Mostly for trout and mostly in England, for which I make no apology, as most of my own experience is based on the chalk streams of Southern England, where some of the more notable events in the history of the sport took place. And the why trout? Because for most people, fly fishing is synonymous with trout fishing. You may also notice a decidedly male angle on what comes next. That is a quirk of history but may also reflect on the sadly misogynistic attitude of our forebears towards sport in general. Let us not forget that the British rod-caught record salmon was caught by Miss Georgina Ballantine in 1922, a fish of 64 lbs that took over 2 hours to land. And she had already caught three fish up to 27 lbs earlier in the day. Respect.
When did fly fishing begin? The short answer is “we don’t know” and much of what has been written is conjecture, albeit conjecture based on some form of historical source. I like to think that it is possible that fishing with a fly began not far from where I am at the moment – in Kenya and close to the Great Rift Valley where some of the very earliest human remains have been found. The people who lived here hundreds of thousands of years ago were hunter gatherers and were adept at making stone tools, a process that requires practice, the acquisition of a skill, a degree of trial and error, a lot of persistence and presumably teachers who can guide and pass on the benefits of their experience.
Sitting on a cliff edge overlooking Lake Turkana, a young boy spots a huge fish in the shallows. He has a length of twine made from the gut of an antelope and a rough hook that he had carved from some bone. He has caught fish before and he searches for a grasshopper or caterpillar to put on his hook but it is dry and there are no insects to be found. In frustration, he pulls at his hair and then an idea comes to him. He tugs at the rough kilt around his waist and collects a small handful of animal fur. Rubbing his hands together, he fashions this into a thin rope which he winds around the hook. He finds a feather and binds this to the hook shank. He looks at his creation and he can see the likeness of a large grasshopper. He lets out a length of twine and twirls it round his head before letting go. The line flies out and lands close to the fish. The boy tugs on his twine, making small jerking movements. The artificial grasshopper jogs across the smooth surface of the lake. The fish turns its head and moves towards the lure, rises up in the water, opens its mouth around the fly and takes it. As the fish turns down, the boy tightens the line and the fish, feeling the unnatural resistance, flicks its tail and heads for deeper water. The boy pulls hard on the line, the fish leaps, the line breaks and the first ever Nile perch to be taken on dry fly is lost.
Well, possibly.
Let’s jump ahead. People have been catching fish for a very, very long time but it’s not until about 2,000 years ago that anyone bothered to write about how you could catch a fish with a bit of wool. The Roman poet Martial mentions the use of a deceitful fly but it is another Roman, Claudius Aelianus, writing a hundred or so years later, who talks of the people of Macedonia in his De Natura Animalium. They use, he says, red wool and cock’s feathers to tempt the fish with speckled skins. Those of you familiar with trout flies would recognise a very basic description of a Soldier Palmer.
I would like to have met Dame Juliana Berners. Well educated and from a noble family, she wrote about etiquette and also about the need for conservation. She loved the outdoor life so must have found it hard at times being the prioress of St Mary of Sopwell. I can picture her staring wistfully out of the windows during Compline, knowing that she was missing a very productive evening rise on the river. We know a bit about her thanks to her contribution to the Boke of St Albans, in which she wrote The Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle in 1496. She clearly knew what she was talking about. She knows that is important to keep well hidden from any fish that you are trying to catch: “for the fyrste and pryncypall poynt in anglynge: kepe ye euer fro the water fro the sighte of the fysshe”. She also knows that fish are easily spooked if your shadow falls on the water: “also loke that ye shadow not the water as moche as ye may.” The “troughte” is to be angled for “wyth a dubbe” “in lepynge time.”
Dame Juliana tells us how to make a rod and she must have been a tough old nun as the rod she describes would have been about 18 feet long and, at the butt, as thick as her arm. The line which she describes is attached to the end of the rod and she goes into great detail not only about how to make the line and dress it but also what to do once a fish is hooked. As any angler will know, you keep the rod high and the line taught: “kepe hym euer vnder the rodde, and euermore holde hym streyghte: soo that your lyne may susteyne and beere his lepys and his plungys wyth the helpe of your croppe & of your honde.”
But what endears me most to Dame Juliana is her instruction on what makes for a worthy angler. She encourages us not to overfish a river, so that others may also enjoy the sport and so that we may return and have a decent chance of catching fish. Anglers should be quiet, patient and polite and should always bear in mind those less fortunate. They should look after their environment and be grateful of the opportunities afforded them to spend time alone, in quiet contemplation and solace. Mindfulness is nothing new!
