I shake the rain off my jacket and push through glass doors of the county expo center, uncertain what I’ll find inside. Behind tables across the foyer stand a group of ticket sellers and smiling greeters, not unlike a lineup of educators ready for parent conference night. What this isn’t, apparently, is one of your humungous sportsmen’s shows — the kind that takes out full-page ads in the newspaper and makes you feel just a wee bit silly as you plunge down yet another aisle promising more fun than you can enjoy in a lifetime. Instead, once inside the exhibit hall, today’s event, hosted by a “regional council of fly fishers,” looks a lot like lunchtime in the cafeteria of a public elementary school.
A pretty big elementary school. Rows of tables as long as bowling alleys, with benches attached along both sides where the ball gutters would be, reach back to the far end of the hall. Staggered along each table, dozens of fly tyers sit working at vises while around them drifts a crowd of onlookers, in equal measure interested, enlightened, a few perhaps perplexed.
Who are these tyers? It doesn’t take long to recognize some of the old guard. There’s Jim Schollmeyer, Jim Teeny, John Shewey, Brian Silvey, Dave McNeese. There’s Trey Combs, for God’s sake. And then there’s the rest, who I wouldn’t know from a lineup of backgammon stars, every one of them with a fly in a vise or encircled with flies already tied that seem capable of fooling any fish that’s ever learned to swim.
In all things fly fishing, we are never far from the belief that at the heart of the matter lives the elemental quest for the Right Fly. How else explain 180 tyers, working two-and-half-hour shifts, displaying their talents over the course of two spring weekend days? Granted, there is a school of tyers, the sprinkling of nineteenth-century salmon fly aficionados, who appear to have transcended the sport of angling altogether in pursuit of something akin to the ornate finery of model railroading — or shipbuilding inside antique bottles. But for the rest of the tyers at this or any similar sort of public fly-tying exhibition, it seems unlikely that the motivation for this meticulous and often challenging work is anything but an interest in catching more fish.
Because by and large, on display today are flies that you know, without question, will work — beautiful patterns tied as well as flies can possibly be tied. There are Spey flies that would move even the most pestered steelhead, Intruders to give salmon cause to pause rather than venturing farther upstream, deer-hair bass poppers with variegated bodies as tight as solid cork. You see mayflies tied upside down, baitfish patterns fashioned from single feathers held upright on edge as if the combs of excited roosterfish, minnows designed to ride inverted like desert fighter pilots flying below the radar. Somebody’s tying butterflies. Another guy’s got a ghost shrimp bonefish pattern you could serve unnoticed scattered atop a dinner salad. Given the need, a particular hatch or unusual feeding opportunity — brown trout snacking on swallowtails? — you can see yourself reaching for any one of these particular flies and thinking to yourself, “Dude, it’s over.”
Yet at the same time, it’s hard not to wonder: Do I really have to get that complex? That specialized?
You know my answer. Which is why I’m particularly pleased when I stumble upon Jerry Criss, a regional all-star tying deceptively simple soft hackles that look like flies I’d fish and tie, something I just can’t say is necessarily so for nine out of ten flies I’ve watched tied today. There’s no point in revisiting, yet again, my sharp bias toward a broad genre of flies that dates back to the earliest recorded dressings and continues to intrigue and inspire anglers, especially trout anglers, today. Still, when Criss finishes the fly he was working on when I joined the small group facing his vise, he holds up a small, scruffy, nondescript bug that makes my heart tremble.
“We use this,” says Criss, “for a little summer caddis that shows up out east.”
Oh, yeah, I think. Don’t they ever.
I’m reminded how, for a long time, I thought my attraction to soft hackles had to do with the kind of trout water I often fished. I’ve never visited Yorkshire, Scotland, or even Ireland, where North Country soft-hackled flies remain standard dressings for “the swift choppy hill streams” that I nevertheless imagine, to this day, are so similar to Western waters I’ve fished for the past fifty years. Across the way, I spot Dave Hughes, his great shock of white hair floating amid a cluster of fans and friends, and I remember the point in my career when I began reading his books and articles with increasing interest as I realized he was writing about the same kind of trout fishing, in the same kinds of rivers and streams, that I usually experienced. Hughes’s Wet Flies, 20 years old and counting, remains one of the few technical fly-fishing books I’ve ever owned. Earlier, I was glad to hear from him that he’s coming out with a new edition; the elegant Schollmeyer color plates in my old copy long ago came unglued.
Meanwhile, Jerry Criss has begun fashioning something new — a different kind of soft hackle. As he ties, he explains that in this style, unlike other soft hackles, you’re able to use feathers with longer fibers. Only the tips are used, and they’re allowed to spin around the entire fly, cloaking the fly, rather than winging it. What he ends up with looks like a cross between a flymph and a bugger — and about as pretty a lake fly as you’d ever want on the end of your line.
He calls it “a dabbler.” Dabbler?
