As you may have noticed from the header, Larry Kenney has stepped away from the column that he created and so thoughtfully steered through eight years. Regular readers know that Larry took an extremely wide-angle view of fly fishing, and he covered a diverse selection of gear and related subjects. I certainly enjoyed and appreciated this broad perspective and will do my best to continue the tradition.
So now that we have taken care of the baton handoff, let’s start with something simple and innocuous — a definition of fly fishing. Before we can properly discuss fly-fishing gear, after all, we really need to know what is and isn’t fly-fishing. For most of the nonfishing public, fly fishing is A River Runs Through It, which showcased elegant casts made to trout in pretty places. It’s what brought so many into the sport in the early 1990s. Of course, not everyone sees the sport through the eyes of a Hollywood movie director.
Fly Fishing and California Law
Before you fish California’s waters with any type of fishing gear, it makes sense to consult the most recent copy of the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Sport Fishing Regulations. Nothing ruins a fishing trip quite as much as getting cited by a warden. An infraction will get you a fine of up to $250. A misdemeanor charge will put you in front of a judge and an overworked district attorney, with the possibility of jail time and fines that can hit $60,000. Don’t believe me? Check out the state’s Uniform Bail and Penalty Schedule. This is serious stuff.
So how do the state regulations define fly fishing? Based on all of the stuff discussed and advertised online and in fly-fishing magazines as being for fly-fishing, I’m betting you are thinking the state will provide legally defensible details on flies, fly lines, fly rods, and fly reels. Hold on to your breeches. “1.08. ARTIFICIAL FLY. Any fly constructed by the method known as fly tying.”
Just ten words. Talk about succinct. Anyone who has read this magazine or typed “fly tying” into a search engine will know that “fly tying” covers everything from classic trout flies made from feathers and fur to creations that are formed, fabricated, or chemically fused together to catch bass, carp, and even marlins. Based on Section 1.08, you can legally fish “artificial fly only” waters such as the Tule River or the Truckee River (from Glenshire Bridge to Prosser Creek) with any gear you like, as long as you have a fly constructed “by the method known as fly tying” attached to the end of the line.
I must admit I have mixed feelings about this. I am no fan of fly-fishing snobs who look down on anyone who isn’t clad in Gore-Tex and equipped with a jumbo mortgage payment’s worth of “fly gear.” I may choose to fish with fly gear these days, but in the past, I enjoyed many other ways of fishing and found them every bit as challenging and exciting. If you think the double haul or double Spey is difficult, try a conventional-gear full pendulum cast, with its 270-degree arc, rapid power buildup, split-second timing, and a reel that quite literally screams as it spins at over 10,000 rpm. Screw up a double haul, and your cast falls short. Screw up a pendulum, and things quickly get terrifying.
Antisnob sentiments aside, I think it is important to recognize that fly fishing, as practiced by most folks across the globe, has certain elements that make it unique. While I understand the need for legally defensible language in the state code, fly fishing deserves a better definition. Let’s take a look at how others define the sport.
Wikipedia and the Deep Nymph Problem
Back when I was a kid, the Encyclopedia Britannica was the place you went for answers. Whether you needed information on parliamentary rules or a sixteenth-century cure for flatulence, the Britannica had the answer. These days, that role belongs to Wikipedia. Here’s how their online experts define the sport.
Fly fishing is an angling method in which an artificial “fly” is used to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. Casting a nearly weightless fly or “lure” requires casting techniques significantly different from other forms of casting. Fly fishermen use hand-tied flies that resemble natural invertebrates, other food organisms, or “lures” to provoke the fish to strike (bite at the lure).
While I am not sure anyone actually uses their reel to cast a fly, Wikipedia’s description seems to cover most of the types of fly fishing practiced in California.
A bit farther down the page, Wikipedia distinguishes fly fishing from other forms of fishing. Surely this will be helpful. “The main difference between fly fishing and spin or bait fishing is that in fly fishing the weight of the line carries the hook through the air, whereas in spin and bait fishing the weight of the lure or sinker at the end of the monofilament or braided line gives casting distance.”
