Archive for October, 2006
Fly Fishing Flies for Sale or How to Catch More People than Trout
30 October 2006I have seen the following type of flyfishing advert many times …
“Fly fishing flies … for rainbow trout”. “Flyfishing flies … for brown trout, flies for cutthroat and so on.”
I have never seen an advert that reads something like the following …
“For sale: flies which all trout like to eat and mistake for the real hatching fly”.
Yet isn’t this what we, as trout fishers, really would like to buy? Of course if there was such a thing as a fly that so resembled a trout’s daily food intake then fishing for trout would become desperately easy because trout live to eat. Yet in general they only eat what THEY consider to be food … not what an angler considers to be a good life-like representation of the trout’s daily diet.
The challenge to create the perfect fly has been ongoing for hundreds of years and the good news is we haven’t found it yet. Improved Mayfly Dun imitations keep popping up.
Then there’s the assortment of Comparaduns, attractor flies, the fancy fly, the perfect artificial imitation insect fly, midge larvae imitations, spinner patterns, hatching dragon fly nymphs, damsel emergers and on the list goes.
Fly fishing with flies is fun, and difficult, and complex and sent to test us all. Let’s hope we never stop looking for that perfect trout fly but pray we never find it either.
Fishing flies for sale … few are truly designed to catch trout; most are artfully created to catch the angler. After all most bulk commercial fly tiers have never seen a trout stream and have never fished for trout at all. How can they possibly tie a concoction that a trout sees as true food?
Personally I’ve been caught in this nice way hundreds and hundreds of times. And I’m still being caught.
Am I a sucker or am I somebody who enjoys the whole idea of being let loose on a stream, river or stillwater where I can meet other trout fishers, enjoy the countryside, listen to the far away call of birds, admire spring flowering plants, and provide myself with a bit of space and time with which to think about life in general?
Now a situation like this is not confined to flyfishing per se. It’s how marketing and advertising in general works. Flyfishing is such a good example (far better than golf for example) nevertheless of how matter can conquer the mind.
By taking the conventional approach the supplier of fly fishing flies can never be accountable for the failure of any fly to catch a trout and frankly this is no problem for me.
You see fly fishing with flies is about thinking BUT not thinking from the perspective of a human being armed with the tools of logic. choice and experience but thinking as if you were a trout. Think about this …
Most of us never change a fly after catching a trout. Yet we will proclaim that this pattern of fly is the secret today … especially after we have caught say 3 more on the same fly. People will walk up to us and ask “What fly did you catch that trout on?”
We will gleefully tell them and everybody else within earshot and all will go away, look into their flybox for the fly so named and tie it onto the leader.
Only to find that they don’t catch any more fish than before. Does this ring a bell with you?
Now think for a moment … when the fly was fished the first time and just before it was taken by the first trout it was in pristine condition. A close inspection of the fly after the first trout would show the fly had been mangled and even more so after the fourth catch. Yet the fly, fur or feather, “thing” on the steel hook managed to catch 4 fish … plainly to our eyes it was not the same fly. Yet, to the fish it did appear to be real food otherwise the 4 fish would not have been caught (one maybe not 4, surely). The fish sees something completely different to us. This is what such an event confirms for us, and, TAKE IMPORTANT NOTE HERE, that’s all it confirms.
There is a wonderful book first written in 1982 by Datus C. Proper. It is called “What the Trout Said”. It is a series of conversations that the author had with real trout in real situations. I’m sure I will come back to this book again. In the meantime if you really do want to catch more trout with a fly then get this book.
Your life on the stream or lake will never be the same again. I supect you will, like me, continue to buy those artfully created bits of fur and feather, beaded, glittered, wrapped in gold braid in bright and subdued colours because they take our fancy.
As Datus Proper, in What the Trout Said
However imagine what might happen to fly fishing with flies if some brave soul was to start advertising “fishing flies that catch trout because the trout always mistakes this fly for food” … guaranteed and also backed up the guarantee.
If you’ve got this far down the page you will never ever think about fishing flies for trout the same way. In fact it’s even got me thinking again … maybe the artificial trout flies favoured by rainbow and brown trout are discount fishing flies and not the most expensive fishing flies around.
Feel free to offer tips to better flyfishing … we can all learn to fly fish better with your help. Please add useful comments below.