One of Dame Juliana’s most fervent admirers was a linen draper from London’s Fleet Street, Izaak Walton. Walton was as a staunch Royalist and it must have been heart-breaking for him when the Royalists were defeated at Marston Moor. Dispirited, he left London and only returned after the restoration of the monarchy at which point, he was able to return one of the Crown Jewels that had he been keeping safe. His move, however, did afford him the opportunity to make the most of his property at Shallowford, where the boundary of nine fields was made by the Meece Brook.
In 1653, the first edition of The Compleat Angler was published. To say that it is an important book is hopelessly inadequate. As the first book dedicated to fishing, it is the mother and father of one of literature’s most enduring genres. It was also not a finished work, as Walton kept making additions and alterations for the next 25 years. He must have been constantly taking notes from his own experiences, as well as from the conversations he held with other anglers, most notably Charles Cotton. In fact, it is Cotton who writes about fly fishing in subsequent editions, with the treaty on fly fishing in the first edition being provided by one Thomas Barker. Walton’s speciality lay in the use of baits: the worm, the grasshopper and the frog.
In the fifth edition of The Compleat Angler, Walton included Cotton’s treatise: Being Instructions how to angle for a Trout or Grayling in a clear Stream. Much of what Cotton has to say is as true now as it was then, especially his instruction to fish “fine and far off”. His lines of finely woven horse hair are attached to rods of 15 to 18 feet in length. His patterns are described in detail and he advocates the use of sparsely dressed flies, unlike the bushy flies of the London dressers whose flies were most likely better at catching fishermen than fish.
Cotton had a deep understanding of fish and fishing, of etymology and of the ways in which changes in the weather and the time of year would affect the feeding habits of fish and, therefore, the best means of catching them. He would surely have strongly approved of Walton’s favourite Bible quotations, from Thessalonians: ‘Study to be quiet’. The Compleat Angler has never been out of print. Enough said.
During the 18th century, advances in manufacturing led to the development of fishing reels and the use of rings on rods. To make them less unwieldy and more easily transported, rods were made in sections, while at the same time silk fly lines started to be made commercially.
The advances made in the Industrial Revolution not only made fly fishing more accessible in terms of tackle, it also afforded a few lucky people with the leisure time to enjoy their sport, to develop it and to write about it. In 1836, Alfred Ronalds published The Fly-fisher’s Entomology. This was a ground-breaking work, as it not only brought together a wealth of experience but also introduced some new and exciting ideas. Ronalds was the first to talk about the trout having a window of vision, an idea that he had developed with the help of his physicist brother Francis. He also propounded the concept of studying a river carefully so as to establish where a trout would most likely lie, what we would call “reading the water” today.
The most important contribution, however, lay in Ronalds’ extensive descriptions of aquatic flies and the patterns that most closely resemble them. Until then, anglers had based their choice of fly mainly on the particular river and the time of year – and most likely on their own preference or simply on what they happened to have in their box. Ronalds’ insights and research, coupled with his artistic ability as an engraver, now gave the angler the information and the patterns required to “match the hatch”.
Advances were constantly being made in reel design, in the manufacture of finer leaders and smaller hooks and in the availability of fly-dressing materials. From Cotton’s patterns made with “bear hair and camel’s under fur, the soft bristles from inside a black hog’s ear, and from dog’s tails” developed dressings that incorporated feathers from golden pheasant, guinea fowl, peacock and kingfisher. Split cane rods made of bamboo were developed in the USA, while railways allowed people to travel quickly to places that had until then been beyond their reach, especially the crystal-clear chalk streams of the south of England. All of this combined to bring about a revolution in fly fishing and, in its wake, one of the great schisms in the sport.
In 1889, at the age of 45, Frederic Michael Halford (who wrote under the wonderful pseudonym Detached Badger) retired to take up angling full time. By this time, he had been fishing for trout on chalk streams for many years, having met fellow angler George Marryat in a fishing tackle shop in Winchester ten years previously. In 1886, Halford published his book Floating Flies and How to Dress Them, followed in 1889 by Dry Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice. These two books were hugely successful and established Halford as the “high priest” of dry fly fishing. As far as Halford and his devotees were concerned, there was only one way to fish for a trout and that was by casting to it upstream, matching exactly the fly on which the trout was observed to be feeding. Here is Halford on the topic: “Those of us who will not in any circumstances cast except over rising fish are sometimes called ultra-purists and those who occasionally will try to tempt a fish in position but not actually rising are termed purists… and I would urge every dry fly fisher to follow the example of these purists and ultra-purists”.
