I don’t want to get in trouble with the fly tying community. But fly tying is a potential road block to your fly fishing success. This isn’t news I reckon and it’s related to the age old argument about presentation vs. fly pattern.
“… an over-plethoric fly book in the possession of a stranger will, with the knowing, place the angling ability of the owner under suspicion. Better a thousand-fold, are the single half-dozen flies the uses and seasons of which are fully understood than a multitude of meaningless creations.”
Orange Perry Barnes, Fishing in Wonderland (1910)
What do I mean When I Say Fly Tying Can Ruin Your Fly Fishing?
I’ll speak to you of my personal experiences as an example.
#1 Clutter at home:
I went downstairs to the basement tying area to tie some Pass Lake Wet Flies for the upcoming spring season. The first step is of course to gather the materials—hooks (check), peacock herl (check), hackle (check), antron for the wing (check), golden pheasant tippets … golden pheasant tippets … !!! Where the frack are the golden pheasant tippets ?!!! Well that question remains. I know they’re somewhere in that mess of fly tying crap.
If you are a well organized person maybe this isn’t a problem, but if you’re like me it is a huge problem. The more patterns you tie, the more material you gather, the more confusing and cluttered your fly tying area becomes. It seems like maybe not such a big deal – but you’ll never get those minutes of your life back. Every once in a while I do a big reorganization and what a great feeling that is – to know where everything is located. It makes the whole experience that much more enjoyable, and that is the whole reason that I got into it in the first place – to enjoy it. Clutter reduces my joy in fly tying. Simplify your fly tying, declutter your life and get more joy out of the process of tying.
“From a pragmatic point of view having a boxful of vague suggestions equips you for a greater range of situations.
Bob Wyatt, What Trout Want
A boxful of highly specific imitations feeds the anxiety that you might not have the correct one for the job.”
#2 Clutter on the Stream:
This comes in two flavors: actual clutter in the way of multiple fly boxes with too many patterns (most of which I don’t use), and the resultant mental clutter, confusion, anxiety and indecision.
If I had to pick one thing that slowed my progress as a fly angler it is the idea of match the hatch and the subsequent plethora of fly patterns that I tied in an effort to do so. And the reason for that is simple. If you think that the answer to the question of “Why am I not catching fish?” is that you’re using the wrong fly pattern then you’ll spend time digging through fly boxes, changing flies and not fishing. You can’t catch fish if your fly is not in the water. But worse than that you will not be focusing on the fundamentals that will actually make you a better angler such as reading water, being stealthy, presenting flies properly and good strike detection.
How do I know this is true?
Well the answer is simple. I changed my approach and I got better at catching fish.
In my case it was my interest and tenkara and the emphasis on technique over fly patten that seems to come along with tenkara angling. But this is not tenkara specific, for example you can look to competition anglers and find an emphasis on fundamental skills over fly pattern too. But the more I got into tenkara the more I became interested in simplifying my fly selection. It did not happen all at once, but it happened in baby steps. The final and biggest step was my “one-fly” season. A few years back I found myself drawn to the idea, that was circulating in tenkara circles, of fishing one basic pattern all the time. It was an experiment and I didn’t really know what to expect. Well, turns out that I still caught lots of fish, and I learned an awful lot about reading water and fly control and manipulation along the way.
The short story of that season is that I caught fish all season long on one basic pattern and at those times when I wasn’t catching fish, instead of reaching for a new fly I tried casting to different areas, or manipulating the fly differently or paying more attention to my stealth. I learned more in that season than in most of my fly fishing years up to that point combined. And the big lesson was that fly pattern is not nearly as important as as I thought, and that my focus on fly tying and fly pattern, had actually stunted my growth as an angler. Were there times when a change of pattern may have been useful? Sure, but overall I came out way ahead regarding my improved skills.
I love fly tying and still tie all sorts of different flies. But now I do it for the fun of tying itself and for the joy of catching fish on different flies rather from a place of anxiety and pressure to “have the right fly”.
