Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients: A Celebration of Five Centuries of Lore and Wisdom

by Paul Schullery

Overview

Modern fly-fishing is only the latest chapter in a two-millennia saga of technological creativity and passionate observation of the natural world. In Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients, historian-naturalist Paul Schullery explores the earlier chapters in that saga and unearths a host of provocative theories, techniques, and insights that helped shape the modern fly-fisher. Schullery demonstrates that whether we're looking for a good fish story, a clearer understanding of why we fish the way we do, or even a way to improve our own sport, we ignore our elders at our peril.

Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients offers the beginning fly-fisher an unprecedented opportunity to come to terms with some of the sport's most fundamental theoretical and practical challenges. It offers the expert fly-fisher a chance to test current angling dogma--and his or her own pet theories--against that of the sport's greatest past masters. And it offers all readers a fresh, probing, and often-humorous take on the great endless fish story we perpetuate and enrich every time we cast a fly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826346902
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	02/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Paul Schullery is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than forty books on nature, national parks, history, and outdoor sport. He is the recipient of the Wallace Stegner Award and the Roderick Haig-Brown Award, and he wrote and narrated the award-winning PBS film "Yellowstone: America's Sacred Wilderness." He is currently a scholar-in-residence at Montana State University Library, Bozeman.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Catch More Fish! 1

Part 1 The Theoretical Fly

Chapter 1 Is the Wet Fly Sunk? 6

Chapter 2 Ragtag and Rumpled: The Mystery of the Ratty Fly 24

Chapter 3 Strange Attractors: Fly Tying on the Historical Fringes 35

Part 2 Delivery Systems

Chapter 4 Superfine and Very Strong: The Rise and Fall of Silkworm Gut 50

Chapter 5 Straps and Ladders: How Many Flies Are Enough? 70

Chapter 6 This Most Salutary Reform: The Slow Rise of the Eyed Hook 84

Chapter 7 The Hatch-Matching Nondebate 100

Part 3 The American Evolution

Chapter 8 Pacific Salmon and the Myth of Uncatchability 112

Chapter 9 The Long Haul: Where Did the Double Haul Come from, and Why Didn't It Get Here Sooner? 141

Chapter 10 Grasshopper Country 149

Chapter 11 Real Dogs and Dreadful Scourges: Have You Invented the Streamer Yet? 170

Part 4 Fly-Fishing Secrets of the Ancients: A Brief Manual 187

Acknowledgments 206

Notes 209

Index 240