Step-by-Step Beginner Fly Tying Manual and DVD
By Ryan Keyes. Published by No Nonsense Fly Fishing Guidebooks, 2013; $27.95, spiralbound.
The folks at Non Nonsense Fly Fishing Guidebooks have lived up to their name by publishing a straightforward, basic book that indeed takes a beginner step by step through the fundamentals of fly tying. And I do mean the fundamentals. Before this book even shows how to attach tying thread to a hook, it explains the parts of the fly-tying vise and how to mount a hook in one correctly, then covers the terminology of hooks, threads, tools, and the various parts of dry flies, nymphs, streamers, and terrestrial imitations. And after explaining how to attach the thread, it covers how to attach different materials to a hook and how to finish a fly with Half Hitches and whip finishes.
The text and photos of the howto tutorials that follow — tutorials that are also repeated, step by step, with Ryan Keyes’s narration, on the accompanying DVD — take the beginner through the techniques involved in tying just seven very simple, but increasingly complicated patterns: the San Juan Worm, Zebra Midge. Brassie, Woolly Bugger, Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear, Rubber-Legged Foam Beetle, and Elk Hair Caddis. There’s no mayfly pattern, but anyone who can tie these patterns successfully probably will have the skills needed to tie a mayfly imitation, too, and a fly box containing these seven patterns would catch lots of different kinds of fish pretty much anywhere.
The approach that Keyes takes here is a product of teaching fly tying from scratch to people who have not necessarily ever been exposed to it at all. Ryan Keyes is a recreation therapist who works at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Grand Junction, Colorado, and he developed the text and the DVD as part of his work with military veterans in Colorado in Project Healing Waters, the program “dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and disabled veterans through fly fishing and associated activities, including education and outings,” as their mission statement puts it. So he takes nothing for granted about the level of knowledge that a would-be tyer brings to the book.
In the larger scheme of things, of course, there’s a certain amount of muted disagreement about well a book can teach fly tying, which after all depends on qualities such as manual dexterity, patience, and a sort of practical aesthetic sense that an individual reader may or may not possess. “You can’t learn fly tying from a book,” I’ve heard experienced tyers say, which is in a sense true, but hardly the whole story. The pantheon of notable fly tyers contains people who got started in just that way, by reading a book, although other experiences intervened down the line, just as there are people who learned at the side of other tyers and never cracked a book until they were looking for pattern recipes to tie.
Different folks learn in different ways, but few learn in just one way. I’m basically a book learner myself, but when I worked my way through the Randall Kaufmann fly-tying manuals, which is how I got started, I had the voices of lots of great tyers echoing in the void between my ears because I had hung out at the fly-tying theater run by Dan Byford and then by Pete Parker at the International Sportsmen’s Exhibitions. I think it’s indeed essential that such voices get inside a tyer’s head from somewhere, whether as a supplement to book learning or as a primary source of understanding and inspiration. Often, when a tying student attends a hands-on class, for example, there’s just too much going on for all of what’s said to sink in, and what they’re doing in a class usually is tying flies, not taking notes on how to tie them.
That’s where the DVD that Keyes has provided here comes in. He talks students through the steps for tying each kind of fly and the techniques needed to tie them. Whether or not they are book learners, students can replay those steps as often as they need them. He’s clear and concise, and although he says “Go ahead and . . .” an awful lot when demonstrating tying moves, the verbal tic gets to be a bit of a mantra — at least, that’s the positive way to look at it.
Getting a teacher’s voice inside a beginner’s head is important, but most beginners still need some kind of text, if only as an aid to memory. Many experienced fly tyers get asked to recommend one, whether they’re teaching formal classes or just have been approached by would-be beginners. There certainly are other books out there that were written for beginners: The Benchside Introduction to Fly Tying, by Ted Leeson and Jim Schollmeyer, with its innovative split, spiralbound pages that allow the pages for tying specific patterns to be paired with the pages on the techniques required to tie them, for example, and Charlie Craven’s Basic Fly Tying. However, both of these are more expensive than Keyes’s Step-by-Step Beginner Fly Tying Manual and DVD, even if they are also more extensive, and neither comes with a DVD with an actual voice urging students to “go ahead. ” Compared with them, this book is like a Thompson Model A vise: uncomplicated, utilitarian, and pared down to just the fundamentals that a beginner needs to learn.