Many folks have found high-stick/ Czech/ French nymphing techniques to be incredibly effective on rivers and streams. This is typically a short-distance game and seldom relies on the fly line to carry the fly through the air. In fact, some folks dispense with the fly line altogether and use a soft, high-visibility monofilament instead. The flies are typically flicked over the water, and their own weight carries them to the target. It seems as if Wikipedia identifies this technique as a form of spin fishing, but we should probably check to see how they characterize spin fishing. “Spin fishing is distinguished between fly fishing and bait cast fishing by the type of rod and reel used.
There are two types of reels used when spin fishing, the open-faced reel and the closed-faced reel.”
This would seem to place short-distance nymphing techniques, where the line isn’t used to propel the fly, into a sort of fishing limbo: not fly fishing, but not spin fishing, either. It looks like Wikipedia may have inadvertently created a new fishing classification — fly-spin fusion.
I imagine this may have made a few readers hot under the collar. If all this confusion really bothers you, and your favorite style of fishing has to be fly fishing, there may be a solution. Simply ensure that your rig has a few feet of fly line outside the rod tip at all times. As long as the mass of the line exceeds the mass of the flies, it should satisfy the good folks at Wikipedia and leave you feeling properly pious.
Of course, you’ll screw things up if you need to fish deep and adorn your leader with split shot. If you aren’t convinced, we can do the math. A BB shot weighs
8.8 grains. Let’s say the river is running hard, and you need three BBs to get your flies down into a productive slot. That’s a little over 26 grains. Like most folks on the river, you are probably fishing with a 5-weight line. Ignoring the lower mass of the front taper, a 5-weight line weighs 4.6 grains per foot (140 grains for 30 feet). In order to ensure you are fly fishing as defined by the good folks at Wikipedia, you will need to have about six feet of line outside the rod tip. Anything less, and you are not fly fishing.
If six feet of fly line is too much for the kind of fishing you do, don’t worry. I think I have another solution. Simply loop a short section of T14 line onto the end of your 5-weight line, like the steelheaders do with their Skagit tips. Just two feet of T14 out of the rod tip will provide 28 grains of line. Sure, it’s going to cast like a pig, but let’s be honest. Regardless of what line you use, casting nymphs and a string of BBs usually has all the grace of an explosion at a munitions factory. Two feet of T14 really isn’t going to make things any worse.
But really, resorting to a length of T14 to make fishing nymphs “fly fishing” isn’t a particularly good solution. There has to be a better answer. Maybe it would help if we examined the way the British fly fishers dealt with nymphs when they invented nymph fishing over one hundred years ago.
Fly Fishing Across the Pond
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Frederic Halford and George Skues, two very innovative fly-fishing writers, were pursuing trout on the chalk streams of southern England. Halford developed the upstream dry-fly approach, which in its purest form requires the angler to cast only to rising fish. He promoted the technique in the fishing press, and with the support of a number of other fishing luminaries, he helped elevate it to a doctrine. To fish any other way was considered exceedingly lowbrow. George Skues fished the same rivers as Halford, but used a different approach — he used nymphs. In fact Skues is widely credited with inventing nymph fishing. I have a copy of Skues’s 1921 book The Way of a Trout with a Fly. Even now, some 95 years later, it’s a fascinating read. Halford and his followers were less than polite about Skues’s technique, and the opposing views reverberated through the angling press for many years. Given this epic battle, one might assume that the Brits have developed a pretty sophisticated definition of fly fishing.
Let’s take a look. Here are the fishing bylaws for the Thames, perhaps the most famous river in England. “When fishing for salmon, trout, or rainbow trout during the annual close season for coarse fish (15 March — 15 June dates inclusive), you may only fish with an artificial fly or lure.” There’s no discussion of lines, rods, or reels. This definition is almost a carbon copy of the one provided by California law. Not surprisingly, a number of Brits are a tad irritated by this vagueness. The following is an amusing and informative excerpt from an online discussion:
Fly fishing: a method of fishing where real flies are not actually used. Artificial flies are used, but only some of them actually imitate flies. A fly line is used, but in some forms of river nymphing it isn’t actually used. A fly rod and fly reel are always used, but in some stillwater methods it is used like a coarse rod and reel, as a legal way of float fishing for trout. Tackle usually costs more than tackle used in other forms of fishing because it’s considered a bit more posh.
