What Makes a Fly Pattern "New"

All that follows was originally posted over at Midcurrent.com. I've been given permission to reprint the piece here - most generously I might add - by Marshall Cutchin. Thank you Marshall. In the article, author Phil Monahan interviews the Orvis Fly and Fly Tying Product Developer, Shawn Brillon. Shawn is a talented bug chucker in every way that matters. I'm proud to call him a friend. Together, Phil and Shawn offer us an industry insider's view of fly-tying innovation.  

What Makes a Fly Pattern "New?"

Have a question you want answered? Email it to us at ask@midcurrent.com.

Question: A lot of fly patterns that are touted as —new” look like mere tweaks of established patterns. How do fly companies determine what's actually worthy of being called a “new” pattern?

C. Moran, Morristown, NJ

Answer: I’ve often wondered about this myself, so I contacted my friend Shawn Brillon, Product Development Specialist in charge of flies at Orvis, to see what he had to say. Here’s his bracingly honest response:

“Typically, determining if a pattern is worthy of being called ‘new’ requires a ton of research, looking at past patterns to compare similarities or differences to the pattern in question. Lets be honest, here. Very few patterns are truly new, by which I mean they are not modifications or versions of a previous pattern. I would consider the Gummy Minnow totally new to the fly market when it hit the scene, although a die-hard striper angler might argue that it is nothing more than a fly-rod-size Slug-Go.  The Crease Fly would be another example of something innovative and new at its time.

“Lets be honest, here. Very few patterns are truly new, by which I mean they are not modifications or versions of a previous pattern.”

I look for innovation—in tying techniques, new materials, new hook shapes, and the like—as my guide to determining whether something can be called ‘new.’ There are no hard-and-fast rules that I use to make my selection other than to search for proven patterns, looking mostly at flies developed by our vast  Orvis-endorsed-guide base. We look for patterns that have proven themselves on the water.

But companies that sell flies are also looking for patterns that will do just that—sell. When we pull together an assortment offering for the year, I’m not necessarily on a quest to find a patterns that are new to the world, as much as I’m trying to find flies that are new to Orvis, to address a market need.

So, I agree with the statement that many patterns are twists on something old or tweaks on proven patterns. Our market depends on new, exciting, innovative fly patterns to keep things interesting. Otherwise, we would all have a box full of Pheasant Tails, Woolly Buggers, and Parachute Adamses... and we would all be bored out of our minds.”

Remember Caesar, Thou Art Mortal

Last week was glorious. Yes, the weather was miserable. Yes, the kids were a little crazy. But wonder of wonders, mercy of mercies, the water was just right on the one day the boss granted me to fish. Unlike the weather and the kids, the river was perfect, and the company was affable. The steelhead were relatively cooperative with two fish hooked and one landed. All things considered, this isn't a bad tally for a day trip, especially in February.

Yesterday, we paid the price for last week's success. Ben and I made the two hour drive to the Salmon River, and we arrived just in time to make the acquaintance of the several hundred other fishermen who had similar plans. After quite a bit of driving - and just a little less trudging through snowy tundra - we managed to find some water that was a reasonable distance from our nearest neighbor.

The problem - as one might expect - was that the fish weren't particularly cooperative. We tried everything a Great Lakes steelheader might be expected to do. We drifted various glo bugs, estaz eggs, and stoneflies. We lined up with caddis, and swung brightly colored streamers. Ultimately, there just wasn't much we could do. The water was low, the sun was bright, and the fish were lock-jawed and skittish. At the close of the day we had little choice but to tuck our manhood in between our legs, and admit that we were soundly beaten.

And we needed to be beaten. We needed a reminder of just how little we know about the rivers we fish and the fish we chase. Sure, I enjoy having a good day. I think it must go without saying that I enjoy a tightened line and shrieking drag as much as any bug chucker. I imagine, however, that it must be difficult to understand the enormity of one's success if one has never failed. Yesterday's failure made last week's success all the sweeter.

