I am appalled at the frequency with which fly fishers pronounce on absolute good and evil in fly fishing, and am shocked at their willingness to do so with no reference to several centuries of accumulated tradition, to say nothing of their equal ignorance of the geography, history, and law that created their attitudes.
— From American Fly Fishing:
A History, by Paul Schullery
I’ve never been a dry fly purist. Nor was I ever, as a writer, an “artist.” Members of either tribe might not see a connection there, save perhaps evidence of a pervasive coarseness of character from which they might rightly presume that I will eat Burger King Whoppers and wrongly imagine that I once bit a bodyguard on Jerry Springer. To my mind, however, there are a few parallels: purists of a certain sort — I’m specifically excluding purists of other kinds — seem to see themselves astride large white horses, elevated from the common ground, their heads closer to heaven.
Until recently, it was authors of the “artiste” variety who seemed to me among the most pretentious. I met many during my academic adventures, then discovered a large pod in the too-cool-to-drool scene of Berkeley, circa 1978, where I’d joined a writing group hoping to find constructive criticism. I received another variety: as somebody who had actually published, I was considered suspect by some of my peers. They employed a syllogism that worked like this:
Masterpieces are not being published today.
I write work nobody will publish. Ergo, I write masterpieces.
Until recently, as noted, this tack seemed more extreme than the position of any fly fisher I knew. What’s threatened this hierarchy is a remark I received some time back, after an evening during which I casually mentioned a friend of mine well known for his writings about a particularly productive nymphing technique. “That’s not a popular name with some people,” I was advised. The impression I had — I might be mistaken was that this animus issued from those who consider dry flies the epitome of the sport, nymphing an errant outgrowth, and fishing with an indicator a bastard endeavor. Shades of Halford and Skues fishers, this is well-traveled ground. I won’t pretend to have visited more of it than most, but l do have a copy of Paul Schullery’s American Fly Fishing: A History, a fascinating book which contains a chapter describing how, when, and why this conflict came to your stream.
The material would surprise many. First of all, fishing subsurface flies is not, as some still seem to think, devolution from an earlier dry standard — what the peasants did when they seized our sport from aristocrats. While the use of “floating flies” goes way back (Schullery rejects the term “dry,” since a part of every fly must contact water), it was the writings of Frederick Halford that formalized their use in England during the mid 1800s, recommending a code requiring an upstream cast to a rising fish with an imitative fly to which you impart no action. Halford devotees soon converted these into sanctified dogma; and, on occasion, employed them as a blunt instrument of moral order. G.E.M. Skues, for example — another savant on that side of the Atlantic — resisted the rise of exclusivity, and took it in the neck for his efforts.
Meanwhile, around 1890 America’s own Theodore Gordon requested and received from Halford a gift of flies and philosophy, which he passed around to the public. While for Gordon these became part of a rather larger repertoire, to another set of converts they represented the New World order.
There weren’t terribly many of these people, nor were they universally admired. An author named Emlyn Gill, writing in the early 1900s, reports a New
York tackle dealer saying “there are not more than one hundred real dry fly fisherman in the United States,” and even these were divided into hostile camps. Whatever their numbers, however, they alarmed observers like James Henshall, another author of that generation, who in Favorite Fish and Fishing lodged “a protest against claiming for [fishing the dry fly] a higher niche in the ethics of sport than wet fly-fishing.”
Ah, but the Trojan horse of elitism was loose — it’s more than that, to be fair and no populist intellectual prophylactic could prevent occasional inseminations. Halford’s ideas are with us today, and are practiced by many excellent and dedicated anglers…which doesn’t bother me one little bit.
Also discussed in Schullery’s chapter on this issue is an overlapping conflict between rival schools: what is simplest to call “imitative” and “non-imitative,” the latter including anglers devoted to “fancy flies,” or to various theories of “attraction.” And it is there where I think things get interesting, or reach the point at which my own prejudices lunge to the surface.
I learned to fly fish without knowing other members of the tribe. Of the slight information I gleaned from sporting magazines, the most influential was an article advising anglers to seine streams to discover what trout really ate. The sense of that struck me partly because I made pin money netting minnows and waterdogs — immature salamanders to sell to livebait bass anglers,
Such sampling did not make an entomologist out of me, I’m afraid. But I learned just enough about natural prey to fish more effectively, and to disdain the gaudy creations Korea provided to Skagg’s Drug Store in circular yellow selector boxes, “psychedelic” patterns that sold 12 for 69 cents. If trout did take these on occasion — bluegill had eaten one or two that I fished — I considered this unfortunate folly, related to their vulnerability to floating cheese bait, whole kernel corn, and trolling rigs named after auto parts. Some fish are idiots, I reasoned, and new stockers are understandably ignorant. Even so, I was ludicrously embarrassed when I came across such victims bleaching on a stringer. How could you? I would wonder. I mean, trout, what were you thinking?