I’ve heard of spiders, bloas, needle flies. Not even Hughes, I think, has mentioned dabblers.
But, of course, we live in the modern age. Secrets can’t hide. And oddly enough — and despite its obvious old-school pedigree — the dabbler is a relatively new dressing, yet another instance of an alleged “mistake” becoming a favored pattern in its own right.
The details of the fly’s origin, however, seem less important than the insights afforded by its cultural context. Although widely debated, one story has it that the first dabblers were tied for an upcoming competition on Ireland’s famous Lough Melvin, home of what some consider four genetically distinct races of native brown trout, including the sonaghan, the gillaroo, and the ferrox. Lough, I should add, is the anglicized spelling for both the Irish and Scottish loch, pronounced roughly the same to an American’s ear, generally water we call a lake, although it can also be used for an estuary or brackish inlet, as well. In the past twenty years, dabblers have become the ubiquitous Irish lough fly, perhaps not quite the claim it sounds, when you consider that lough fishing is almost always done three flies at a time, your offerings spread out toward the end of an 18-foot leader. Dabblers are said often to be most effective when fished “in a wave” — heavy wind chop that causes your flies to bob up and down, conditions that would probably drive most American fly fishers off the water unless they happened to find themselves in a sturdy, seaworthy Irish lough boat.
How does all of this translate into our own fishing? These days, “dabbler” refers more to a style of fly than to any specific dressing. Which is another reason why Jerry Criss’s version grabbed my attention. The very best flies, in my book, are ones that can be easily adapted to the subtle differences in hatches and types of water one finds from one river or lake or stream to the next. Unless I’ve been someplace before, I’m usually tying an approximation of what I suspect I might find. I’m drawn to patterns, therefore, that offer an impression of different hatches, patterns that I hope work well enough until I home in, if necessary, on details and begin to revise.
Which is why I’ve already gone from the Claret Dabbler to versions in various shades of green. There’s a nearby lake that opens late, a summer trout fishery that gets you out of the lowlands and where it is always worth swimming a fly. Eighteen-foot leaders? Three flies at a time? I don’t know. But if I can get this new dabbler just right, I ought to be set — to paraphrase John Gierach — for the olive bugger hatch.
Materials for the Claret Dabbler
Hook: TMC 3769 or similar, size 8 to 12
Thread: Black Uni 8/0
Wing: Bronze mallard tied “cloak” style
Tail: Pheasant tail dyed red, topped with bronze mallard
Body: Peacock herl dyed red
Body hackle: Badger saddle hackle dyed red
Rib: Thin copper wire
Shoulder hackle: Badger saddle hackle dyed red
Eyes (optional): Jungle cock
(Note: You can watch Scotsman Davie McPhail tie a dabbler very similar to this one on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0z5Tc0RifQ , a video in which he demonstrates the technique for tying the cloak-style wing described below.)
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Secure the hook and start the thread. Cover the forward half of the shank, then return the thread to a point about a sixteenth of an inch back from the eye.
Step 2: Align the tips of the wider, darker side of a bronze mallard feather by stroking the fibers perpendicular to the stem. Once the tips are aligned, remove or cut about an inch-wide section of the fibers. With the tips still aligned, roll the fibers into a loose bunch. Hold the fibers so that the tips are pointing forward of the hook eye. At a tip length approximately the length of the hook shank, take a loose wrap of thread just back from the hook eye. As you slowly tighten the thread, allow the feather tips to spin around the hook shank. Try to end up with a fairly even distribution of fibers all around the shank. Trim the butts of the fibers and cover with thread.
Step 3: At a point directly above the hook point, secure half a dozen dyed-red pheasant tail fibers.
Step 4: On top of the pheasant tail fibers, tie in a small bunch of bronze mallard feather fibers.
Step 5: At the root of the tail, secure a short length of copper wire. Advance your thread to a point just behind the forward-facing wing.
Step 6: Secure two or three strands of dyed peacock herl behind the wing. Wind the thread over the strands down to the root of the tail, then wind back to the wing. Wrap the peacock herl up the body with turns toward instead of away from yourself. Tie off the herl just back from the wing.
Step 7: Just behind the wing, tie in the butt of an appropriately-sized saddle hackle. Take a couple of turns directly behind the wing, then palmer the hackle to the tail. Secure the hackle fiber with a turn of the copper wire. Cut off the excess hackle feather. Wind the copper wire forward, ribbing the fly and protecting the peacock herl with 4-6 wraps of wire. Secure the copper wire with your thread and clip the excess.
Step 8: Position the cloak-style wing by pulling the fibers back over the hook shank. Aim for an even distribution around the entire fly. Hold back the fibers with tight turns of thread, winding up over the folded fiber butts where necessary.
Step 9: If you have the patience, talent, or inclination, tie in jungle cock eyes before whip finishing and saturating the head of the fly in lacquer or head cement. I’m never sure they’re worth the effort.
