It’s hard to know what to say about steelhead flies anymore. With a number of runs this year falling to record lows throughout the fish’s historic range, who can say with certainty that we should even cast where wild steelhead still swim and spawn? We’re not quite there yet, but if trends continue, I can imagine hiking into remote watersheds armed with nothing more than binoculars and a camera, hoping to catch sight of a steelhead, perhaps paired up on or near a redd, a story to tell one’s grandchildren as though having encountered, firsthand, a condor, a trout in Baja, or the bark of the spotted owl.
Given the state of the fishery, tying steelhead flies can come to seem like a conceptual exercise, the creation of an object, elegant or otherwise, that may never do what it was intended to do. Of course, the vast majority of flies tied for steelhead, even those tied by serious steelheaders, never catch a fish; many of them will never even find their way into the water. The very best steelhead anglers, those who fish all day with confidence, never worrying about fly selection once a choice has been made, go through very few flies. Yet like most dedicated anglers, these same steelheaders will happily tie flies night after night, a form of creative exploration that leads, now and again, to a fly that seems just right.
Yet there’s little reason to believe that any of us needs a new steelhead pattern. The flies don’t represent much in the first place; most of us simply mimic patterns we’ve had success with in the past. Over time, we settle on a handful of patterns that we feel will cover any conditions we might encounter on steelhead rivers near to or far from home. We fall back on these patterns because they’ve worked in the past, accepting the grim truth that they worked — and they no doubt will continue to work — because these are the flies we keep swinging on the end of our line. This is the kind of logic that can drive half-hearted steelheaders nuts. What eventually becomes apparent is that this fishing is for someone other than the faint of heart. Bearing down takes on a whole new meaning when you fish for days on end without any sign of a fish, without any discernible reaction to the fly. Wondering if your fly is the problem is the surest way to start down a road that leads nowhere other than yet another fishless day.
Successful steelhead anglers do of course change flies. They recognize different river conditions, different lies, and they adjust accordingly. Most steelhead anglers have a collection of winter flies and another stash of patterns for summer-run fish; flies for high dark water, flies for water low and clear; flies to use with their floating line and flies for getting deep when attached to a short leader and 10 or 15 or 20 feet or more of thin, dense, “sink-tip” material powered by a plump, heavy Skagit head or the like that flies from the rod tip like a two-ounce pyramid sinker. All of these different fly types indicate a process of selection more sophisticated than some of my initial comments might suggest. I’ll stand by my argument, however, that in any given season, under such-and-such conditions, successful steelheaders don’t spend a lot of time worrying about fly selection. They’ve seen what works, and they assume the same will work again. Few of us approach the level of disregard for different patterns shown by an angler once described by Tom McGuane, a fellow steelheader who, allegedly, if I remember correctly, fished only with flies given to him by other steelheaders. I love that attitude, knowing full well I suffer far too many anxieties to embrace such a radical tack.
“Anxieties” may not be the right word. What we all tend to hold somewhere in our minds, however, is the belief that there just might be a fly out there, one we still haven’t stumbled upon, that will work like magic, a silver bullet that provokes a response from any steelhead anywhere in a given river. We know that belief is absurd. Yet nearly all of us continue to hold onto it somewhere in our psyches, more so, perhaps, the longer we go without any sign of fish.
The real issue today, no doubt, is whether those fish we long for are in the river at all. A big issue, to say the least. It’s hard to know how we reached this point. But for anyone who has invested the time and energy to find these iconic West Coast fish in the past, the one fish that has driven so much in the way of innovation both in gear and technique throughout the entire sport of fly fishing, the current spate of crashing runs and river closures, from California to British Columbia, feels like nothing short of a tragedy.
So who needs another steelhead fly? My guess is we all do. A new steelhead pattern places a claim on hope, that precious attitude at the heart of every successful steelheader’s game. The history of the sport is littered with anglers who gave up hope and quit, their attention diverted to more plausible pursuits, anything besides the grim prospect of never finding another steelhead again. It could happen. But a new steelhead pattern demands we don’t surrender to this fatalistic view, that we still believe it possible a fly can move a fish from the realm of mystery or speculation to a concrete visceral experience with the clearest expression of unfettered wildlife many of us will ever know.
Is it too late? I don’t think so. River closures and unprecedented angling restrictions mean that somebody is paying attention, that wild steelhead won’t vanish overnight from the face of the earth, like the last of the passenger pigeons. But the threat is real. Something happened to this year’s age group of West Coast steelhead: they left their natal waters in apparently normal numbers, but on return from the ocean, there are far fewer fish than anyone has ever counted.
