Every Day Was Special
Page 16
The Perfect Dun is really a sparse Clumped-Hackle Comparadun with the addition of hackle-tip wings. So is the Nearly Perfect Dun.
1. Begin by tying in the hackle-fiber tail. Spread it and cock it up by taking two or three turns of thread under the fibers and drawing them tight against the place where the tail is tied down.
2. Bring the thread just forward of the midpoint of the shank. Tie in a matched pair of hackle tips here. The wings are the focal point of the fly and should be slightly bigger than on the natural—about the length of the hook shank. When you get them set properly, they should be slightly flared, concave sides out, and cocked slightly backwards. Datus Proper tied in hackle-tip wings by pinching them so that the stems straddled the hook shank. He figure-8’ed around them to set them in place, then bent the stems back under the shank and lashed them down before clipping off the ends. Tied on this way, the wings never pull loose or slip out of position.
3. Tie in a hackle feather in front of the wings and bring your thread behind the wings. Make just one turn of hackle in front of the wings and two turns behind them. You want a sparsely hackled fly that will not obscure the wings. The hackle suggests the mayfly’s legs, supports the wings, and assures that the fly will land right. Tie off the hackle and trim away the excess.
4. Now stroke up the hackle and figure-8 under it, bunching it up so that it forms a semi-circle around the wings on the top of the fly.
5. Wind the thread back to the base of the tail and spin on dubbing to match the body color of the mayfly you want to imitate. Dub the abdomen. Keep it slender. Make a couple of figure 8s under the hackles to build up the thorax.
6. Whip-finish the head and add a drop of cement.
7. Tie it on, drift it over the fussiest trout you can find, and be prepared.
Tap’s Nearenuf
For 35 years—from 1950 to 1985— my father filled two pages of Field & Stream with useful information for outdoorsmen. There were the 50-word “Tap’s Tips”—six every month—which made Tap’s name famous, and there were the 500-word “Sportsman’s Notebook” articles—one per month—that needed the extra words to explain more complicated things.
I’ve done the math. More than 2,500 tips and 420 notebooks. That adds up to about one hundred new and useful ideas each year and over one-third of a million words—not a single one wasted—in 35 years.
What most people didn’t realize, but what I, his son, understood, is that for every Tip-worthy idea that Dad selected to write about, he discarded three as impractical or wrong-headed or dumb. He field-tested everything exhaustively, and I got to go along and “help” him.
We had to do a lot of fishing and hunting to test four hundred ideas a year. Lucky me.
Sometime in the 1950s, with the trout season upon us, Dad gave teenaged me a box of dry flies. “I need your help,” he said.
I opened the box. It was full of beautifully tied dry flies. My father was a perfectionist.
I started to thank him. Then I noticed that except for their sizes, which ranged from 12 to 18, every fly was identical. I arched my eyebrows at him.
“Here’s the idea,” he said, in pretty much the same words he used a few years later when he felt comfortable writing about it. “If I’m right, this should be the only dry fly we’ll ever need. With this range of sizes, we won’t have to worry about what pattern we should tie on. We’ll just match the size. This way, we can concentrate on the important matter of fishing the fly properly. We’ve just got to figure out if I’m right.”
I picked up one of the flies and held it in the palm of my hand. It had a split, wood-duck, flank-feather wing, mixed ginger-and-grizzly hackle, a stripped peacock quill body, and a pair of stripped grizzly quills, splayed wide, for tails. It reminded me a little bit of many dry-fly patterns we used, but it was identical to none of them.
“What do you call it?” I said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t have a name. It’s a mongrel. I’ve tried to blend the elements of our common eastern mayfly hatches—Quill Gordon, Red Quill, Hendrickson, March Brown, Gray Fox, Light Cahill, Pale Evening Dun. It doesn’t really imitate any of them, as you can see. But if I’m right, we should find that it’s near enough.”
And that’s what he eventually called it: the Nearenuf.
Several of Dad’s trout-fishing friends agreed to participate in his experiment in exchange for a season’s supply of Tap-tied flies, and for two full seasons of dry-fly fishing, all of us used only the Nearenuf regardless of what was hatching.
At the end of the second season, Dad insisted on candid reports from all participants. None of us felt that we’d been handicapped in the slightest or had caught fewer trout using the Nearenuf than in previous years when we’d attempted to match the hatches precisely. We spent more time stalking trout, making accurate casts, and achieving drag-free floats, and we wasted less time poking our noses into our fly boxes. As Dad wrote: “If you use the Nearenuf, your only problem will be to match the size of the hatching flies, a much simpler matter than trying first to identify whatever those things are that are dancing over the water, and then to match them in both pattern and size, which generally involves much fumble-fingered tying on and snipping off of flies the fish don’t seem to want.”
Dad never claimed that the Nearenuf was a magic fly. That wasn’t his point. He didn’t believe in magic flies. He believed that presentation was more important than imitation, and he admitted that for all he knew, an Adams or a Quill Gordon, if fished properly, would catch as many trout during any mayfly hatch as a Nearenuf.