I suppose this might sound a little odd, but I don't make my way back to the river to catch fish. If I did, I suspect I would often leave dejected and disappointed. No, it's the hoping that stays with me. Day after day and year after year I return to the Salmon, Battenkill, Madison, and all their sister flows armed not with expectation, but solely with the hope of catching fish.

Hope is enough.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

- Emily Dickinson

 

Out There: Video Redux

The video isn't the best, the actors aren't the best, the fish wasn't the best ... but it was too much fun for February.

Out There

In previous entries, I've discussed the inherent misery of winter fishing. Snow. Sleet.  There is ice on the water, and ice in your guides. The air is cold enough to freeze beer; even the pines seem to shiver in the wind. This is especially true if you're fishing "out there," in the snow belt, just a few short miles from Lake Ontario.  As a knuckle-headed, February flyflinger, one's only real consolation when knee deep in New York's Salmon River is that the fish are cold too. I imagine they must be so cold - in fact - that they're precisely one step removed from the box of fish sticks you fed the kids at lunch.


Regardless, intrepid bugchuckers will gird up their loins and make the two, four or six hour drive to the river, all in the hopes of hooking - maybe even catching - a mirror bright steelhead.

If the cold isn't hint enough that you're fishing during a northeast winter, then the trees decked out for Christmas should give you a clue.

Ben isn't a particularly rotund man, but you would never know it when he's wearing umpteen layers of moisture wicking, heat preserving, cold resistant, alpaca-lischious glory.

After we spent six hours defying Old Man Winter's malevolence, the river gods extended their collective generosity.

 

Until now, my ugly mug has never appeared on this blog. I guess I'm not one for hero shots. I suppose my inaugural photo has me looking a little like an overstuffed Bilbo Baggins (the bravest little hobbit of them all). Of course, I'm over six feet tall, and weigh in just under three bills.

What's Old is New

Apparently, Ben's father was once something of a flyfisherman. He traveled the western United States, wetting his line along the way (please ignore the obvious innuendo). He fished an old Garcia fiberglass rod, not unlike the one on which I learned to cast. Attached to that rod was the reel you see below. When Ben recently uncovered his father's aged tackle, both rod and reel had clearly seen better days. Ben has taken it upon himself to refinish his dad's gear, and present the finished assembly to his father once it has received a thorough going over. He's finished the reel, and I think the results are rather impressive.

The paint was chipped, cracked, and faded; corrosion covered the cast metal.

The spool was in similar shape. Note the broken handle.

 

The spring wasn't much better.

 

Papa's reel had clearly seen better days.

 

I won't pretend to fully understand the process by the which Ben was able to breath some life back into Pop's reel. I know that both a sand-blaster and bead-blaster were employed (I don't what a bead-blaster is either). I know he used a little epoxy to reshape the broken handle. I think everything came together nicely, and I suppose that if this were a high dollar Hardy Perfect from the 1920s - rather than an inexpensive 1960s Garcia - we would probably call the end-result a Spitfire finish.

Corrosion and all but a few flecks of paint are gone.

You would be hard pressed to tell the handle was cracked, and the spool appears new.

 

If Ben could work this kind of magic on turn-of-the century Hardys ... his business might take a new turn.

Not bad Ben, not bad at all.

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

Elmer was my great-uncle. He lived in Shushan, New York, and his home stood on an eastern bank of the Battenkill. In the water that cut a swath through his backyard, I caught my first trout on a fly. Elmer was my great-aunt Aggie's second husband; her first drowned in the river as had her only son. It's a tragic story, and an indelible reminder of the lower river's deceptive power. I digress.

Out of the necessity born of poverty, Elmer was a fisherman. In fact, he was a superlative fisherman. No, he never wrote any magazine articles; I'm fairly certain he never read any either. Hunger, family and the vows of marriage were his only motivators. He didn't own a pair of waders; he kept only a single flybox in his wicker creel. Elmer fished a steel rod because Elmer had always fished a steel rod, and his silk fly line was wound onto an old nickel-silver baitcaster.