Bud Bynack
Cathy Beck’s Fly-Fishing Handbook,
3rd edition.
Published by Stackpole Press, 2013; $21.95, softbound.
It’s comforting to think that we’re all experts, needing nothing to perfect our fly-fishing chops except more time on the water and the money with which to buy new equipment. But sometime way back when, we were ignorant as smolts. So imagine yourself a beginner wanting to learn about fly fishing. You can stumble around and learn from your mistakes, pick the brains of experienced friends, subscribe to fly-fishing magazines, or take a class at a shop or a club. And of course, you can glue your fingers to the keyboard and your eyes to the monitor and search the Internet, which currently has an almost incalculable amount of information on fly fishing, from how-to articles to videos showing you where the fish hold in the ABC pool on River X. It all works, but it’s still helpful to be able to refer to something on paper that lays out the basics in an organized, approachable manner: something that defines terms, breaks down the gear needed and the types of flies, and talks a bit about casting, presentation, wading, and the hatful of other things you might need or like to know.
There are lots of books that do just that, going back to the earliest days of the sport. But techniques and equipment evolve, and what Ray Bergman wrote in the 1930s, or Ted Trueblood wrote in the 1940s, or Joe Brooks wrote in the 1970s, while interesting and useful, is not the ideal choice for learning in 2013. It’s nice to refer to something that covers contemporary gear, techniques, and practices beyond the world of trout. Cathy Beck, an angler/photographer/trip leader of significant accomplishments in the fly-fishing world, has done just that with the third edition of her Fly-Fishing Handbook.
In 160 well-illustrated pages (Cathy and her husband, Barry, are prominent and skilled angling photographers), Beck leads a reader through the basics on rods, reels, and tackle; lines and leaders; casting, finding, playing, and handling fish in fresh and saltwater; aquatic entomology; fly-fishing watercraft; and angling travel. And along with the basics via print and image, the book contains thirty or so scanable QR codes that link to videos that expand on the text and offer sensible instruction.
I’d still start out a beginning fly fisher with Sheridan Anderson’s Curtis Creek Manifesto, because it conveys sophisticated angling wisdom with humorous illustrations straight from the world of underground comics. But while it’s great on technique, it’s oriented largely toward trout fishing and is dated on a lot of things. Beck’s FlyFishing Handbook offers a broader overview of our sport, and if it is pot roast and gravy to Anderson’s chili and barbequed hog ribs, there’s still fine sustenance in it for anyone hungry for useful information.
Larry Kenney
50 Best Tailwaters to Fly Fish
By Terry and Wendy Gunn. Published by Stonefly Press, 2013; $34.95 softbound.
Terry and Wendy Gunn’s 50 Best Tailwaters to Fly Fish is too pretty to be a guidebook. It is a large-format book with thick, glossy pages loaded with quality color photos and detailed maps. But it’s not a coffee table book, either. I’d simply call it a book of dreams. The Gunns, of Lees Ferry Anglers Fly Shop fame, elected themselves to nominate the best 50 tailwaters in the United States and Canada. They couldn’t decide on 50, so the book actually lists 56 “best” tailwaters.
