FLYMPH FORUM

Hi,
Been meaning to post this for a while.
There is an ongoing debate, whether soft hackled patterns are suggestive or imitative, and indeed what the difference is! Otter has written eloquently and persuasively in favour of the imitative approach, and it always makes me smile because of my experience tying up a fly to imitate a particular fly on my river.

It was towards the end of last season and i was out of action fishing-wise due a bad neck. However, I still needed my waterside fix, so I found myself spending a lot of time just lurking around the river, watching the insect life and fish activity. The predominant fly on my water at this time (Septemeber) was the willow fly. Now what we call the willow fly in the UK is in fact one of the smaller stoneflies (Plecoptera) and goes under the monika of Leuctra geniculata, for any entomologists out there.

I put this, because I seem to remember in the States the common name willow fly refers to something completely different, and I also seem to remember reading that the willow fly I am referring to is absent from Ireland. Thinking about it, I have just alienated many on this forum! Oh well, I'll press on...

The thing that most struck me about these small stoneflies, is the clumsiness of their flight. The wing beat is slow enough for the wings to be visible, all be they a blur, and it is as if they actually manage to change direction a few moments after deciding to do it. As such, to my eye, they very much occupy a three dimensional space, sketched out by those wings. And the fish were making an absolute meal of the female flopping around on the surface, depositing her eggs.

Rather pretentiously I sat down at the vise and tried to capture something of that visual 'noise'.

One of the patterns I tied up was this, which imaginatively enough, I called The Willow Fly.


willow by ASGriffiths, on Flickr

#14 light weight hook, tan thread to hook bend, leave some tan wraps exposed for egg sack, tie in couple of strands brown ostrich herl, reddy brown soft feather cock (later genetic hen - easier to get) twist the lot around the thread, wind in open turns back to eye, trap down a few barbs over the eye for antenae, and go fish.

Fished upstream, just the slightest touch of gink on the barbs above the hook shank, applied almost superstitiously, and fish dead drift. It was lethal! It was just about the only fly I needed for a month and it took grayling after grayling. I passed it around, and it was working well for others too - much to their amazement when they had looked at it in with some distaste before they fished it!

This was the first ever fly I had tied as a result of studying the natural. To say that I was chuffed would be an understatement. In fact, the next time I stepped into the river, I was surprised my wading boot actually managed to penetrate the water.

Now fast forward a few months, to the beginning of this season, think it was early April. I put a couple of flies over an intermittently rising fish, sitting just on the edge of a fast chanel of flow, over time busy cutting out the river bend. Dark Olives on the water. Unusually, no joy with my usual suspect, but there in my box was one of these willow flies from the season before.

Tied it on, the trout took it first pass, a fish just north of a pound, which proved to be my best of the season from this small stream. And not a willow fly in sight.

My point is, that if you had asked me last year, I would have whole-heartedly agreed with Otter's imitative reasoning, but it is my experience with this fly that has tipped me further over into the suggestive camp.

This is why I believe that much is in the angler's mind, our own perception rather than that of the fish. I looked at that fly and saw a willow fly. I thought the trout and grayling at the end of last season did too. But what did that trout see early this season? Certainly not a willow fly. Presumably, it was enough like a dark olive in the speed of the flow for it take it. And maybe the reality was, at the end of last season, it was just enough like a willow fly for those fish to take it too.

This debate, between imitative and suggestive, can easily become one of semantics - do we all actually mean the same thing when we use the same term? On that note, I would like to enter a third term, that for me more accurately represents what I think at the moment is going on with spiders - I think they are impressionistic.

Andrew.
ps - as an aside, I subsequently discovered that the pattern I had 'invented' , palmered soft hackle over ostrich herl, was first mentioned by Charles Cotton! (1630 - 1687). So, slightly pipped to the post there then...

Andrew,
I would say they are both imitative and suggestive, and YES impressionistic is probably better. There is NO fly, unless tied as a realistic, that will totally duplicate the look of a real insect. Most fishing flies ARE impressionistic. There's no getting around it. The realistics are "dead" representations-lacking life and movement. Our wonderful wingless wets are quite the opposite. Simple, impressionistic, with life in the materials, they can be tied to represent real insects, yet you can tie attractor patterns that do not.