Elmer's nose looked to have been broken a dozen times; his hands showed the scars and calluses of a lifetime of manual labor. I imagine him as a prizefighter in boxing's heyday, but more likely he had been on the bad end of more than a few bar fights. Elmer would never have made the cover of Flyfisherman, although he may have appeared on a timeworn Field and Stream.

Elmer caught trout - bushels of trout - every season. I remember once marveling at the contents of his chest freezer. Hundreds of browns and a few dozen brookies, were lined up and packed like cord wood in the cavernous, frozen vacuum. If he and my aunt subsisted on fish, as I must assume they did, then they ate well and often. Elmer may have heard the arguments in favor of catch and release, but the freezer left little doubt that he dismissed those discussions as so much romantic drivel. When Elmer took a trophy fish - and he often did - that fish ended up on the dinner plate, not on the wall.

Elmer died years ago, and Aggie followed shortly thereafter. Their house - or what remained of it anyway - was sold to a gentleman angler from New York City, who thought it quaint to own a home on the Battenkill. I drive by occasionally, and when I do I invariably lament the loss of the place and the man. Elmer's home and Elmer's water occupy a sanctified place in my memory.

And as I revisit that memory, I find it tinged with a hint of sadness at the realization that my children will never know Uncle Elmer. They'll never know anyone like Uncle Elmer. The world has changed.

The world has changed, indeed.

Favorite Flies Volume 2: J.A.Z. (Just Another Zonker)

Zonkers are terrific streamers. They're relatively easy to tie, and they produce like few other streamers do. I'm sure that there are hundreds of variations in thousands of fly boxes. The pattern that follows is the one you would find in my box. It is hardly anything groundbreaking, but it is crazy effective. I tie this fly in several colors, but olive/white is my standard.

Hook: TMC 8089 Bass Hook Size #10
Eyes: Dumbell style with a yellow iris tied in 1/4 the length of the shank behind the hook eye
Thread: UNI 6/0 white
Tail: A tuft of orange rabbit pulled from a dyed hide
Wing: A short section of olive/white bar-dyed zonker strip, tied in directly above the tail
Body: White crosscut rabbit wound up the shank, ending behind the eyes
Head: Olive Senyo's Laser Dub tied in a dubbing loop and x-wrapped through the eyes

Don't be skeptical of a bass hook on a trout fly. I had been searching for a hook with a wide enough gape that the zonker strip wouldn't foul, while at the same time maintaining excellent hooking and holding properties. The TMC 8089 fits the bill perfectly. Also, don't make the mistake of thinking that a #10 makes for a small fly. This hook's gape in a #10 is about the equivalent of a #4 or #2 streamer hook.

There was a time ...

There was a time when nothing - absolutely nothing - would stop me from getting to the river. I remember being an undergraduate student, and working the night shift at a local convenient store. My schedule was set. Classes from three or four in the afternoon until nine or so at night. Grab a quick bite somewhere, and then off to work for eleven. My relief came by seven a.m., and by eight I was on the river. Six or eight hours on the water, nearly everyday. The weekends meant fourteen hour fishing days, and evening spinner falls.

I remember once being so sleep deprived and out of sorts that I asked my buddy to pull the car to the shoulder, and I promptly vomited all over route 313. Three days worth of Green Mountain Home Blend coffee and gas station chimichangas formed a Jackson Pollackesque smear on the shoulder of the road. Afterward, I simply shrugged it off, and continued on to Arlington to fish the hendrickson hatch on the Battenkill. Caught some good fish too.

How many times have you swatted at your alarm clock as the buzzer rang, and the LCD flashed 3:00? I've done it on the first of every April since I was sixteen. Every April since I was sixteen I've been the first person to the river. Nearly every April since I was sixteen I've caught fish on opening day, but I just don't know that it's going to happen this year. I'm getting older. I'm getting tired. I have other stuff on my plate. Let's face it, even though I've plenty of natural insulation, I just don't deal as well with the cold as I once did.