Anytime a publication lists the 50 best of anything, it immediately puts a target on its forehead, because it didn’t include someone’s favorite. After a week of critically thumbing through the pages here, I’d be hard-pressed to swap any unlisted tailwaters for any of those in the book. The authors did a remarkable job of research. Part of that research probably taught them that they weren’t expert enough to write accurate descriptions of all these locations, so they rallied local talent to do the heavy lifting. Each chapter is written by a pro who details seasonal fishing information for each stream, along with suggested flies, equipment, and techniques. Since each author has a vested interest in his or her water, some of the chapters are a bit enthusiastic and almost sound like sales pitches, but none are truly over the top. Since nearly 50 people contributed to the book, it took some strong editorial talent to have each chapter match the voice of the others.
The chapter templates include the closest fly shops, guides, restaurants, lodging, and medical facilities. They also include each author’s subjective choice of the best restaurant and best “place to get a cold, stiff drink.” I like that.
Each chapter begins with a beautiful full-page map. The details are excellent, but sometimes not quite accurate. As an example, the chapter on the Feather River shows a total of three boat ramps on the entire reach between Lake Oroville and the confluence with the Sacramento at Verona, but in fact, there are many ramps on the river. And it shows the city of Alicia in bold type, but doesn’t hint at the existence of Marysville, which is not only the county seat, but has an excellent boat ramp. As far as I can discern from the Yuba County almanac, Alicia is a “populated area,” but the map shows it only a mile upstream of “stripper” (sic) water, and I’ll have to check it out for myself.
A few factual gaffes do not affect a book of dreams, though. Of course I had to read about all the places I’ve fished, but there are far, far more places in this book that I have not visited. 50 Best Tailwaters is the best kind of bucket list.
It provides a base of very useful information and enough pointers to provoke reveries in any angler.
Ralph Cutter
Classics Revisited
Death Is No Sportsman
By Cyril Hare. Published by Faber and Faber, 1938; available used as a HarperCollins reprint, 1991.
It’s remarkable how many sports and games have their origin in the British Isles. The first written mention of fishing with an artificial fly might date back to Macedonia in the second century, but the art of fly fishing as it is practiced everywhere around the globe today derives from the sport as it developed along chalk streams and freestone rivers in Great Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria and on into the Edwardian Age.
A great game or sport is like an unfailing well. All great games — golf, fishing, hunting, cards, dice, board games, ball games — yield endless permutations. They seem to exist as a kind of perpetuum mobile for human energy. Like all great sports and pastimes, fly fishing provides an opportunity for personal pleasure under conditions where beauty may arise.
Another “game” that came out of the British Isles — around the same time that fly fishing was taking on its popular form — was the classic murder mystery. Edgar Allen Poe, an American, invented the detective story, but British authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie gave it its “modern dry-fly codes.”
Death Is No Sportsman, by Cyril Hare, brings together two great sports, fly fishing and detection. This mystery novel was published in 1938, and it is a prime example of what has been called the Golden Age of detective fiction. These murder mysteries, like classic salmon flies, conform to recognizable styles and patterns, their plots a bit artificial and overly intricate, but lovely to look at. The conventions of the genre include “fair play” for the reader, a set of rules governing the clues that are as strictly enforced as the regulations on a British chalk stream. No one ever dies in these books for any reason other than to provide a corpse for our entertainment. And an idyllic setting is paramount to the story. These murders usually occur in rather genteel surroundings, often in grand country manor houses inhabited by the upper class and their servants. Cyril Hare’s whodunit takes place in a fishing hotel on a private trout stream where the angling is strictly limited to dry flies.
Every weekend, four businessmen devoted to fly fishing gather at the Polworthy Arms to enjoy the contemplative man’s recreation. Though not friends, these four Londoners have learned to get along in order to share the fishing rights on a particularly lovely stretch of the River Didder, a fictional stream not unlike the fabled Test. Beneath the surface courtesy of ritualized angling, sinister currents flow. For starters, the youngest member of the fishing syndicate might be having it off with the wife of the local baronet, a landowner who is disputing stream rights. The baronet might be a bit of a rake. And the village doctor seems to have his eye on the wife of the syndicate’s eldest member, a doddering old fisherman who took a rather young bride late in life. Complicating matters, a lass from the village has been knocked up “without benefit of clergy,” and her fiancé wants to have it out with the bumptious landowner whom he believes had his way with her. When the baronet ends up dead on the riverbank, shot through the eye, members of the local constabulary are baffled. Enter Mallett of Scotland Yard.