Will your new fly help? I won’t answer that, other than to state that if you go ahead and tie it, and it gives you pause to consider the fate of these remarkable fish and what it might take to keep them as an important part of any comprehensive West Coast fly-fishing career, then it’s served its purpose — improving your odds, however small the increment, of catching a steelhead in the uncertain future ahead.
Materials
Hook: Partridge low-water Wilson, or similar, size 6 to 10
Thread: Claret Pearsall’s Gossamer, Morus, or Ephemera silk, or wine 6/0 UniThread
Tag: Silver tinsel and orange floss
Tail: Golden pheasant tippets and topping
Rib: Oval silver tinsel
Body: Claret seal fur or substitute, spun into a dubbing loop
Hackle: Grizzly saddle hackle dyed red
Throat: Guinea fowl dyed blue
Underwing: Golden pheasant tippets
Wing: Bronze mallard
Tying Instructions
Step 1: Secure the hook in the vise and start the thread along the middle of the shank. If you didn’t stock up on Pearsall’s Gossamer when they quit the business of producing silk thread a decade ago, you can find the exact same product now from Morus Silk. Their reproduction of the original Pearsall’s colors may not yet have reached an outlier such as claret, dark or light, but another silk thread, by the French company Ephemera, is a good substitute. The “wine” Uni-Thread is also a perfectly good option.
Step 2: Above the barb of the hook (which you may need or want to flatten before fishing) secure a length of oval or round silver tinsel for the tag. Make two or three wraps of tinsel, secure with a wrap or two of thread, then tie in the floss and add a couple of wraps of orange at the forward end of the tag.
Step 3: The tail is made in two parts. First, just forward the tag, secure a single small orange-and-black “tippet” feather from that golden pheasant skin I’d really like you to buy if you haven’t done so already, so that you have a wealth of the beautiful and varied feathers found on such a bird. (These birds, I should note, are now raised in captivity, like the chickens or turkeys raised for food, which makes the skins remarkably inexpensive.) Secure the tippet feather so the tail extends just past the bend of the hook. Now, for the second part of the tail, use a single yellow feather from the crest of the bird, located on the skin above the two-tone tippet feathers. Position the feather so that the tips curl upward, then tie it in so that these tips extend just past the reach of the tippets below.
Step 4: The body of the fly is also composed of two parts, the dubbing and the rib. Start by securing a length of small oval tinsel just ahead of the tail. Now create a dubbing loop, wax the legs, and spin in the dubbing material. (I get my seal dubbing from FeathersMC.com; only by buying from this sort of small-time supplier can we hope that products such as genuine seal dubbing are available in the future.) Wrap the dubbing noodle forward, stopping just short of the tip of the return wire from the hook eye. Then rib the dubbing body with four or five evenly spaced wraps of tinsel. Secure the tinsel and clip the excess.
Step 5: Forward of the body, tie in by the tip a single hackle feather with barbs about one and a half times the hook gap. Advance the thread several wraps, then wind the hackle forward, trying to fold the feather lengthwise and holding the barbs rearward as you wind. Make three or four hackle wraps, secure the hackle, and clip the excess. Now a few judicious thread wraps can help aim those hackle tips rearward, rather than sticking out as if on a bottle brush.
Step 6: The throat of the fly is a single guinea feather dyed blue — in this case, Silver Doctor blue. Secure the guinea feather along the bottom of the hook just forward the hackle, with the tips of the feather pointing aft. After taking a turn or two of thread to secure the feather, you can tug on the stem and slide the feather forward until the length of throat tips seem appropriately proportionate to the length of the hackle barbs.
Step 7: The wing of the fly is also two parts. For the underwing, just forward the hackle, tie in a small tuft of fibers from one of those two-tone golden pheasant tippet feathers. The tip of the underwing should just reach the root of the tail. For the wing itself, select sections about three-sixteenths of an inch wide from two different bronze mallard feathers, feathers from opposite sides of the bird. Hold the feather sections as a pair, dull sides facing each other, and secure along the top of the fly with the tips of the wing extending to the end of the tail. This is easier said than done. You are better than I am if you can tie a symmetrical pair of wings that embrace the rest of the fly as if arrow fletching. But I try to tell myself I’ve learned other important things in my life while I wasn’t at my bench trying to master this skill. Once the wings are finished, create a tidy head, whip finish, and saturate the final thread wraps with lacquer or your favorite head cement. (See the previous page for an image of the finished fly.)