Is it possible that fishing just isn't my first priority anymore? Yes, I suppose it's possible. After all, I am a husband and father. Three children have a way of making one reorganize the essential elements of one's life. My wife isn't exactly high maintenance - in fact, she's about as laid back a woman as any man could want - but she needs some attention too. Then there's my career. Contrary to popular belief, teaching takes a lot energy. Teaching well does, anyway. All that aside, however, I am in no way suggesting that fishing isn't essential.

I simply couldn't imagine my life without fly rods, waders, and bits of fur and feather wrapped around strands of wire. Few things bring me as much joy as a well tied fly, a well executed cast, or a solid fish pulled from a difficult holding lie. As I look through the kaleidescope of my history, most of the images I see involve running water and fleeting flashes of silver and gold. Increasingly, however, these moments - precious as they are - run in the background.

Now, images of family occupy most of my thoughts. As I sit here at this keyboard I find myself thinking that it will be a special day indeed, when memories of family and of fishing begin to meld into one. Until then, I'll try to be content with looking forward to the day when my boy and my girls ask to fish one of my bamboo rods or to teach them to tie a woolly-bugger. And while this might be the first year in two decades that I miss fishing on the first of April, you can be damn sure I'll probably be fishing on the second.

Snowbound Videographic Masochism

Here's an outstanding video from a group of German bug chuckers. Beautifully shot and professionally edited, it is well worth your time, and likely to leave you wishing for spring to arrive.


FLY-FOCUS Trailer from Marcus Sies on Vimeo.

Pagophobia

When I was a boy I was terrified of the ice. Dad would take me to the pond, hockey skates in hand, and try as I might I just couldn't make that first step off the firmament. The old man would throw rocks - veritable boulders in a child's eyes - onto the ice to prove its solidity. He'd jump up and down like a Zumba dancer at Carnivale, stomp like Gargamel rampaging across the rooftops of Smurf village, and still I wouldn't budge. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think he may have given up after a single winter. That paralyzing fear persisted into adolescence and continues even today.

"Hi. I'm Mike, and I'm a pagophobic."

There's no need to say it. I know what you're thinking. Six feet three inches tall. Two hundred ninety pounds. Former infantry soldier.

"Pussy."

It's O.K. No hard feelings. I agree. My fear is unfounded, some might say unreasonable. Unfounded and unreasonable as it is, however, it is still very real. Pagophobia is also probably why - regardless of my enthusiasm during the normal fishing season - winter fly fishing has never much appealed to me. Sure, I've made the occasional steelhead trip. I've walked the banks of the Battenkill on New Year's Day. Honestly though, winter fishing is cold, it's uncomfortable, and occasionally winter fishing can be very nearly deadly.

I'm reminded of one particular winter - twenty years ago I suppose it must have been - when Adam and I spent quite a bit of time fishing the Kill. The trophy section (something of a misnomer) was open year round, and as young men we had few responsibilities and little else to do but fish. I remember it was February, the brilliant glare of sun shone on ice hardened snow. I remember seeing dark shapes that were fish in the run immediately above the inlet of Camden Creek. I remember spotting more fish in the Spring Hole, and Adam stinging one there.

I also remember walking the bank just upstream of the Battenville Covered Bridge, and the knot in the pit of my stomach as that bank gave way beneath me. I remember the rush of February water over the top my Redball waders, and the pain of a cold so total and complete, I thought I might have been stabbed by an errant piece of rebar hidden beneath the inky surface. I remember my desperate, ragged breath. I remember clawing - very slowly, clawing - my way up a slick, frozen stream bank. I remember the weight of the water, and the weight of my fear. I remember my gratitude for the blast of a car heater on naked - frozen flesh, and cursing my stupidity for not having brought a change of clothes.

I remember all this, and still I find my mind is off on the Salmon River and the trophy section of the Battenkill. Who knows? Maybe sometime in the coming weeks I'll make the trip to Massachusetts, and fish where there is generally no designated season or prohibition against taking one's life in one's hands for the sake of a January trout. Maybe I'll forgo the long rod altogether, and accept Ben's invitation to fish Champlain through the ice. I just don't know.

What I do know is that I need a break, some alone time, a few hours on the water. Ultimately, I suppose it doesn't matter if that water is frozen or not.