Tying Steelhead Flies with Style
By Dec Hogan and Marty Howard. Published by Wild River Press, 2018; $100.00, wiredbound.
When Atlantic salmon fishing in Russia appeared on the radar in the late 1900s, well-heeled travelers to fishing camps on productive Kola Peninsula rivers could count on multi fish days, instead of a fish or two a week on traditional Canadian and Scottish rivers. Not everyone was happy about that. One prominent Northeastern fly tyer and angler told me that he was severely depressed that all it took now to catch an Atlantic salmon — “the noblest of sport fish,” to his way of thinking — was a Texan with a Woolly Worm.
In a reversal of that shift, West Coast steelheaders, led by the ever-intrepid Spey Brigade, have been assembling their own new and more elegant ethos. Gone is the scruffy fish bum of Bill Schaadt’s day, content to cast a ratty rod and hand-made line with simple, but productive flies over, it must be admitted, thousands of willing fish. Today’s steelheader concentrates his or her efforts on declining fish populations in increasingly crowded waters. And in an age of $900 Spey rods and $700 reels spooled with $100-plus fly lines, it’s no wonder that steelheaders are cooking up fly patterns that rival our Atlantic salmon angling cousins’ fetishistic addiction to elegance and minutiae.
Now, for the subset of that group of steelheaders who obsess about flies, comes an elegant new book on tying steelhead flies that are the antithesis of a mere Woolly Worm — or a trusty Boss or Comet. Actually, the term “ book” doesn’t do justice to Dec Hogan and Marty Howard’s handsomely produced Tying Steelhead Flies with Style. Between its heavy covers are almost four hundred creamy pages of fly-tying arcana, information, and recipes, wire binder–bound to facilitate repeated reference, all beautifully illustrated with four-color tying-sequence photography. The thing weighs close to five pounds, though I admit mine is a fisherman’s scale.
Tying Steelhead Flies with Style is organized helpfully, beginning with a chapter on the anatomy of a steelhead fly that discusses not simply the parts of a fly, but those of a hook, of a feather, and the various styles of steelhead fly. Take that as a clear hint that the patterns to be discussed later on aren’t going to be mere easy-to-tie fish catchers. Subsequent chapters discuss and illustrate three to five different patterns for each of five different styles of fly: feather-winged flies, strip-winged and married-winged flies, bombers and surface flies, prawns and marabou flies, and shank flies and tube flies. Those styles pretty much cover the spectrum of possibilities, with the exception of those California standards mentioned above. Maybe they’re too uncomplicated.
Within each chapter, the flies discussed move from the relatively simple to the more complex. The chapter on Dec Hogan’s Summer Fly illustrates how to fold a hackle collar properly before winding it, a technique that will apply in some later, more involved patterns. And they do get involved. Marty Howard’s Steel-
head Married Wing Fly has a tip, a tag, a tail, a rib, hackle, a body, a collar, an underwing, a wing, and cheeks.
Why so complicated, when simpler flies will often do? “It’s all about the process, and staying connected to one’s passion for steelhead.” OK, why not? There are no rules that say you shouldn’t tie and fish a complicated, well-proportioned, elegant fly. What the fish have to say is, of course, unknowable.
An introductory essay by either Hogan or Howard precedes each fly recipe. Of the two, Howard is the more straightforward. He’s a tyer intensely interested in working with or modifying traditional methods and in connecting his own creations to tradition, often as much for his own pleasure as for taking fish. Hogan, on the other hand, while mindful of tradition, is the more excitable, more experiential tyer-angler. He’s shooting for something that looks steelheady, something that will rekindle his interest or increase his angling confidence. “My sole intent was to see my new fly in the water I truly let out an audible gasp when I saw it swim. It had life, color, and movement that just screamed steelhead. It was electric.” That’s a little over the top, but Hogan’s enthusiasm is contagious.
