Fishing Facts and History

A wonderful admonition if Mr. Thoreau had been speaking of fly tying -- simplifying, eliminating the profound complexity of some of our established patterns. Take, for example, the fly once universally employed when fishing for Atlantic salmon. Until some enterprising soul had the audacity to replace the feather wing of a full-dress salmon fly, which might sport twenty different types of feathers from exotic fowl, with a simple hairwing of bear or squirrel, it was a given that salmon would only strike the gaudy betrayer.

Below are some salmon flies, hairwing flies from Maritime Canada surrounding a full-dress "Blue Doctor". All of them catch fish,and not just in North America, but in all the streams where Atlantic salmon swim. So, what did it take for the first Maritimer to "dress-down" a salmon fly? Did he sleep that night or toss about, torn by guilt for believing that the noble Salmo salar would roll to such a simple device?