"Anyone who started their involvement with fly tying in the 1960s, as I did," says Guest Blogger Mary S. Kuss, "..cannot help but have a bit of future shock as we adapt to the many changes since then."
Mary is a life-long avid angler, a retired licensed PA fishing guide, and founder of the Delaware Valley Women's Fly Fishing
Association. Read on as she takes an inward look at how good it is to (sometimes) break the rules.
A Personal Look At Breaking The Rules
Most tyers who have come on board more recently have never heard of some of the things that once were widely accepted dogma. Much of it would never occur to them, and why would they care?
The roots of my personal standards of behaviour in general were learned during a Pentecostal Sunday School upbringing. I was conditioned to obey rules, and feel guilty if I didn’t. Rule-following became an established, default setting for almost anything I did, including fly tying.
When I started tying flies, at age 15, removing the natural tips from feather or hair fibres was strictly taboo. Many years later I had a personal epiphany on this subject when I discovered John Barr’s BWO Emerger pattern. The tail, wing, and wing pad cover are all made of fibers from large rooster neck hackles. They are tied in and then trimmed—just snipped off to the proper length. I found this a bit distressing but was intrigued by the pattern and its thrifty and efficient use of a material that would have otherwise been of little value. The trout didn’t seem to mind at all, which sealed the deal.
Marabou was another material that puzzled me for a long time. I still had that obsession with preserving the natural tips of any feather. For tails on my Woolly Buggers, I would seek out short marabou or blood plumes with very even tips, and use an entire plume for each tail—two if they were skimpy. I liked a thick, full tail about the length of the hook. I would separate out, remove and discard all of the longer fibers and fluff at the base of the feather.
I experienced a profound marabou revelation when I saw Denny Rickards’ Seal Bugger. I watched a video of him tying the pattern, and was stunned to see him break off and discard the tip of a marabou plume in favour of using the parts I would have thrown away. After selecting a relatively sparse clump of long fibers, he tore off the skimpy and uneven tip before tying it in to length—a much longer length than I had ever used. Here was another example of an elegant blend of thrift and function. There was video of the fly in the water, and its lively appearance convinced me to give it a try. The results have been impressive and convincing.
Looking back through the fly fishing literature it’s clear that rule-breaking is not a new thing. Many tyers, including some highly regarded authors and professionals, have always violated these proscriptions.
When I first saw Art Flick’s Variant patterns in his Streamside Guide, I noticed immediately that both the hackle and tail were considerably longer than traditional dry fly proportions would indicate. However, knowing that he was an acknowledged Catskill fly tying legend I figured he was allowed to deviate from the usual standards.
Edward Hewitt’s Neversink Skater patterns also turned traditional proportions on their head. Two stiff dry fly hackles, with fibers that were dramatically oversized for the hook, were tied and wrapped with concave sides facing at the center of the hook shank. He developed this concept in 1937. The flies were designed to float high and to be fished by actively skittering them over the water's surface. They were known for producing explosive rises, often from large trout.
Fly tyers and fly fishers love to make rules and break them, or become annoyed when other people do. I remember when it was considered rather gauche to tie with anything but natural materials. This was not a problem for quite a while, because so few artificial materials were available. Synthetics started creeping in, however, and before long they began taking over. Natural materials continue to gradually lose ground in fly tying catalogs and websites in favor of a proliferation of synthetics.
There are still people who prefer to tie with natural materials, although I doubt that many use them exclusively. Proponents of natural materials argue that synthetics are usually derived from hydrocarbons—they are essentially plastics, with all of the associated environmental issues. Others prefer to use synthetics for most or all of their tying, touting their advantages in consistency and durability, economy, and lack of appeal to insect pests. Tradition, aesthetics, and the dictates of one’s personal philosophy must be taken into consideration too. All viewpoints have their legitimate place.
I have cheerfully used both natural and synthetic materials during my 55+ years as a fly tyer. At first my materials were mostly natural in origin; the early synthetics were few in number and rather crude. I really didn’t care for most of the ones I tried. I never shied away from synthetics on principle, however. They rapidly improved in quality as well as variety, and I incorporated more and more of them into my list of preferred materials.
Closed-cell foam quickly became a favorite, particularly for terrestrial patterns. I’d always tied and used a lot of Crowe Beetles. But Foam Beetles, with their nearly indestructible bodies, quickly replaced them in my terrestrial box. And it wasn’t long before I adopted foam cylinders for bodies of all but the tiniest ant patterns, instead of the traditional dubbed fur.
When I started tying flies to imitate cicadas, both annual and periodical, I used the late Greg Hoover’s “Hoov’s Cicada” pattern as a point of departure. When my version suited me I used it for quite a while before it occurred to me that it was made entirely from synthetic materials. The body was foam sheet, the wing a mix of Krystal Flash colors, and the legs were Spandex. I didn’t set out to design an all-synthetic fly, I simply chose materials that I felt best accomplished my goals for the pattern’s appearance and performance.
Now it’s hard for me to imagine tying without foam and a wide variety of synthetic yarns, chenilles, and dubbings made partly or entirely from synthetic fibres. Although it seemed that nothing could ever replace dry fly hackle, my dry fly patterns have largely evolved away from using it at all. So replacement is not an issue. Again, I did not plan this, it just worked out that way.
Fly tying, like fly fishing, is a journey without a destination. The joy is in exploration and discovery, a never-ending process. There’s always something new to experience, learn, and share. May you travel happily, and ignore the rules whenever you can get away with it!