by Tony Orman
In my job as a farming journalist, I attended many field days aimed at making farmers more efficient. Two things struck me but both are interrelated.
- The same keen local farmers attended – perhaps 25 percent of all.
- A recurring theme advocated by guest speakers was the need to strive to be better and thirst for knowledge.
And from that those 25 percent, were invariably the top bracket of farmers.
It’s really no different to most things, trout fishing being just one. The old adage is “ten percent of anglers catch 90 percent of fish.” I’m not sure of the numbers but in short a minority of trout anglers catch most of the trout. Why? Because they are eager for more knowledge and to learn.
With that in mind, I recently picked up a second hand book “Fishing Dry Flies for Trout on Rivers and Streams” by an American writer Art Lee published back in 1981.
Art Lee in his introduction wrote that he was convinced, first and foremost trout fishing should be fun. After admitting that he became too preoccupied at times and lost sight of the ”fun”, he told of scanning, perusing and reading scores of angling books.
Among them were “tidy ones and tedious ones”.
“Some have been useful, a few even inspiring. As a body of work, however they have left me troubled, primarily due to a pervasive bias towards portraying (fly fishing) as much more complicated and difficult than it really is.”
Then a page further on, Art Lee says in answer to some critics who might complain that his book “isn’t very scientific in contemporary fashion” then they should look elsewhere. “Those who seek yet another dissertation on aquatic insect life with Latin names” won’t find it in his book.
How’s Your Latin?
It’s an echo of the words of colourful American fly fishing author Lee Wulff who once wryly wrote along the lines of “don’t worry about Latin names of insects trout feed on, because trout don’t know Latin.”
The one disincentive to venturing into dry fly fishing is that some writers and some fly fishers complicate it, weaving a mystique around it that seems quite daunting.
Further over midway through the book Art Lee attacked the theory of “matching the hatch” and the associated second theory of “precise representation”.
“Some anglers feel obliged to abandon common sense in favour of obsessively locking themselves into precise representation —- as if failure to do so would erase all chance of success.”
Art Lee went further at the risk of offending some when he added, that he had met few people preoccupied with precise representation who he believed were truly skilled fly fishermen.
“I have witnessed though, many anglers who attempt to rationalise deficiences in technique by spending countless hours memorising insect species by Latin names and then concocting replicas of them, hours that would be more wisely used, mastering the elements of fly presentation.”
Art Lee then recalled a friend Ed Van Put “a most outspoken critic of compulsive matching the hatch.” Ed fished with just three patterns of dry flies being the Adams, Royal Wulff and the Pheasant Tail Midge. Art Lee then recalled a day on the Beaverkill, a historic New York state trout stream when he and Ed fished together.
It was evening with the water low and clear. Scores of trout were sipping at the surface as if to midges. Ed began fishing with a size 14 Adams while Art Lee watched closely.
Most of the next two hours Art spent watching Ed moving from trout to trout, casting once or twice, occasionally three or four times, hooking each fish in turn, playing it quickly, netting and releasing it. To anybody unfamiliar with Ed, it would have seemed uncanny but as Art watched in admiration, he was aware Ed was presenting his size 14 Adams right on the trout’s feeding lane, not a few centimetres one way or the other, of knowing before each cast there would be no drag to disrupt the fly’s float and of allowing enough drag-free float astern of each trout to permit the fish to follow the fly downstream a couple of metres before deciding whether to suck it in or reject it.
Then Ed encountered a trout he could not get to take. He tried and tried and then eventually hooked it. Most anglers would have changed flies. But as Ed explained later in the difficulty of getting the fish to take, it was not the fly that was wrong.
Then he added “Betcha though a hatch-maker would have changed patterns a dozen times and then trotted around telling everybody the trout are ultra-selective. What a lot of crap!”
Presentation Vital
He explained to Art Lee , “I don’t care what dry fly you use within reason. If you put that fly over the trout the way the trout wants to see it, that trout is going to take. But if your presentation is wrong — if you slap the water, if the fly drags, even though the drag may be invisible to the angler, the trout won’t take. If you want to say trout are selective, okay, say they’re selective about presentation. But about fly pattern, no way!”
Art Lee then added his own thoughts saying that zealous “hatch matchers” can be so obsessed they are guilty of “self serving snobbery and patent nonsense.”
Of course you use a fly that is likely to imitate the flies trout are likely to feed on in that particular river or stream, at that particular time of the season and particular time of day.
“An obsession with matching the hatch and fly pattern rather than fly presentation wastes hours of fishing time as devotees change flies every twenty seconds to find the right pattern.”
Trout after all can’t rise to flies they don’t get to see and anglers–are certain to have the devil’s own time keeping flies on the water when a third of each outing is spent lopping off tippets and tying knots.
Then Art Lee in emphasis added “no fly is ‘right’ unless it’s fished correctly.”
Last season at dusk one evening on the Wairau I cast to a rising trout with a small size 14 Turkey Sedge dry fly. I must have cast over twenty times, floated the fly slightly to the left and then a tad to the right and over it. I didn’t change flies because it was close to nightfall and was dark and I didn’t intend to fiddle around. So I persisted. Then on about the 30th cast more or less, the trout took and I hooked and landed it, a fine 1.5 kg brownie.
My presentation had be spot on with that 30th cast.
Remember Art van Put’s words?
“If the fly drags, even though the drag may be invisible to the angler, the trout won’t take.”
I agree. I think the drag may be imperceptibleto our eye but to the trout the fly is not behaving as a natural should.
I’ve had the same with nymph where after numerous casts to a feeding trout, it has taken on the umpteenth cast. I believe the way the leader was between indicator and nymph was perhaps too straight and the fly was ever so slightly dragging but unseen by me. But eventually the leader was okay so the nymph behaved naturally and the trout took.
And remember Ed van Put said about choice of fly “within reason”?
Obviously during cicada time you’d be unlikely to choose a small Adams. Similarly at brown beetle time, a Humpy would be far preferable to an Adams. And if trout are on small mayflies a size 14 Adams would be a likely pick. If trout are on willow grubs, then use a small grub imitation.
But importantly don’t get obsessed with exact imitation.
Not so Hard
Back to dry fly fishing. It’s no great mystery. In fact it’s arguably easier in terms of hooking fish than on a nymph. And it’s very effective particularly on brown trout.
Given that trout see a lot more flies than twenty years ago and can become spooky during a summer season, the dry fly offers a quieter presentation compared to the plop of a nymph. I recall many season ago Squadron Leader ASG “Smithy” Smith telling me how spooky fish were on the Buller due to a continual parade of guided anglers as well as locals with almost all using nymphs, often weighted.
Smithy’s solution was to fish a dry fly.
“You know that plop of the nymph scares them. But a dry fly doesn’t.”
Smithy’s success was testimony to the wisdom of using a dry fly.
So if you haven’t tried a dry fly, resolve to do so come next October 1 and the new season.
In the meantime, read articles and books but remember you as a reader and angler, are the jury. Judge for yourself. Don’t accept every book as gospel. Read, consider, reject, or accept.
Remember too Art Lee’s words that some portray fly fishing and in particular dry fly fishing, “as much more complicated and difficult than it really is.”