So what did I think of those who fished such concoctions?
We be smug; we be superior. We be fourteen years old and smarter than the average bear.
I wish I’d left that attitude way back there in time. But twenty years later, while reading a long, sad book in which the protagonist angled for many frustrating months, hoping to catch a large brown trout with a Royal Coachman — he seemed to have faith in nothing else — I finally concluded, “Man, you never looked at the river or into it; you only fished to your reflection.”
That’s not a nice thought, granted. I might have been more generous if he’d articulated some sort of reason for the choice, a la Wulff or La Branche. But even so, it’s quite a long distance from condescension to active resentment. His name isn’t unpopular with me; I just don’t remember it.
Technique is a different issue for some, I know. So let’s look at the most awful of these in fly fishing: “Indicators make it too easy,” we’ve heard people say.
Easier, certainly. At least, indicators provide a starting point where there’s a better possibility to succeed, especially in relatively shallow water with swift current and a broken surface, like the run where I first saw these devices used, sometime in the early eighties, The fishers were novices wearing expensive new duds and holding rods worth more than my limping Le Car. Lob and drift, lob again, watch the bobber dip — hook a fish. “You could do that better with cane poles and corks,” I thought — which was true, though what I also meant was “Wish I could afford that rod, and while I’m at it, a better car.” Later, I reacted rather differently, thinking that’s not such a bad way to begin; and, hey, I wonder how well — as in “life-like” — that lets them present a fly? Close casting, “indicated” bites, less need to actually detect a mouth opening, or notice a leader twitch minutely at the point it pierces the meniscus — to recognize what Skues’s called that “cunning brown wink under water.” A rig that when properly employed allows you to control depth and reduce the kind of drag fish find suspect….
This is bad?
“Unearned results” better describes what bothered more experienced folks. “Took me years to learn to see and interpret what was happening when I nymphed (without an indicator). These guys get it in an afternoon.”
Yeah, and they drove to the river at seventy miles an hour without having to shoe horses or navigate by stars. If fly fishing isn’t about finding the simplest way to succeed, neither is it an endeavor that requires us to contrive complications. Most likely, we have already more challenges than we know: in one of those iffy-but-interesting studies we’re prone to read, an observer in scuba gear watched an “expert” nymph fisher working sans indicator, and claimed the fisher failed to notice trout taking his fly two-thirds of the time.
Which brings up something else: the fisher who gets really good at fishing an indicator — who mends well and reads water, who watches closely and sets a hook at just the right angle — will outscore the rest of us by five to one. I’ve watched the friend in question begin with a fifty foot curve cast, or longer — yes, across current braids — which he mends before it touches down, mends again, and again, and again — sometimes in the opposite direction, depending on the seam he’s working — until he achieves a drift beyond what I ever considered possible. The line control involved, the ability to discern currents and visualize the progress of a tumbling fly as transmitted by a tuft of yarn… is simply mind-boggling. It bears the same resemblance to lob-and-drift efforts as dapping pocket water at a rod’s length does to a delicate downstream presentation on the Henrys Fork. “Whatever your starting point,” says my pal, “an indicator gives you an advantage. But how far you take the technique after that depends entirely upon you.”
“Who cares what it catches it’s an ugly way to fish,” runs another line of criticism. Can be. I’m probably happiest handling only a solo fly. I take less pleasure throwing shooting heads, for that matter: you make concessions or you don’t. I have friends so enamored of elegant casting they rarely bother with fish, aiming instead at hula-hoop rings or distance markers. One of them regularly puts a tuft of yarn though a basketball hoop down the hill from his house, an eighty-five foot throw that hardly counts, in his mind, unless a cross wind is whistling in his ear.
Finally there’s this observation: “There’s nothing like seeing a fish come up and eat my fly.”
True again, maybe. At least after forty years of fishing l still will squeak falsetto sounds when this happens, and may tremble at a miss. I’ve made this assertion myself, and often nodded agreement when somebody else did; so I recently surprised myself in the process of switching to a soft hackle after taking several fish on a dry. Then I realized that l do this fairly often. Why?
Curiosity, for one thing: what’s happening below? At the surface begins mystery, to my mind: I am fascinated by possibilities beyond sight. It’s also true that I will, probing deeper, often find fish greater than any I can raise.