Recently, I "discovered" the work of Steve Thornton. I met him at a tying show I participated in in Roscoe some time back and was amazed. From England, Steve ties very real looking imitations, which to me, are fish-able. Not many are. How successful they are, I don't know. I love the wingless wets too much.

http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/thornton/

Do more searching for Steve online.

Mark

Mark,
to me, those exact imitations are model making, which is something else and a great skill I can appreciate. But I wouldn't personally fish 'em

Life is about being alive, it is about movement, and surely tying flies is about capturing an instant in time of a dynamic system - but you know all about capturing such moments, as an artist.

Meant to put a link to this in your ostrich herl thread, just to lower the tone of it - will do so now.

I *think* I am right in saying, that Skues just used to palmer brown ostrich herl onto a hook shank for when willow fly were on the water. I could believe that works well.

Andrew.

Yahoo, Mike is back.

Interesting post.
I would like to bring in the term "mimicry" into the discussion. This is a word used and brought forth into the discussion by Pete Hidy, and it is a term worth thinking about. Tying flies that mimic naturals, brilliant !

Mike mentioned "thinking positive". The effects on fishing and life in general of thinking positive or negatively has been thought of for quite a long time. A rod maker out here studied Japanese teachings in these principles( what they are actually called I cannot remember) and other such beliefs and now is trying to build a rod that when cast will give off the "positive vibration" or " harmonic frequency" . Fascinating stuff I think.
Jim

Mike,
My training as an art educator taught me that there is no such thing as extrasensory perception. There is only sensory perception, except only certain individuals learn how to use all the senses we possess. Most people only think we have five senses, when in fact, we have many more. Most people don't know how to use the senses they are aware of or realize that at one point in our lives, there was no separation of senses-they were used as integrated senses to help us process incoming information. After learning how to read, our senses then become separated, and for the most part, we become, primarily, visually oriented. Some people, however, re-integrate their senses and learn how to tap into the unknown senses. The person becomes multi-sensory and more acutely aware of what is going on around them.

Mark

Mike wrote:
Obviously some things work, and very consistently, other things also work on occasion, and others still, only very rarely. Assuming that one wishes to catch more and better fish, the main trick is finding out what works best when. Finding out WHY!!!! is another matter entirely, and invariably moves into the realms of pure speculation and the, (at present ), unknowable. Some surmise may be correct, or it may not, there is simply no way to know this. The only real way for anglers to discover these things is to observe them, think about them, learn as much as they can about various insects, conditions, and fish behaviour, use the methods they think are most likely to work based on that, and then try these things as often as possible. After a while various patterns and trends emerge that make things easier, and the more such patterns and trends an angler knows the more likely is he to be successful. He will never know WHY! Some things work at certain times, he simply learns that they do, and acts accordingly.

I'd agree with that, that's basically outlining a trial and error approach over time, often generations. If the natural is the 'problem', then a pattern that works is a 'solution', and there can be more than one solution to the same problem. That's why the cultural element fascinates me so much - how, essentially, different 'communities' of fly fishers have solved the same problem differently, over time.

This season, if olive upwings were on my stream, 7 out of 10 times (say) this pattern would work:


GRHE Spider by GlassJet, on Flickr

For the three times or so that didn't do the business, it turned out the willow fly pattern did:


willow by ASGriffiths, on Flickr

Now I have no idea WHY! And other patterns may have worked better of course, but work these did. And I wouldn't call either of them 'imitative'.

Most anglers aspire to catching more and better fish, and there are also more than a few who wish to catch fish in specific ways using specific flies and methods and are apparently not too bothered about catching lots of fish, or even larger fish( although some unkind persons might well be heard to remark that this is because they can't! ).