There are many times when trout are not eating mayfly duns. On those occasions, in the experimental spirit that my father bred into me, I’ve found that a small pair of sharp scissors and a Nearenuf of the right size will still do the job of several boxes of flies:
• If you find trout feeding on low-riding duns in flat, slow-moving water, you can improve a Nearenuf by clipping a V-shape out of the bottom of the hackle.
• If they’re eating emergers in the film, cut the bottom hackle flat and trim down the wings.
• If they’re sipping spinners, clip the hackle flat on the bottom, cut off the wings, and clip a V-shape out of the top of the hackle.
• If they’re gobbling nymphs in or near the surface film, cut the hackle and wings to a nub. Spit on it to make it sink.
• If they’re targeting cripples, but the bottom of the hackle at an angle and amputate one wing.
With a little creative barbering, Tap’s Nearenuf comes awfully close to fulfilling the promise implied by the title of the article he eventually wrote about it: “One Fly for Every Hatch.”
I don’t know anybody who literally fishes with just one fly. I certainly don’t. Dad’s point was that you would handicap yourself less than you might expect if you focused your attention on variables other than fly pattern. I think he was right.
Fly-Tying Note: If you want to substitute materials for those listed here to create a better general match for the prevalent hatches on your waters, feel free. You will not violate the principle of the Nearenuf.
TAP’S NEARENUF
1. Tie a rolled, wood-duck fank feather on top of the shank of a standard, dry-fly hook, about one-third of the way back from the eye, with the tips facing forward, so that the wing will be as tall as the shank is long. Trim the feather toward the rear of the hook, tapering it to create a smooth underbody.
2. Make a few tight turns under the wing feather to stand it up. Then split the wing and figure-8 around it. It should be cocked slightly forward with about a 45-degree angle between the two wings.
3. Bring the thread to the rear of the hook and tie in two stripped grizzly-hackle quills for a tail. The tail should be a bit longer than the length of the hook shank. Figure-8 around them to splay them out, and then fix them in place with a small drop of head cement where they meet the hook.
4. Strip the fuzz off a quill of peacock herl with a soft pencil eraser. Tie in the quill at the bas
e of the tail, bring the thread forward to the wings, coat the thread underbody with a thin layer of head cement, and wind the peacock quill forward while the cement is still tacky. Tie off behind the wing.
5. Tie in one ginger and one grizzly-hackle feather behind the wings.
6. Wind the hackles separately, one turn behind the wing and two turns in front, and tie off behind the eye of the hook.
7. Form a neat head, whip-finish, and add a drop of head cement.
Old-Time New England Trout and Salmon Flies
Today’s New England anglers enjoy a tremendous variety of options. Our cold-water streams and lakes abound with self-sustaining populations of European brown trout and western rainbows, often happily mingled with smallmouth bass and northern pike. Our warm-water ponds and lakes hold southern interlopers such as bluegills and largemouth bass. Our coastal waters teem with migratory striped bass and bluefish.
There’s something for everybody, and most of us treat it like a buffet and sample everything. We’ve got lots of good fly fishing to choose from.
But buried deep in the marrow of most New Englanders runs a powerful strain of traditionalism. We are proud of our roots. We cherish the Good Old Days.
The Good Old New England angling days focused on brook trout and Atlantic salmon, the only salmonids native to our waters. When the nineteenth century industrialists built dams on virtually all the running water in the six states and barricaded anadromous fish from the ocean, the salmon adapted, became landlocked, and created a unique fishery in the headwaters of what had been oceangoing rivers.
Meanwhile, native brook trout populations dwindled, but did not disappear. They remain still in northcountry lakes and rivers, and backwoods ponds and streams. They are direct descendants of the “squaretails” (as we call them) that thrived here eons before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth.
We New Englanders value our native fish. We are stubborn and chauvinistic. We are determined to keep our traditions alive. And so we bushwhack into boggy beaver ponds and troll streamers around the rims of big Maine lakes, the way our fathers and grandfathers did.
Over the years New Englanders have created and adapted scores of fly patterns for our native brook trout and landlocked salmon. They’ve been around for a while, but they all still work as well as ever, and many of us prefer to use them. They do just fine on interloping fish like rainbow and brown trout, too.
Here are seven old-timers, still favorite New England trout and salmon flies among us traditionalists:
1. Grey Ghost: Probably the most famous of all featherwing streamers, the Grey Ghost is still Number One among those who troll flies on Sebago and Moosehead and the Rangeleys and other big lakes for landlocked salmon and squaretails. Carrie G. Stevens (who didn’t use a vise) tied the world’s first Grey Ghost on July 1, 1924, to imitate the smelt that were (and still are) the primary forage of salmonids in coldwater lakes. That same afternoon she tied her new creation to her leader, cast it into the Upper Dam Pool near her home on Lake Mooselookmeguntic, and caught a 6-pound, 13-ounce brook trout. The fish won second place in the Field & Stream annual fishing contest and everlasting fame for Mrs. Stevens and her Grey Ghost streamer. She subsequently invented variations of the Grey Ghost that she called the Black and the Green Ghosts, and they work awfully well, too.
