DonO
Check out George Grant's book on weaving hair hackles. If memory serves me
correctly he has a fly called a headlight that has a deer hair collar.
Mel
----- Original Message -----
From: "DonO" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:15 AM
Subject: Re: [VFB] Questions
Wow, Paul, that was great! Perfect reading for my morning espresso.
I have always had the suspicion that hair spinning came as an offshoot of
hair-wing tying. What happens when you tie hollow hairs on as wings? The
bases flare out. Trim them off and there's a hair wing left. Don't trim
them and you have a muddler collar and head. Tie on lots of them, and
trim
them all, and one has a mouse. If the first trimmed hair was the body of
an
irresistible, them maybe it was the offshoot of using hair for the tail,
and
them trimming the butts for the body rather than cutting them off.
I have an old magazine about the invent of the muddler pattern. The
article
gives the credit to a man named Don Gappen. The photo of his fly bore
little resemblence to the trimmed, dense-headed muddlers of today. It
looked like a feather-wing with a hair-wing added, left untrimmed.
I would also like to know who claims responsibility for the humpy. I have
sure caught a lot of fish on that fly, when not much else worked. I think
someone from Jackson Hole WY is claiming the double-humpy, another
fish-catcher. I claim the 'quintessential humpy'- five humpies on a 10X
hook. :o)
I remember experimenting many years ago with deer-hair 'hackle' collars.
Flies looked great, but they didn't hold up like chicken feather hackles.
DonO
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Marriner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:40 AM
Subject: [VFB] Questions
"First" always means "first to write, or be written, about." I don't
believe fly fishing has had much of an oral history except perhaps in
middle Europe where it is believed that fly fishing existed long before
its appearance in western Europe.
first dry fly - likely the Macedonians as they tied a feather on a hook
to imitate a natural fly being taken on the surface. "Dry" flies have
been around "forever" so the usual historical question is "who began
tying flies intended to be CAST UPSTREAM and floated to a feeding fish?"
It's the problem of "casting a (FLOATING) line" as opposed to say
"dapping" that moves the debate to "modern" times. There are quotations
from 18th century works that suggest this method but imagine how hard it
would be to fish a short line tied onto the end of your rod.
first hair wing - records exist of Native Americans using strips of fur
lashed to hooks. These might be also be considered the first streamers.
I have a record of an Indian Streamer in a circa 1840 book. It was
created by a Mi'kmaq living in the Shubenacadie area of Nova Scotia. The
first hairwings are often credited to guests at the Trude ranch (circa
1910), but this is very unlikely, even if you don't like the strips as
wings. I'll check later, but I believe I found mention of a hairwing
(hair cut and attached as a clump) fly in Marbury.
spin deer hair - apparently a much later development, likely the early
'30's. Almost certainly a North American innovation; Marbury (1890)
shows no flies of this type, nor do any of my salmon fly books prior to
the '40's. Schwiebert states Darbee but Messenger (Irresistible) also
laid claim. My best info would suggest Darbee's Bastard series circa
1934, BUT, he (Darbee) suggests that these are an amalgam of bass and
trout flies, therefore, it suggests that hair-spinning for bass flies
preceded his patterns. If anyone has other references I'd be very
interested.
wind a hackle collar - ancient likely, but certainly medieval.
cheers
Paul
DonO wrote:
Who tied the first 'dry fly' ?- intentionally to stay afloat.
Who tied the first hair-wing flies?
Who tied the first streamer fly?
Who was the first to spin deer hair?
Who was the first to wind a hackle collar?
--
Paul Marriner
Outdoor Writing & Photography. Owner: Gale's End Press. Member: OWAA &
OWC. Author of: A Compendium of Canadian Fly Patterns (co-author),
Stillwater Fly Fishing: Tools & Tactics, How to Choose & Use Fly-tying
Thread, Modern Atlantic Salmon Flies, Miramichi River Journal, Ausable
River Journal, and Atlantic Salmon.
--
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