Read an Excerpt
Introduction
– Yvon Chouinard
Why bother to write an entire book about the singular barbs of the tail feathers of a male ring-necked pheasant? You may be thinking the old boys have fallen into the behavior of the nerd scientist who devotes his life to learning more and more about less and less. But wait, before you pitch this book back into the fly-fishing shop’s dusty remainders bin, let us explain.
Our previous book Simple Fly Fishing made the case to replace a lot of the unnecessary gear and impediments endemic in fly fishing with knowledge and technique. Going toward simplicity is not an absolute. Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify,” to which his friend Emerson responded, “You could have said that with one simplify.” Since we wrote that book in 2014, we have done just that.
We propose that the barbs of ring-necked pheasant tail feathers can be used to tie the bodies of nymphs, dry flies, emergers, and beetles that are equally as, or even more, effective than the thousands of flies in the fly shop.
This book is not intended for the beginner fly angler nor for the gear junky who believes the secret to success lies in buying ever more equipment and flies. It’s not even for the serious angler who doesn’t tie flies, because you can’t buy some of the patterns we’re describing. It’s for the person who knows that restricting your options forces you to be creative. If you understand that limiting your fly options and relying on skill, knowledge, and technique leads not just to success but to satisfaction, this book is for you.
Before catch and release caught on in the 1960s, a fish was fooled by an artificial fly once or twice at most before ending up in the frying pan. Now with each release they get smarter and are less eager to fall for the same fly again. Perhaps more than intellectually “superior” humans, fish learn from their mistakes. The big, bushy, dependable old flies like the Double Humpy or Royal Coachman—or even Czech Nymphs—don’t work as they used to. Yet why do the Classic Pheasant Tail Nymph, the Adams, and the Wooly Bugger still fish as well as ever? It may have to do with their simple plainness.
The favorite of many anglers, the Adams has been around since 1922, and a hundred years later it still works great. The flies with modern, distinguishing features like glitter, doll’s eyes, or garish colors now often scare fish rather than enticing them to eat. A tackle company in the United States estimates that after a fish has been fooled into taking one of its lures, it will not go for that lure again for three weeks. The New Zealand anglers say that gold and silver beads on nymphs are no longer an asset, and they have switched to the more natural black beads. There is also a tendency to fish smaller flies than before.
The big gaudy streamers that were all the rage for catching big brown trout just a few years ago still elicit explosive boils, fooling the angler into thinking that she just missed a monster. But more often, it was just an irritated brown trying to chase the fly out of its territory without ever grabbing it. Switch to something small and drab, though, and you better hold on.
Of all the aspects in an artificial fly that are important to fool fish, we would rank them as follows:
1. The position of the fly in relation to where the fish are feeding. “People rob banks because that’s where the money is.”
2. The action of the fly—for example, a dry fly or nymph with no drag, or a hopper or emerger with a small twitch.
3. The size of the fly, closely matching the size of the natural, or, when there is no hatch going, larger as an attractor.
4. The shape or type of fly to match the intended food.
5. The color of the fly—the least important aspect, even though fish do see some colors.
Fish are predators just like your house cat. Drag a toy mouse across the floor and the cat will go into his attack crouch. Stop the toy and then give it a twitch. Bingo! Does the cat care if the toy mouse is yellow or tan? As fly anglers, we are trying to elicit this instinctive predatory response from the fish we target.
Successfully catching fish is less about having a thousand flies in your vest and more about having faith in an all-around fly and fishing it where, when, and how it should be fished. Technique, confidence, and skill trump dozens of fly boxes. In other words, you need to learn to read the water and to match the fly and the technique to each specific situation. Here’s a story about how that theory was drilled into us some years ago.