2. Edson Dark Tiger: The Dark Tiger was my father’s favorite bucktail for both salmon and trout, and inevitably it became my favorite, too. Dad tied scores of Tigers every winter for us and his friends—trout-sized ones for brookies in small streams and beaver ponds, and longer ones to troll and cast for salmon, togue (lake trout), and squaretails. Dad believed the Dark Tiger was the only bucktail anyone would ever need, and it was just about the only one he ever used. It was invented by William R. Edson of Portland (Maine, of course) in 1929. The Dark Tiger featured a natural-brown bucktail wing. Edson’s variation on this theme, the Light Tiger, had a wing of yellow bucktail, and works particularly well on brook trout.
3. Ballou Special: A. W. Ballou of Litchfield, Maine, is generally credited with being the originator of the marabou streamer, and his Special, which he created in 1921, was the first one. Ballou’s original Special makes an excellent smelt imitation, which is what he intended. It quickly became a favorite of the salmon fanatics who trolled flies around the mouth of the Songo River on Sebago Lake, where the smelt gathered for their spring spawning ascent. More importantly, the Ballou Special inspired uncountable numbers of fly patterns and designs featuring marabou, not the least of which is the ever-popular Woolly Bugger and its ancestor, the Woolly Worm. Jack Gartside’s Soft Hackle Streamer, which features marabou that’s wound around the shank of the hook, takes the promise of Ballou’s original to its ultimate incarnation.
4. Parmacheene Belle: Modern anglers who might sneer at brightly-colored attractor flies can comfort themselves with the fact that this famous red-and-white wet fly was designed, perhaps whimsically, as an imitation … of the pectoral fin of a spawn-colored brook trout. Henry P. Wells invented the Belle in 1878 and named it after Parmacheene Lake in the Rangeley region of Maine. Whether cannibalistic brookies mistake it for one of their cousin’s body parts who can say? I do know that red and white makes a deadly color combination (witness the Dardevle spoon).
5. Cooper Bug: Downeaster Jack Cooper invented this simple deer hair bug back in the 1930s to catch the brook trout that gobbled caddis flies off the surface of his local ponds. The fly worked so well that Cooper applied for a patent. He was denied on the grounds that his bug was too similar to Orley Tuttle’s Devil Bug. Both bugs featured a sprig of deer hair bound fore and aft on top of a hook and trimmed to a head in front. Tuttle’s version was bass sized; Cooper’s was tied on size-12 and -14 dry-fly hooks. Sometime back in the 1950s Bob Elliot, for decades the official spokesman for Maine’s angling tourism and an expert on eastern brook trout, gave a handful of Cooper’s bugs to my father. Dad gave ’em a try and declared the Cooper Bug his favorite all-round searching fly. We fished them dead-drifted upstream, both to rising trout and to likely pockets. We cast them down and across and twitched ’em back. We caught a lot of brookies both ways from the streams we floated in Dad’s canoe.
6. Bivisible: Nobody knows who was the first angler to wrap a feather around the shank of a hook and catch a trout with it. The “palmer fly” goes all the way back to the days of Charles Cotton, who made them in many colors and believed they imitated caterpillars. The Bivisible is simply a palmer fly with a turn of white hackle in front so the angler can see it easily. We New Englanders use it for probing pockets and riffles on both fast-moving, little brook-trout streams and big, brawling salmon rivers. On fast water, the Bivisible works as a generic imitation of caddis flies, stone flies, and mayflies. It floats forever, skitters nicely, and is easy to see. You’ll have to ask the trout what they’re thinking when they eat it. Probably not a caterpillar.
7. Sparrow Nymph: Jack Gartside, the legendary Boston fly tier, cab driver, and raconteur, has been experimenting with fly-tying materials and coming up with entirely new designs and concepts for close to fifty years. Among his revolutionary inventions are the Gurgler and the Soft Hackle Streamer. The Sparrow Nymph, while nowhere near as old as the Grey Ghost, has been around for close to half a century, and it has stood the test of time. The Sparrow is the nymph equivalent of the Tap’s Nearenuf. It’s buggy and suggestive and works just as well twitched in a pond as it does dead-drifted in a stream. Big ones suggest stone flies; tiny ones imitate midge pupae. All the in-between sizes are, well, near enough to whatever mayfly nymphs are available.
Table of Contents
Halftitle
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Halftitle1
Introduction
Part I Where, When, Why Are We Fly Fishing Yet?
Opening Day 1938
Just an Average Day
Same Time Next Year
Counting Coup
Part II Cold Water Why Trout Eat, and Why They Don’t
When Trout Get Antsy
Dam It
Out of Season
Tuna Fish Sandwiches and Other Inert Materials
Fear of Midges
My Love Affair with Spring Creeks
Part III Warm Water Bass-Bug Humbug
Mr. Bass
The Perfect Fish
Just Fishin’ with Uncle Ray
The Pig Boat
Part IV Salt Water First Light
Silence on the Flats
Turkey Bones
The Bones of Deadman’s Cay
Spring Break
The Hunt for November Reds
Daisy-Chain Blues
Part V Some Flies The Mongrel Bugger
Bloodsuckers
Clumped Hackles
Tap’s Nearenuf
Old-Time New England Trout and Salmon Flies