Inspector Mallett — we never learn his first name — is a city boy through and through. He doesn’t understand all this rigmarole about fly fishing. Naturally wary of country types, the inspector has to sort out the many passions and rivalries along the stream and in the village. But the more he looks into this crime, the more he is convinced that he must bone up on fishing lore and practice, because only by understanding the subtleties of this art will he be able to uncover the evidence that he needs to lay hands on the murderer. Mallett becomes particularly interested in a change made in the daily rotation of beats on the day before the murder. And he is fascinated by the subtle differences between two distinct patterns of “blue hackle” flies. As another fictional detective might have put it, “These are deep waters, Watson.”
Cyril Hare was the pen name of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, who knew his subject well. The author grew up fishing and shooting in Surrey, and as a successful London solicitor, he got in plenty of quality time on chalk streams such as the Test and Itchen. He could well afford the fee fishing, because he had a thriving practice. In his spare time, however, he wrote bestsellers such as An English Murder and Tragedy at Law. Death Is No Sportsman is an early entry in his oeuvre. The author brought more wit and style to the “cozy” genre than most Golden Age practitioners.
Hare’s love of fly fishing is evident in these pages. Here is Inspector Mallett’s reaction on being led quite suddenly and unawares into the showroom of a London fishing emporium that bears an uncanny resemblance to the House of Hardy.
His first impression was one of innumerable straight lines, all parallel, all vertical, stretching from floor to ceiling of the large but overcrowded showroom. It was like a schoolboy’s nightmare on the eve of a geometry examination. A second glance showed the shop approximated more nearly to a schoolboy’s Elysium, for every one of those lines was a fishing rod. They were all sorts and sizes, fragile little featherweights with top joints tapering off almost into invisibility, stout, blunt-ended weapons for the big game of tropical seas, long twohanded salmon-rods — rods of every kind for every one of the inexhaustible varieties of angling, all glittering in the bravery of paint and varnish, all — and this was to many their chief merit — with the magic name of Slocum engraved on the butt. At one counter, a stout, bald assistant was decorously waving a gigantic split-cane, manfully endeavoring to demonstrate a Spey cast for the benefit of a hesitating prospective purchaser. At another, an elderly customer with weeping moustaches that smothered his utterance was carrying on an interminable argument on the subject of silk backing with a deprecating but determined expert. Overall hung a hushed religious atmosphere, and the inspector felt as though he had intruded into a cathedral where a service was in progress, of infinite solemnity indeed, but conducted with rites of which he was entirely ignorant.
All the clues finally come together at the end of the case, but not before the plot turns more complicated than the windings on a Jock Scott or a Dusty Miller. In the grand tradition of all Golden Age crime fiction, Mallett assembles all the suspects together for the unmasking of the murderer. Whodunit? Let’s just say that the criminal truly is no sportsman.
If for some crazy reason authors stopped writing detective stories, people would just read the old ones again. Mystery is a form of energy. And as soon as a mystery is solved, the energy vanishes. So we move on to the next one. It’s sort of like the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Come to think of it, so is all the fun and mystery in fly fishing.
Michael Checchio
Bill Dudley, a San Francisco writer and angler, recently published his first book, The Chosen River. Its 24 “essays, fiction, and ponderings” include seven pieces that appeared in California Fly Fisher and four from Gray’s Sporting Journal, plus others that ran elsewhere or are appearing in print for the first time. I’ve long enjoyed Bill’s work, which is thoughtful, observant, and has a strong moral center. He’s done a terrific job crafting a finelooking book that is also well worth reading. For info: http://thechosenriver.com.
Richard Anderson