I’ve always thought that the photos that illustrate tying recipes in Fly Tyer magazine were the best in the game. Those in Tying Steelhead Flies with Style rival or surpass that standard. Each page may have just one image and never more than two. Images are six by four inches in size, and the photographic detail is exceptional. The accompanying explanatory text is likewise very good. The result is that the book works simultaneously as a commentary on steelhead tying history, an argument for tying flies that are as stylish as they are effective, and a useful tool when tying them.
Tying Steelhead Flies with Style was clearly an expensive book to produce and, not surprisingly, at $100 per copy, it’s an expensive book to purchase. That may limit its audience to the truly dedicated. But in thinking about price, I’m reminded of the Hard Rock Café scene in the film Pulp Fiction. Uma Thurman’s character orders what John Travolta’s character thinks is a very expensive milkshake. Travolta asks for a sip.
“(Expletive deleted), but that’s a pretty (expletive deleted) good milk shake . . . . I don’t know if it’s worth five dollars, but it’s pretty (expletive deleted) good.”
So’s this book.
—Larry Kenney
Fiberglass Fly Rods: International Edition
By Victor R. Johnson, Jr. Published by EP Press, 2018; $30.00, softbound.
If you’re interested in the contemporary history of fly-fishing gear, you’re probably familiar with Victor Johnson’s work. He’s written books on the histories of Fenwick, modern fly lines, waders, and, notably, I think, fiberglass fly rods and the people who build them. (In the interest of full disclosure, my own rods are mentioned in one of the books. Johnson also once bought me a very good lunch.)
The first of the fiberglass books, titled Fiberglass Fly Rods, coauthored by his son, was published in 1996. It traced the history of glass as a rod-building material and profiled just about every notable individual and company who had made good glass fly rods. The book predated the current fiberglass fly-rod renaissance by a couple of years, but I don’t doubt that it helped spark that renaissance by reminding both anglers and rod builders of the virtues of glass. A second book, titled Fiberglass Fly Rods: 20th Anniversary Edition, came out in 2016 and updated things, profiling the glass work of 23 contemporary one-man rod shops and a dozen larger manufacturers. Together, the two books make up an excellent and unique reference source on glass rods in general and contemporary glass rods and makers in particular. Delays due to issues of language and translation prevented Johnson from including a number of glass builders outside the United States in the 20th Anniversary Edition. He corrects that in his new book, Fiberglass Fly Rods: International Edition, which covers the works of 19 builders from places such as Japan, the British Isles, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Netherlands. Three additional builders from the United States who weren’t around in 1996 are also profiled, as are four large manufacturers whose glass products are new. If you’re interested in glass rods, or if you simply need to have a glass rod built someplace outside the United States, Fiberglass Fly Rods: International Edition will provide you with a starting point.
The title of the book is a bit misleading, however. Of its 110 pages, only 32 are concerned specifically with glass fly rods. The rest of the book addresses a number of other angling subjects, described, just a bit optimistically, I think, as international fly-fishing topics. But they all are of potential interest to those of us intrigued with the hows and whys of things angling.
The first of these sections discusses the history and uses of Spey, switch, and tenkara rods: the long rods of fly fishing. It’s decent information, but there’s nothing really new that hasn’t been covered in other works on those subjects. Next comes a historical discussion of catch-and-release angling that’s notable from where I sit for pointing out not simply the positive reasons for it, but the results of contemporary studies that show how potentially ineffective it can be when practiced incorrectly.
Then there’s a section titled “The Best Fly Fishing Books (Past and Present),” and here, along with some suggestions on where to buy, how to price,
and how to store books, Johnson presents us with the opinions of two notable bookmen, the Bay Area’s Jim Adams and Gene Fassi, and of one Michigan collector, Tom Belt. Three respondents doesn’t make this a wide or potentially even a representative survey, but few of us who love angling literature will object to the recommended works. They include how-to titles by Schwiebert, Bergman, and Swisher/Richards that Belt feels are important, as well as contemplative works by McGuane, Maclean, Chatham, Gingrich, Lyons, and Haig-Brown that Adams and Fassi nominate. As a whole, it’s a list you can’t go wrong in taking seriously. It would have been nice to have a short description of each work to better pique the interest of new readers, but Johnson instead provides a link for each work to a website such as Wikipedia to provide more information.
