-the average SOT is 60-80 lbs in Poly – There is a solution
- Transportation and Storage – They don’t deflate or fold up — You got to have a roof rack or PU truck bed to transport them
I am so sold on kayaks that I sold my bassboat last month and just upgraded to the Native Ultimate 12 Tegris to solve the weight issue. It will accompany me to Montana this summer for use on the rivers and lakes out there.
Stability: http://www.chesapeake-angler.com/storyoct06-Ultimate12kayak.htm This is not a joke-standing and casting from this kayak is easy.
Weight: Checkout the Native Ultimate 12 Tegris at: http://www.nativewatercraft.com/
Good luck with your decision.
Walleye will hit just about any pattern resembling a Leech or Minnow if you can get the fly in front of them. My only experience with them shallow water has been in the Rainy River in International Falls, MN. You catch Walleye there on the same Woolly Bugger and Clouser patterns used for Smallmouth.
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.
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=booksZach…would it be possible to move all the submissions and future ones to their own thread that is locked for no replies. This would allow submissions to be seen one after the other.
I concur, having all the photos, sans the chit chat, all together would be useful.
Tim,
I will second the Yellowstone as the DESTINATION if you have never been there. 100 years ago fisherman were visiting Yellowstone because everyone said “There IS NOT ANOTHER PLACE LIKE IT ANYWHERE”. Still isn’t. There are few rivers where you can catch lots of browns and rainbows with these beasties as a backdrop-most if not all are in the park.
I first fished the park in the 1970s and its better today than it was then. The fishing is excellent in late September and October, even better if you want to work for it. If you camp as I did in the 1970s, its really reasonable. If you want to do motels and such (like I do now), both West Yellowstone and Gardiner offer very affordable stuff. Above all, anytime you are fishing the major Yellowstone waters, you know you are fishing with ghosts–All the greats fished these same streams and wrote alot about them. You could spend a month on the Madison and Firehole and not begin to unlock all their secrets.
A plus for the Park is that if you are staying at West Y. then you’ve got the Upper Madison in Montana as well. If you stay in Gardiner, you’ve got the Yellowstone in Montana, and if by chance you get to Jackson, you’ve got the Snake–all great streams.
I will admit my bias–since the 70s I’ve fished YNP alot, and thus am retiring this year in Bozeman, MT.
Keep us up the speed on what your thinking is!
Although I cannot comment on the contents of the book, it does get very high reviews, made it to #8 on the Canadian bestseller list and had a very low initial printing in 2000.
The original pricing was:
Hardcover Limited Edition: $55.00 Canadian. (150 copies)
Hardcover: $27.00 Canadian.
Softcover: $22.00 Canadian.Ian had this note on his website: http://www3.sympatico.ca/ianjames/
“Used Fumblings
Did you know that used “Fumblings” are selling for $228 online at Amazon, and that last year one of the limited editions was sold for $870 in a private deal. I had to verify that the book was one of the limited editions. It was purchased by a book collector in Michigan. The book was in mint condition. It was nice to see it again after 7 years. Don’t ask. I do not have any “Fumblings” left in stock.”A search on abebooks.com also reveal copies selling in the $100 range.
This book must have some appeal
Re St Croix Warranty
I bought a St Croix SCIV 3pc, 7wgt Blank (Legend Ultra) when they first came out and built a nice Saltwater rod for Florida flats fishing. I eventually broke the middle section beating up on some Spanish Mackeral. Their warranty department replaced the blank no questions asked and I rebuilt the rod. Three years ago, I broke it again, this time in Montana (consumed by errant and heavy-headed woolly buggers). I completely forgot I hadn’t botthered to get the rod rebuilt (Blame 7wgt XP), so this winter I sent the broken rod back to St Croix and they unquestioning replaced it with a new SCIV 4pc 7wgt blank as the 3pc blanks had been discontinued and unavailable.
Although I don’t know that I’d intentionally buy another St Croix rod, I certainly have had a very good experience with their warranty support.
Frankly I have one of each on a 7wgt XP and a 5wgt FLI and I don’t know that I could tell the difference.
I noticed Simms only offers the new Rivershed boots with Aquastealth/ studs. Are the studs permanent on most boots or can they be easily removed. I dont want to be in a situation where someone is insistent on me not getting in their boat with studs.
I have experienced both attitudes with drift boat drivers and one trip I was made to stand in the boat all day with my boots off. Although I had a pair of Korker convertibles for a few years, they didn’t hold up well with the abuse I gave them plus my old feet were getting uncomfortable in them. Although my LL Bean studded Aquasteath soled boots are still functional and have held up well, I use them only for wet wading here in Alabama because the studs can’t be removed. I chose the Chota STL Plus as my next boot for travel and guided float trips. They fit, are as comfortable as hush-puppies or rockports right out the box and have a great lacing system. The studs are removeable and the aquastealth soles grip well even without the studs. My vote–Chota STL Plus.