So despite hashing this issue out for over one hundred years, the Brits are no further ahead than we are. Let’s look to others for guidance.
Fly-Fishing Records and the IGFA
Some folks are really into record fish. They spend a lot of time and money chasing large fish all across the globe.
The International Game Fish Association (IGFA) is the world’s authority on records, and they have established specific requirements for fly-fishing records. Let’s see if they can help us nail down a definition of fly fishing. “Casting and retrieving must be carried out in accordance with normal customs and generally accepted practices. The major criterion in casting is that the weight of the line must carry the fly rather than the weight of the fly carrying the line. Trolling a fly behind a moving watercraft is not permitted.”
Judging from this, the good folks at Wikipedia took their lead from the IGFA — the line must carry the fly. Anyone seeking to catch a record fish using deep nymphing techniques had better stock up on T14 line.
Also: “The reel must be designed expressly for fly fishing. There are no restrictions on gear ratio or type of drag employed except where the angler would gain an unfair advantage.” This eliminates the use of spinning or baitcasting reels, which seems to agree with the good folks at Wikipedia, too, though I wonder if some enterprising fly-reel designer will develop a spinning reel “expressly for fly fishing.” When it comes to drags and gearing, I am not sure how you would determine an “unfair advantage.” One assumes that the lack of a reel disqualifies Tenkara.
“The fly must be a recognized type of artificial fly, which includes streamer, bucktail, tube fly, wet fly, dry fly, nymph, popper and bug.” Fly fishers are a creative bunch, and “unrecognized” patterns come out of vises every year. Should a record fish be disqualified just because a fly is of novel type? And it’s not just new flies that fall foul. The case could be made that a San Juan Worm or egg pattern wouldn’t fit any of the IGFA’s recognized types of artificial fly.
“Only a single fly is allowed. Dropper flies are prohibited.” Forget about the hopper/dropper setup. Don’t use a dry fly as an indicator, and never fish more than one Czech nymph.
“The fact that a lure can be cast with a fly rod is not evidence in itself that it fits the definition of a fly.” It’s hard to know exactly what they mean here, but perhaps it is best to forget about using small Rapalas or Flatfish.
“No scent, either natural or artificial is allowed on flies. The use of scented material in a fly is prohibited.” Given that fish can smell chemicals in the parts-per-trillion range — well beyond the range of the average human nose — this is a bit of a tall order. Some fly fishers attempt to mask human scent by applying anise or vanilla to their hands and even to their flies. I am frequently guilty of squishing brand new nymphs into pondweeds or mud to help them sink and in a (probably vain) attempt to mask any residual odors of head cement. And wouldn’t residual head cement odor be a scented material in the first place, making my actions a double foul? It seems to me it would be prudent to wash your hands and flies with unscented soap before you tie on your fly and again before you send it to the IGFA to claim the fly-fishing record for the California Roach.
Fly Fishing as Characterized by Other Anglers
I have always found bass anglers to be an enthusiastic, yet practical bunch. Let’s see how the World Championship Bass on the Fly Tournament folks characterize fly fishing. “Trolling with combustion engine as a method of fishing is prohibited.” That seems fair enough, but I would have thought an electric motor, oars, or even kicking a float tube are far more effective ways to troll flies anyway.
“Only rods and reels, line and flies designed exclusively for fly fishing may be used.” That sounds reasonable, too, but 3D printing of reels could pose a problem sooner or later.
“No soft plastic baits, or any other type of bait, customarily used for fishing with other types of rod and reels may be used.” This is actually an interesting way of defining what isn’t a fly. It’s not perfect, but it does help narrow things down a bit. Clearly, plastic worms and grubs are off the table.
“Liquid fish attractants are allowed.” Apparently these guys don’t drink at the same bar as the IGFA folks.
Fly Fishing as Pornography
So what can we conclude from this little exercise? Not much, it seems. To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, I shall not today attempt further to define the gear I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (“fly fishing”), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.
I like to think I have an open mind when it comes to fly fishing, but my idea of what constitutes fly fishing may well be different from yours. Most of the time, I’ll probably be looking at gear we can all agree on, but there will no doubt be times when I discuss or describe gear that you think crosses the line. It sounds like the start of a wonderful relationship.