The final section is devoted to worldwide fly-fishing locations. Here, Johnson presents some thoughts on the kinds of trips an angler might take, the opinions of three guides on what clients should expect from a guided trip, and section titled “A List of Possible Worldwide Resources for Short Duration Fly Fishing Outings.” Johnson, along with his wife and fishing partner, Nancy, are well-traveled anglers, so it’s a sure bet that he’s done his homework in coming up with this list. They take you from the United States to Europe, Asia, and beyond. Some of us who’ve also traveled widely to fish may wonder at contacts not mentioned, but what the hell, it’s a big world, and there are lots of destinations and outfitters that none of us will ever see. And if you’re contemplating fishing in Montenegro or a day’s fishing within easy travel distance of Tokyo, Johnson provides suggestions that will help or at the least aid further inquiries.
All things considered, what you’ll find in this edition of Fiberglass Fly Rods is a nice continuation of Johnson’s earlier works, plus some intelligent observation and opinion on four other topics of potential importance. The latter aren’t generally the most complete discussions of any of those subjects, but they hit the high spots and provide lots of food for thought.
Fiberglass Fly Rods: International Edition is currently available direct from the publisher, EP Press, at vrjvallejo@ gmail.com.
—Larry Kenney
Classics Revisited
With Michael Checchio
Sunlight and the Dry Fly
By J. W. Dunne. Published by A. & C. Black, Ltd., 1925; Kindle edition, 2013, $7.99.
You don’t hear much about J. W. Dunne these days. He was one of those magnificent men in their flying machines during the glorious days of early flight. He was also a fly fisherman par excellence who came up with a new approach to the dry fly. Today, he is mainly remembered for a screwball theory he had about our dream life.
Dunne designed some of the world’s first stable aircraft, gave us a new way to dress dry flies, and, unaccountably, had considerable effect on world literature through his ideas about time and consciousness. He led a remarkable life in three distinct acts.
John William Dunne was born on a British Army base in County Kildare, Ireland, in 1875. He volunteered for the Second Boer War, rose to the rank of sublieutenant, and was twice invalided home for disease. On sick leave in England, he pursued his twin passions: fly fishing and the systematic study of flight. He became one of the world’s first aeronautical engineers at a time when the science of flight was still in its formative stages. Like other aviation pioneers of his time, Dunne observed birds in flight for clues and became convinced that in order for manned flight actually to be safe, a way would have to be found to make aircraft aerodynamically stable. Encouraged by his friend H. G. Wells, who foresaw both the age of aviation and space travel, Dunne began work in 1902 on a series of small-scale test models, which led him to the development four years later of a tailless, swept-wing “arrowhead” configuration that became his trademark.
Americans are prone to giving the Wright Brothers most of the credit for sending humankind aloft, but early aviation was incremental and collaborative, certainly international in scope, and who did what first wasn’t half as important as the will to do it. Manned flight owes as much to the spirit of the age and to the sheer zest of the times as to what happened at Kitty Hawk. The early aviation craze saw the fervid creation of all manner of experimental gliders, monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes and hydroplanes, all seemingly held together by bailing wire and spit and sent skyward by daredevils flying by the seat of their pants.
It was an age of weird and wacky inventions — one that was brilliantly spoofed in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. The movie was a box-office hit in 1965 and was remarkably faithful to the era it both glorified and satirized. British filmmakers pulled out all the stops to produce it, assembling an all-star international cast and overseeing the construction of 20 different replicas of authentic 1910-era aircraft, 6 of which could fly. Stunt pilots sent these antiques into the air for a movie where much of the onscreen flying was real. J. W. Dunne would have felt right at home with the film’s “intrepid birdmen,” for he, too, went “up-tiddly-up-up” and “down-tiddly-down-down,” test flying his own inventions, like the heroes in the movie’s catchy theme song.