In 1891, Halford met with and fished with G E M Skues, on the river Itchen. Skues was Halford’s junior by 14 years and had read, probably many times, Halford’s books. He may have been somewhat in awe of the older man but he would have also have had a great deal more experience on the Itchen, as he had fished it ever since he had started at Winchester College at the age of 13 and never missed a season.
Skues advocated the use of patterns that imitated the nymph stage of the mayfly. Nymphs can live in the water for up to two years and in this stage of their cycle they form an abundant and important part of the trout’s diet. Observe a feeding trout, moving from side to side with its pectoral fins sticking out, and you will see it glide across the current to intercept a nymph, the flash of white from its snapping mouth a sure sign that it is a fish “on the feed”. It is only when the nymphs hatch and emerge from the surface as subimagos, or return to the water as imagos that the fish will come up and feed – the much-fabled “rise”. It stands to reason that to use an imitation of the nymph makes perfect sense, as the angler is not dependent on the emergence of adult insects.
To Halford and his ultra purists, using a pattern designed to fish below the surface was unthinkable. Debates raged about the two approaches, to the extent that many clubs banned the use of the upstream nymph from their waters. Indeed, on many rivers, the use of the nymph is banned to this day, certainly in the first part of the season.
In fact, the difference between the two anglers is probably not as great as it is sometimes made out to be. Halford may have disagreed with Skues but the two fished together, and there is no doubt that Skues would have enjoyed dry fly fishing when the conditions were right. Skues’ seminal work, The Way of a Trout with the Fly, was not published until 1921, seven years after Halford’s death. Whatever the rights and the wrongs may have been, there is no doubt that these two men changed for ever the way in which we fish for trout with a fly.
Strangely, one of the best-known nymphs was much heralded by Halford. The Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear, he said was “one of the best flies for bulging fish”. Halford may have fished this as a dry fly with wings but is was a great favourite of his, fished on or in the surface film of the river. Skues also loved the GRHE and fished it as a nymph with great success.
Halford, Skues, Marryatt … These men changed fly fishing for ever and, in their wake, came a number of notable people whose dedication, skill, observations and some would say obsession have make massive differences to our sport.
Frank Sawyer lived for most of his long and distinguished life on a river bank. As a river keeper, his job took him along and often into the River Avon, said to be the river with the most diverse population of aquatic insects in the UK. A keen fisherman, he fished with the great Skues an also Oliver Kite, the inventor of the excellent Kite’s Imperial. Sawyer promoted the use of the nymph, fished upstream but not during a mayfly hatch, and preferably only to a fish that had been seen by the angler. His observations on the way in nymphs moved lead him to understand that they were more streamlined than the current fly patterns at the time, and that they were often brown in colour. Taking some thin copper wire and a few fibres from the tail of a male pheasant, Sawyer tied his pheasant tail nymph. The PTN is probably the most used, most valued and most customised of all fishing flies. It now comes in any number of sizes, with or without a tail, with gold or copper beads, coloured thoraces, with UV wing cases, as a dry fly and as an emerger. However, Sawyer’s original size 14 fly, tied with just copper wire and pheasant tail, remains the most productive of all. If I had to choose one fly only to use for the rest of my life, it would be the Sawyer Pheasant Tail Nymph.
Across the Atlantic, fly fishing was growing exponentially in popularity. Unencumbered by the mores of Victorian and Edwardian England (you had to be known to the right people, have gone to the right school and wear the right clothes to fish many rivers in the British Isles), the Americans thought outside the box, as they might say today. The story goes that Ernest Peckinpaugh from Chattanooga saw the cork from his bottle floating down the river and decided to incorporate this into the tying of a fly for bass. By carving the cork in a particular way, he made it pop on the top of the water, something that the bass found irresistible and thus was created the Bass Popper. Such was the success of “Peck’s Poppers” that Peckinpaugh was able to give up his job as a builder and found his own fly-tying company which, by the end of the 1940s, employed over 300 tyers.
If I had to choose one dry fly to go alongside the PTN, it would be the Adams. The fly was first tied in 1922, almost on a whim, by Len Halladay, for his friend, a Mr Adams. The fly quickly became famous and was adapted by fishermen and tyers in the Catskill mountains into the form that we know it today, with hackle fibre tail, long slim wings and a bushy hackle. The addition of the parachute hackle, tied around an upright wing post, make it both highly visible and incredibly effective in catching rising trout.