If you’re interested in a good read on this whole idea two books that really helped me out are Bob Wyatt’s book What Trout Want: The Educated Trout and Other Myths (as of this writing I’ve still got a few in stock- and on sale- in my shop –> click here to go to the Three Rivers Tenkara store); the other book (which actually turned me onto to Bob Wyatt’s What Trout Want) is Morgan Lyle’s fly tying book Simple Flies: 52 easy to tie patterns that catch fish —> here’s a link to the Amazon page for it)
Yes indeed, I’ve lived my fishing life by: Location, location, location, Understanding same and how the fish use it, and then, Presentation, presentation, presentation. For rainbows, browns, steelhead and smallmouth bass, I fish Woolly Buggers 80% of the time, wet flies 15% and nymphs (wigglers patterns) 5%.
Hey Bob,
Thanks for the comment. I remember something you said when I saw you talk at the Midwest Tenkara Fest in Wisconsin – I’ll have to paraphrase – but you said something about how when you’re teaching folks to fish and when you catch a fish adults will ask “what are you using?” but kids will ask ” what are you doing?”. I thought that was a very interesting observation, and I find that I’ve reflected on that when I’m having one of those tough days.
Nice read… question; how did you determine the ‘ONE’ fly i.e. wet or dry, hook size or sizes of the same, and/or visibility etc. Thom
Thom,
I guess it could vary depending on where you fish – but a size 12 hook is good size for me (but I think varying hook size a bit is still in keeping with the simplicity of it all) – sometimes smaller would be better – but I like the little bit more weight of the 12 hook over a smaller hook so if stuck with one hook I’d go to a 12 for myself. And if I was sticking to mountain streams during the salad days when fish are hitting dries well I’d be happy to stick with a dry fly like an Adams parachute or elk hair caddis, but for the spring creeks then subsurface flies are the ticket – plus in my case I wanted to work on fly manipulation tactics so a wetfly was key. This year I was considering revisiting the one fly season idea and going with a Pass Lake wetfly and a pass lake dry fly – so a one theme season I guess. If I do so it won’t be very strict though. I’ve been meaning to write a post that sums up lessons learned during the one fly season (so I don’t forget them myself) – keep an eye out for that soon.
Great observations here. I started my angling passion primarily fishing for bass in Florida. There were many a day when I would outfish, or be outfished by a buddy that was using the same bag of Zoom worms that I was. Which underlines the fact that presentation counts for a great percent of fishing success. Now that I live in CO, I fished all last season with Tenkara for trout. Same principle applies. You put that fly in the right place, doing the right thing, and no matter what you’ve concocted on the vise, the fish will react. They are alot less complicated than we would imagine they are. Maybe it helps us feel better when we get skunked to believe a trout is somehow clever, but nah…we just didn’t do well.
Jonathan – yeah they’re not all that smart. I always say that it’s pretty easy except when it isn’t! I’ll admit that I do meet up with tight lipped fish from time to time – and I surely can’t always figure it out – but I guess that’s what keeps me coming back for more.
Thank you very much for this post. As a beginner with a tenkara rod I just started the process of learning how to tie a kebari fly. Your thoughts confirm in my mind to work on my presentation and use only one pattern to tie and to fish with. After all, that’s what it’s all about right?
William,
I think that focusing on presentation, stealth, strike detection and reading water is key. If you develop those skills you will be well served in many times and places. That’s not to say that there aren’t times when a particular size and shape fly isn’t going to help – but the general size and shape is usually going to be adequate when fish are more keyed in and exact matches aren’t usually neeeded- and I’ve found that flies that seem quite different than the prevalent bugs can catch a ton of fish. For example I’ve used size 12 red Takayama Sakasa kebeari during tiny blue winged olive mayfly hatches now numerous times and caught plenty of fish. Click here for a blog post where I talk about one such experience
I have evolved into a minimalist in most areas of my life by choice and as a result of different life experiences.
I typically make a list of the tackle used by two or three people who I view as successful anglers that consistently produce the type of results I am attempting to duplicate as an angler.
Next I pare my tackle down to those components.
Otherwise, I too find myself in piles and mountains of clutter and being pulled by the forces of BUT!! – and WHAT IF?.
Similar to what you’re saying is how I read fishing books these days. I used to read them and add to my fishing complications – now I read and look for common denominators among different books and I try to dig down to fundamentals behind the angler’s techniques – I read fly fishing books now as a way to to try and simplify my fishing to the fundamentals