At the Army Balloon Factory in Farnborough, Dunne began designing a number of experimental aircraft, some of which were tested in secrecy in the Scottish Highlands. He developed a pair of manned gliders and an engine-powered “aeroplane” that Dunne said “hopped more than it flew.” He had more success with the Dunne-Huntington triplane that he designed at the Balloon Factory for a private investor. Dunne wanted to try his hand at a monoplane, but the military was focused on biplanes.
In 1909, the War Office abruptly stopped all work on powered aircraft after a government inquiry into military aeronautics. So with financial backing from friends, Dunne started his own company, Blair Atholl Aeroplane Syndicate, Ltd. The company’s first model, the D.5 biplane, was an astounding success — the world’s first truly stable “flying wing” aeroplane. Dunne piloted this aircraft for two and a quarter miles in its maiden flight at Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey in 1910, with Orville Wright present as a witness. The aeroplane was so stable Dunne didn’t have to use the controls except to steer the course. (He proved this from contemporaneous notes that he scribbled into a blank notebook handed to him at takeoff.) Despite its success, Dunne’s design did not become popular. He went on to design three monoplanes and the D.8 biplane that flew across the English Channel to France in 1913.
But Donne’s health was dodgy, mainstream aircraft design was advancing in new directions, and his designs were becoming obsolete. His company foundered and went into liquidation. So Dunne simply put down his adjustable spanner, picked up his fly rod, and went fishing.
Fly fishing’s popularity had grown in the Edwardian Age with the rise of the leisure class. The world of upper-crust British fly fishing was still in thrall to Frederic Halford, the grand poo-bah of dry-fly fishing. Casting a wet fly downstream could get a gentleman kicked out of his angling club. Fly fishing was class warfare by proxy.
Like Halford, Dunne was a dry-fly man. But he was an upstart who dared challenge orthodoxy. Dunne put his radical ideas on fly dressings into a book he called Sunshine and the Dry Fly, published in 1925. It was received as if it was The Communist Manifesto.
Dunne’s apostasy was to suggest that Halford’s dressings didn’t look like real mayflies — certainly not the insects hatching on the Test and on other nearby chalk streams. Yet anglers were still slavishly using the great man’s imitations. They could be found in every calfskin fly wallet in Great Britain.
Dunne said Halford’s flies were too dark and looked more dead than alive. He said Halford hadn’t observed mayflies under the proper light conditions. Dunne became obsessed with the idea of translucency. He dressed his artificial flies to match what he reasoned trout could actually see while looking upward at insects in direct sunlight. He made technical observations about light, angles, optics, cones of vision, and what he claimed a trout could and couldn’t see. He advocated that anglers paint their hooks white, the better to reflect sunlight. He arranged for a manufacturer of artificial silks to create a line of specially colored threads for the windings. He even oiled his dressings to make them look more translucent. His unorthodox approach caused quite a stir in angling circles and was seen as revolutionary — “amounting almost to heresy,” as a book reviewer put it in the October 1925 issue of Nature. The Halford crowd held out for their hero, crying “Tommyrot” and “What cheek!” But Dunne had his champions among some prominent anglers, including Arthur Ransome, famous for his Swallows and Amazons series of children’s books. And for a time, Dunne’s flies enjoyed a degree of popularity, until they were overtaken by more practical dressings created by G. E. M. Skues and others. Even so, Dunne’s fly patterns were still available from the House of Hardy up to 1966, when the Beatles released “Yesterday.”
As for the book itself, well, as the novelist Pete Dexter once observed, a book that entertains but doesn’t enlighten can still be a guilty pleasure, but a book that only enlightens is algebra. Dunne was a stickler for technical detail, to a fault. And getting through his trout book is a long-distance flight.