Carrie Stevens of Maine developed and experimented with streamer flies and long-shank hooks. Her Grey Ghost paved the way for any number of streamer patterns. The Olson brothers of Minnesota invented the Prince Nymph and were some of the first to use biots, short, sharp feathers that are found on the leading edge of a bird’s wing. Elsewhere in Minnesota, just off the Gunflint Trail on the banks of Hungry Jack Lake (and no, I did not make those names up) Don Gapen spun deer hair around the hook shank and invented the Muddler Minnow. In Pennsylvania, James Leisenring and Pete Hidy developed wingless wet fly fishing and created the Flymph, an emerger pattern halfway between a fly and a nymph.
Born in Alaska where his father was following the Gold Rush, Lee Wulff was never far from a river or lake. Having studied engineering, he spent a time in Paris at art school, then returned to the USA to take up fishing full time. Wulff’s contribution to modern fly fishing cannot be underestimated. Not only did he invent the Grey Wulff, using buoyant deer hair to keep the fly afloat, he also invented the fishing waistcoat, the triangle taper line, the cageless reel and he promoted the idea of right-handed anglers using a left-hand wind reel, using their stronger right hand to hold the rod. Like all brilliant ideas, it seems so simple. He taught himself photography and film-making and also became an accomplished pilot. He could tie flies without a vice and did so well into his seventies and was catching giant marlin at the age of 85. In short, Lee Wulff was one of those remarkable people that makes one feel hopelessly inadequate.
Establishing that a problem exists is one thing; finding a solution is quite another. Seeing that grayling in Norway often preferred to eat flies that were caught in the surface film in the act of hatching form nymph to adult, what are called emergers, Dutchman Hans van Klinken set about to create a fly that would hang in and just under the surface. Using an upright poly yarn wing and tying the dub right round the bend of the hook, Hans invented the Klinkhåmer. Not only was this fly immediately popular around the world, but it also gave rise to a whole new range of Klinkhåmer hooks.
Back in the UK, passionate anglers Brian Clarke and John Goddard decided to look at things from the trout’s point of view – literally. Using underwater cameras and making their own observations looking up at flies, Goddard and Clarke revolutionised the way in which flies were tied and instigated a whole range of “upside down” flies. Their observations influenced fly tyers around the world but perhaps more importantly they opened the eyes of anglers and tyers to endless possibilities.
Since the end of the Second World War, there has been an explosion in interest in fly fishing around the world. The bucket list now includes Patagonia, Kamchatka, New Zealand, British Columbia, Iceland, Venezuela and Nepal as well as the Itchen, the Test and the rivers of Colorado or Idaho. Fly fishing in salt water, for bonefish and permit, is hugely popular and quite rightly so. Advances in stocking and rearing trout have produced still waters with huge fish, some would say to the detriment of the sport and the feverish thrashing of the water to land your limit.
Still water fly fishing, from bank and boat, has allowed many more people from all walks of life to master the art of casting a fly and the thrill of landing a fish. Day ticket waters provide some good sport, but the real challenge lies in angling for wild fish on ‘natural’ rivers and lakes.
The tackle used by fly fishermen today would amaze Dame Juliana. Rods that once were heavy and unforgiving are now made of featherweight carbon fibre. I picked up a fibre glass rod the other day and could not believe that this sluggish and ponderous beast was once at the cutting edge of fishing technology. Reels are lightweight, durable and, with larger arbors, produce far less memory in the fly line. Fly lines too seem to undergo another revolutionary change every few years. Gone are the days of dressed silk lines that had to be dried and treated to stop them rotting. We now have lightweight durable fly lines that are designed to fish high in the water, or deep below the surface or at any given depth in between.
I am aware that I have not mentioned a legion of people who have made vital contributions to the art of fly fishing – and it is an art, as well as a science and a pastime and a sport and a way of life. You know who you are and we know who they were. We salute you.
And so, it continues. There is a vast wealth of knowledge and experience available thanks to the huge number of books written about fly fishing and thanks nowadays to the internet.
Typing “fly fishing” in a search engine will return some 40 million results. What works for him or her may not work for you. You will have your own “go to” flies, your own favourite pools, runs, lies and riffles, your own knots, your own leaders and your own casting style. However, when next you cast a fly, spare a moment for those who came before you and share some of your experiences with those who are starting out.
Let’s leave the last word to Dame Juliana: “And if ye angler take fysshe; surely thenne is there noo man merier than he is in his spyryte”.
By Robert Blake, former KFFC Vice Chairman 2022.