Ah, that'll be me then! If all I wanted to do was to catch fish, on my stream, I'd probably only need carry three patterns: the hare's ear above, a tradional GRHE, Griffith Gnat, and a gold head Hare's ear. And maybe chuck in a simple elk winged sedge pattern for good measure. Each in a #14 and #16.

But I don't! I carry loads! I tie loads and make stuff up, and in the trout season, I'm forever walking the twenty yards or so over the lane outside my house and trying them out in the river. I am very lucky in that way, I have spinners coming out in my kitchen, the skins are still there - really must clear up!

But seriously, tying the flies and catching fish with them is what it is all about for me. Once I have 'induced the take' I am happy - I've been known to pull off a pattern if it is too easy to catch, and try and 'solve the problem' differently.

"Impressionism", as applied to soft hackles is also a semantically laden term which may confuse many. Is not a "good impression" of a certain fly not automatically a "good imitation" of it as well? Yes, of course it is.

I'm not sure we can conclude that. I agree with you, when, in your first para, you said:

Trying to view them from the "point of view" of the fish is doomed to failure as long as we can not know what the fish actually see or perceive.

Semantics again. For me, by 'imitate', I mean 'copy' i.e to look exactly like the original. But that can only ever be to our eyes, because if we don't know how the fish 'see', how can we copy it? By 'impressionistic' I mean that if the fish is feeding on one fly, and we present it with something that looks unsurprising (ie vaguely familiar to the last thing it ate) and is moving like it is alive (ie food) the chances are the fish will take it as such. It is a kind of greater reality...


As an aside, I sometime wonder if our flies are not sometimes more appealing to the trout than the natural. They can be taking naturals from in / on the surface, but they often seem to hit the artificial much more aggressively... just a thought - more of a good thing?
I could go with mimicry, as has been mentioned, but I like impressionist because it sounds that bit more pretentious, don't you think?

Anyway, enough, probably far more than enough! All good fun and thought provoking stuff, for me at least!
cheers,
Andrew.

Hi All,
We must remember that the term "Impressionism" is an artistic term used to describe a period when the artists working during that time tried to capture a fleeting scene which they saw. Many times, the artist tried to actually capture movement and create atmosphere and mood with color and quick, open brush strokes. A quick " Impression" of a subject or a personal interpretation of a subject. This was because, during that time period, photography, was just coming into being, and many of the impressionists were reflecting this new development in their artwork. SO, impressionism, to me IS a very good term to describe our attempts to capture, quickly, and loosely and without completely copying exactly a living, moving insect.

We have also talked about the blending of different colors of dubbing to achieve an overall coloration. This is a direct result of impressionistic approach to blending color. Let the eye mix the color rather than blend it on the pallet as artists did and still do. Take a look at Seurat's work, or look at Monet's "Water Lily" series. A good book to look at would be John Atherton's The Fish and The FLy. It is still in print, today.

Mark

Spot on Mark, thanks, put far better than I could!

Re: blending of colours, I was experimenting towards the end with blending in bits of dyed argentinian hare's ear, and seal's fur, into the natural hare's ear mix - and to promising results! Time beat me this year - will pick up next season.

Trouble is, you can wish your life away like this, can't you?

Andrew.

Andrew,
One of the periods of art that was always interested me was the "impressionistic" period. I studied it, in depth, while in college. There can me no mistaking the connection between the way some tiers approach fly tying. This approach could, technically be called imitative, too. However, Like I said before, to me "imitative" means an attempt to recreate the insect as closely as possible. Modern fishing flies, to me, are, mostly impressionistic, even our attempts to imitate, because unless we try to actually duplicate-copy exactly- the insect, as in realistic tying, our results at the vise are off.

I think it is important we don't try to copy exactly. Our attempts, I feel, are much more successful BECAUSE they don't copy exactly. As Hans will tell you, fellow fly fisherman Bob Wyatt has some very interesting ideas as to why fish take flies. One is because they don't copy exactly. Hans and I have also discussed building "triggers" into a fly which simulate a natural insect, thus making a fly successful. These triggers, more than likely, are also suggestive rather than duplicating to Nth degree.

Mark