No matter. Dunne was already on his way to much greater glory. Two years after Sunlight and the Dry Fly stirred the waters, he followed it with a book that became an unlikely bestseller and the talk of the town. An Experiment with Time (1927) wasn’t about fly fishing, but about another of the inventor’s obsessions. For decades, Dunne had been keeping a dream journal, and he had become convinced that we can see the future when we dream — not public events, but personal ones. Awake, we see only the present moment, he theorized, but asleep, we see fragments of our past memories, along with our future “memories.” This led Dunne to hit upon a theory of serial time that — for a while, anyway — made him famous. The theory says that past, present, and future are one, nothing ever dies, and we are all immortal.
“Serialism” was what he called his grand theory of precognitive dreaming, time, and consciousness, and for a while, it was taken very seriously indeed. Philosophers largely rejected Dunne’s book as pseudoscience, but it was a sensation with the public. And some prominent novelists of the time, and even afterward, drew inspiration and were keen to explore his ideas in their own books. Nicholson Baker, writing in a recent issue of the New Republic, has said that it was as if Dunne’s book had opened a kind of secret wormhole in twentieth-century literature. An Experiment with Time was published by Faber and Faber in London, where T. S. Eliot worked as an editor. Eliot was known to have read the book
while writing his famous poem “Burnt Norton.” There has been endless speculation that Dunne’s theories inspired the well-known opening lines:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
Meaning that if everything that’s going to happen has already happened, then there’s nothing we can do about it.
Eliot wasn’t the only one fired up by Dunne’s theory. H. G. Wells, already a fan of his aeronautical work, incorporated Dunne’s ideas into his speculative fantasy The Shape of Things to Come (1933). John Buchan, the author of the wildly popular spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, used Dunne’s ideas for a sci-fi book that he called The Gap in the Curtain (1932), where the future can be glimpsed through a parting in the draperies. (A fellow fly fisherman, Buchan famously said, “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive yet attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”) James Hilton (Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips) took inspiration from Dunne for his novel Random Harvest (1941). J. B. Priestly drew heavily on Dunne’s time theories for three of his plays, including his biggest hit, An Inspector Calls (1945). Both C. S. Lewis and J.
R. R. Tolkien were also under Dunne’s influence. Lewis cites the author by name in the body of his unfinished science fiction novel The Dark Tower, and Tolkien used Dunne’s ideas about parallel time to develop the relationship between Middle Earth and Elvish time in his abandoned time-travel novel The Notion Club Papers, which he wrote while developing The Lord of the Rings. Philippa Pearce put some of Dunne’s notions about time into her children’s classic Tom’s Midnight Garden (1958). The Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short essay, “Time and J. W. Dunne,” that he included in his nonfiction collection Inquisitions. Irish novelist Flann O’Brien was a fan, as was Agatha Christie, who said she took comfort in Dunne’s ideas about eternal life. Even Graham Greene (Brighton Rock, The Quiet American) began keeping his own dream journal, and Dunne’s influence can be seen in The Bear Fell Free (1935), a short-story collection.
Another writer keeping a dream journal was Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita. He was delighted with Dunne and drew heavily on his ideas for Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969), an erotic masterpiece that explores the nature of time and that can be read as a kind of puzzling, but beautiful dream. Nabokov had named the character Ada after his favorite butterfly, a species with yellow wings and a black body. Like Nabokov, Ada aspires to become a lepidopterist. In real life, Nabokov pursued butterflies with as much ardor as Dunne chased trout with his mayfly imitations. It was Nabokov who famously said, “A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.” Or maybe an aeronautical designer? Dunne’s “aeroplanes” became obsolete in his own time. His grand theory of time and consciousness is all but forgotten. But trout are still rising to mayflies on the Test, and Dunne’s legacy is all around us. If flying is symbolic of our yearning for transcendence, implicit is the dream of falling, a form of dying. Who wouldn’t want immortality, if only to fish forever? As Thomas McGuane observed, “each refractive cold slide of water is a glimpse of eternity.” In a well-formed cast, a fly line takes on the exact aerodynamic shape of an airplane’s wing. Maybe fly fishing is the dream of flying without the bother of having to grow wings.