And then…
Some people are more visual than others — and I mean a lot more. I’m a pretty touchy guy, I confess: “What excites my eyes, I need to feel,” as I tried explaining to dates in high school — and did they treasure my honesty? Consider this: an erotic image is good beginning, but in the end serves as a poor substitute for — A shuddering strike on a streamer. Or that solid, silent instant when a
nymph probing deep hooks you to a life in the shadow and you wait for the move that means this begins — thrusts of tail that draw down your rod — once, twice — stretching you tight to a force that races into current. I doubt most of us breathe in those early moments of battle. I think the strain on the line reaches right to the base of the brain where it fastens to instincts ancient as any we own. That tension is what you came for and cast to and now hold tight, mind and body thrumming. Your jaw will ache if this goes on long enough; you may suddenly remember the reason we have canine teeth in our mouths. If the fish remains unseen you are still joined and only one adversary has release on his mind — ain’t you — until you triumph and, gloating, exercise a victor’s option…
Or you lose and wonder forever.
But that’s not it, if you’re a purist, for this wasn’t done rightly by your lights. Which is just fine, by mine; let me stress again, that I haven’t a single bone to pick. I appreciate the passion of a fisher committed to dries, just as I’m fascinated by the rarer anglers who’ll strip a great streamer all day waiting for The Beast, or by a midger who’ll work one cast until the cows come home, mimicking life with tweaks of his hand so tiny that my own begin to cramp while I’m watching. I’d like to watch John Gierach fish a crayfish pattern, to see how he makes his mud bug play….
None of these anglers or techniques spoil my day, nor let down the team. In fly fishing, people are entitled to take their satisfaction where they want, define the game for themselves. Within limits, of course — but let’s be careful about what we proscribe. I’ll rush to judgment quickly enough, if the man upstream kills fish with cavalier handling, or even if he edges closer than I think courteous: there are rules worth enforcing. Short of destruction or interference, however…
What’s the point?
Skues was said to be sometimes dismayed at the condemnation he received for fishing nymphs, particularly when it came from fellows of a club in which he’d been an active and valued member, and from which he eventually resigned. His own writings certainly suggest he was puzzled and concerned; as documented in The Essential G.E.M. Skues, by Kenneth Robson. “In the last year or so I have, somewhat to my surprise, seen signs of a movement on the part of some chalk stream anglers to try to re-rivet upon their brethren the fetters of the exclusive dry fly, from which I had hoped that time, experience and common sense had enabled anglers to set themselves free.” He follows this with five categories into which he thinks fly-fishing dominatrix tend to fall, including among these several types of kinds of ignorance and presumption — he’s very nice about it — of techniques generally, and subtleties more specific.
And while reviewing these, I have a revelation.
I intended to write that, by contrast, my unmentionable friend couldn’t care less about purists’ opinions. But I suddenly think that’s not entirely true. Perhaps I’ve been slow to recognize something, probably because his manners are good; he’s modest, although aware of his skills and the benefits he’s accrued through experience — he fishes more than anybody I know with a day job, and enjoys the sort of success few people I’ve met can even approach. In fact, I expect he has actually spent more time with a dry fly on his tippet than most purists ever will ever get to do. But he’s chosen a road that allows other options, and he goes where he likes. If a few folks fall silent as he passes, this mostly amuses him; but now I recall a time or two when he talked about people who pushed piety in his face.
I remember the expression on his. It was a milder version of the visage I wore one evening in Berkeley, when an over-Privileged author of unpublished-ergo-masterpieces tasked me too loudly for “prostituting” talent by selling a humor piece to Field & Stream — a story I’d got a kick out of writing, and that also helped buy groceries for three kids. My inclination was to suggest a dark moist place for him to store both his trust fund and pretensions, and since these were so large, to assist with the insertions.
That’s not quite the message l want to convey. First, because it implies dry fly purists could not fish nymphs and indicators successfully — I don’t believe that for a minute, though an angler would need to invest serious effort (probably decades) to reach my friend’s level of competence. More importantly, and I know I repeat myself, purists are entitled. I’m not asking they include in their personal pantheons the architects of highstick nymphing, or people like Frank Sawyer, of PT fame, or Andre Puyans of the AP. I mean only to urge that when it comes to making harsh assessments, we as fly fishers might reserve ours for people and institutions whose practices do real damage, or offend in some fashion more profound.
Theodore Gordon would have concurred, I think. He’s the American often attributed with importing Halford’s dry fly positions to this country. Paul Schullery takes issue with this, but also proclaims him “the central figure in the history of American fly fishing,” and considers him “unrivaled in his importance as a symbol…rarely matched in his qualities as a writer and angling thinker.”
To Gordon, then, this ending:
It is just as well to remember that angling is only a recreation, not a profession. We usually find that men of the greatest experience are the most liberal and least dogmatic….It is often the man of limited experience who is most confident.
Ergo, sum.
Editor’s note: This Meander is from our March/April 2001 issue. Yes, a couple of decades have passed, but the divisions and biases noted by Seth Norman still exist, and perhaps even worsened. Nowadays, with our aquatic ecosystems under increasing threat from climate change and other ill effects of the modern world, it is even more critical that anglers work together to protect our wild game fish and the waters these fish inhabit. Brothers and sisters of the angle, unite!
