Catching fish is as old as mankind. We’ve poisoned, trapped, clubbed, speared, netted, snagged, noodled, and of course caught them on a hook as long as we’ve been around. The history of fishing hasn’t stopped; conversely, it is a process that seems to be evolving faster and faster with each season. I feel fortunate not only to have observed and been actively involved in the evolution of fishing over the past 50 years, but to have been allowed to chronicle that evolution on these pages for over the past 20.
I look back, and it seems like only 20 years ago that I was writing about the subtleties of matching the hatch, creating the “perfect” fly, and using deft presentations to imitate the various stages of insect behavior. Today, fly fishers are writing about floating fluorescent foam ants the size of small Gila monsters, dragging Frenchies, zip trolling from a float tube, and the best way to deploy plastic bobbers that look like small navigational aids. For better or worse, fly fishing is merging with spin fishing, and the only real technical difference once the bait hits the water is that the fly angler can mend the line. I like mending.
Even the question of what constitutes a fly is becoming moot. The State of California takes the cake when it comes to its legal definition of an artificial fly: “Any fly constructed by the method known as fly tying.” So unbelievably lame!
Nathaniel Gilbert, esquire, is a self-described “fishing ticket attorney” who makes his living getting (alleged) poachers off the hook. Gilbert states that artificial flies are “made entirely of, or a combination of, natural or synthetic non-edible, non-scented, materials such as wood, plastic, silicone, rubber, epoxy, glass, hair, metal, feathers, or fiber, designed to attract fish.” In other words, if it isn’t edible or doesn’t smell edible, it’s a fly. Kind of like a Super Duper, a Panther Martin, or a plastic bead. Gilbert’s definition (but not the CDFW’s) would include Lee Wulff’s first attempts to create flies out of plastic and with hot glue back in the 1950s. A dab of glue here and a flash of plastic there has given way to entire fly catalogs devoted largely to synthetic lures masquerading as flies. Many of them are awesome fish-catching machines, but in no way imitate anything in nature. Welcome to the world of attractors.
Fly fishing for bass has never intrigued me like trout fishing, because most bass bugs don’t make any sense to my nature-loving, match-the-hatch mentality, and randomly casting gift-wrapped hooks is more boring than a lot of other things I can spend time doing. Though there is the element of presentation and figuring out which kind of gift said bass might want to unwrap, it always seems to be an exercise in swapping bugs until something works, and the only real skill involved is being able to tie knots fast. For many people today, fly fishing for trout has become the bass fishing of yore.
There is probably a lot of truth to the notion that competitive fly fishing has led to the rapid evolution of trout flies and how we fish them. We’ve devolved from “far and fine” to lean, mean, and kick-ass. Watching a competition where George Daniels or Lance Eagan surgically dissects a river without making a single false cast or putting a fish on the reel is as fascinating as it is humbling, yet the numbers of fish caught don’t equate to my definition of quality time on the water or remotely resemble why I fish. That said, when the going gets tough, I’ll tie on a Rainbow Warrior and do what the pros do to save the day from a skunk.
Over the past 20 years, rods have gotten incredibly light and powerful and are a blast to cast when you really want to reach out and touch something, but I’m absolutely positive that a day on the water with a spanking new Grandiose III won’t result in any more fish to hand than a tried-and-true first-generation Scott PowerPly or an old Fenwick HMG.
The leaders and tippets of 2018 hardly resemble their counterparts of two decades ago. I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool hand-tied leader fan, but today, only a masochist would tie his own leader when he can buy a machine-tapered piece of magic that can tow a boat. Likely the best improvement in leader design during my career has been the relatively new (to the United States, at least) introduction of tippet rings. Last summer, Lisa and I fished at least four, sometimes six days a week for three months straight, and I don’t think either of us ever replaced a leader. I’m not sure why companies that make good money manufacturing leaders would shoot themselves in the foot by selling tippet rings.
The evolution of hooks has been dramatic. I still have a drawer full of Edgar Sealys and Partridge hooks that were top shelf only a few decades ago. I can’t seem to throw them out, as I did my collection of old Mustad 94840s. The tempered, fine-wire, microbarbed, chemically sharpened hooks of today are works of art, and you won’t find any in the box that don’t have perfectly closed eyes or that have rough burrs that require filing. The trocar points on several brands rival surgical instruments with their precision, laser-cut points, and cutting edges.
I was recently talking with Bruce Richards about advancements in fly-fishing gear, and he said he was most impressed with tungsten beads. I use them almost to the exclusion of any other bead, without giving them much thought, but apparently the technology to make those things is pretty hard core. If he is amazed, we all should be.
Speaking of Richards, he has been the mastermind behind much of the flyline evolution we have seen over the past 30 years. Welded loops, superslick, durable finishes, textured surfaces, creative tapers, and an endless range of temperature-and-species-specific designs make fly lines a modern miracle. It is sometimes difficult to grasp how much lines have evolved and what an amazingly complex tool such a simple thing as a plastic-coated string can be.
I have a love-hate relationship with synthetic fly-tying material. Most of it is fantastic and frequently better than anything nature can deliver. Synthetics are more durable, come in an infinite array of colors, and are predictably uniform in how they look, tie, and how they behave in the water. That said, I still have a soft spot for natural materials and have yet to find an adequate substitute for beaver, otter, buck tail, chicken feathers, and marabou. Many younger tyers have never made buck tail streamers or spun deer hair because synthetics are such a credible substitute. I can’t blame them, actually, and if I were new to the game, I probably wouldn’t bother with the unpredictability of natural materials either. Life goes on, and all that really matters is that people get out and fish and have a good time.
Life does go on, and change is inevitable, including in the pages of this magazine. This is my last column in California Fly Fisher. I’m not sure what I will do instead, but those kind of things seem to take care of themselves. I have worked with many editors in over 40 years of writing, and some of them are justly famous — Frank Amato, Nick Lyons, John Randolph, Judith Schnell, Silvio Calabi, and Geoff Mueller to name a few — but none have been as much fun to work with as Richard Anderson. He has a light touch with his editorial direction and allows, for better or worse, the voice of his authors to come through.
Copyeditor Bud Bynack has kept me on my toes for over two decades, and even though, just to test his skills, I regularly try to sneak spelling and grammatical errors across his desk, he invariably roots them out, and I’m certain it makes him feel useful to believe he is making my writing more correct, cogent, and readable. The fact that my articles are always more correct, cogent, and readable after Bud swings his axe at them says a lot for his skills, because I know just how mangled some of the articles were before he got them.
I will continue to touch base and write articles for California Fly Fisher, but without those dreaded deadlines. It has been a wonderful ride, and I’m already looking forward to writing the next piece for Richard. Thank you for your readership and support.
