The Thoroughly Unscientific...

But why would trout, such sagacious salmonids, accept a fly that looks like this:

Can't we depend upon the good judgment of our quarry. Perhaps not judgment, but surely instinct would prevail and cause the fish to turn from such a lure; yet this was the fifth fish in seven casts to hit the fanwing. Didn't these fish know anything about the requirements of "Scientific Angling"?

The lore of scientific angling purportedly began with James Rennie's 1833 publication of "Alphabet of Scientific Angling, for The Use of Beginners". However, Professor Rennie was not concerned with the matter of imitation, instead artificial flies should be designed to attract fish and for this any fly capable of attraction by "form and color" was practical rather than an attempt at imitating a particular insect. Indeed the trout had not the ocular capacity, in Rennie's estimation to distinguish the niceties of form; he noted that the visual differences in shape of even a natural fly varied tremendously based upon the fish's perspective.

Therein arose concern for such matters as the eyesight of trout and their other senses. Controversy swirled around the need for exact imitation, creating flies with the finest art to replicate the natural insect. Yet, in 1888, Genio Scott wrote in Fishing in American Waters:

"From the perusal of previous pages addressed to the questions of "senses in fishes," the reader will not be surprised by the difference in natural and artificial flies. Fishes in general, and indeed all fishes, are generally more readily attracted by the size, color, and action of a lure than by its form."

Are these writers wrong? Does form matter less than size, color, and action? Is an attempt at imitation self-defeating? I proffer the answer "Yes" to all these questions. I am not alone in finding that the finest imitations are often the poorest performers onstream. On the contrary, the essense of "bugginess" seems manifestly more significant in determining the success of a pattern. For example, the Bivisible resembles no particular insect, but, by its size, color, and high-floating action induces takes even during a hatch. Perhaps the myriad points of light created by the palmered hackle is more attractive than the slim body form of a more conventional dry?

In 1962, when I began tying flies, the classic dry fly neck was from an Indian gamecock. The hackles were much wider at the base than the tip, long enough for only three turns, and very webby. Necessarily, though we all aspired to produce the crisp Catskill dries of Darbee (who grew his own select roosters for hackle), our confections resembled a splayed, sway-backed version of the same.

(Though, truth to tell, the wings of my flies never looked so good.) After just a few casts, the webby hackle soaked up water and settled down into the film. Even frequent applications of Albolene or Mucilin and drying with alcohol (Dave Cook sold a great little hourglass shaped bottle for this) could do nothing to perk up a sad fly. Nevertheless, if your presentation was good, the size was right, and the color approximated the hatch, you generally caught the fish you were after.

And what of wet flies? I mean the "fancies", those delightful baubles like the Silver Doctor, the Red Ibis, and the Yellow Sally. Nothing swam, flew, or crawled resembling these in form or coloration, yet they caught fish then as well as they catch fish today. Thoroughly unscientific ... but it's possible that Salmo Trutta is laggardly in his piscitorial reading and simply knows no better.