Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

Arnold Gingrich was a man of influence in a city of power.  He founded Esquire magazine in New York City in 1933 as a “Quarterly for Men … dedicated to the enjoyment and improvement of the new leisure”.  The magazine appealed to refined cosmopolitans, which made Gingrich a celebrity among New York’s fashion and literary elite.  Esquire showcased manly pursuits, which included a healthy dose of fly fishing.  Gingrich was a pas­sionate fly angler and an accom­plished author (The Well Tem­pered Angler, 1965; The Joys of Trout, 1973; and The Fishing in Print, 1974).  On a gala evening of cele­bra­tion in 1983 to mark Es­quire‘s 50^th anniversary, Gin­grich was presented with a boxed gift of 100 trout flies tied by Wisconsin native Helen Shaw, often described as “The First Lady of Fly Tying”.  Upon opening the box, Gin­grich choked with emotion as he haltingly and tearfully said, “I never had a Helen Shaw fly.  Now I have a hundred.  Nobody’s worth that much.”

Helen Elizabeth Shaw (1910-2007) is arguably the most influential fly tyer in American history, because she taught generations of Americans how to tie flies.  Interest in the outdoors exploded following World War II, and Helen Shaw’s 1963 instructional book Fly-Tying educated decades of American fly tyers.  It was the first book to provide large, clear, step-by-step photos of tying flies from beginning to end.  At a time when most angling books were dense with text and only sparsely illustrated, Fly Tying was dense with sharp vivid photos and accom­panied by clear succinct text.  The book is a model of simplic­ity and clarity.

Helen Shaw was born in Madison and grew up in She­boy­gan.  She learned fishing from her father and de­scribed her first encounter with trout as “love at first sight”.  She was largely a self-taught fly tyer and sold flies locally while still in high school.  At age 20, Shaw and a business partner, Art Kade, opened a tackle store and fly shop in Sheboygan.  Kade built bamboo fly rods, and Shaw tied flies.  The shop’s mail-order business attracted know­ledge­­able clients from all over the coun­try, and Shaw’s reputa­tion as a fly tyer grew with in­creased expo­sure.  Shaw closed the shop in 1953 and moved to New York City to marry Herman Kes­sler, whom she had met during his fishing excursions to Wis­consin.  Kes­sler was art director for Field & Stream magazine, and their union proved ex­ceedingly fortunate for Amer­i­can fly tyers.  Kessler was a gifted photog­rapher but not a fly tyer.  Shaw was a gifted fly tyer but not a media mogul.  The two collaborated to pro­duce two out­stand­ing instruc­tional books: Fly Tying in 1963 and Flies for Fish & Fisher­men in 1989.  A re­view in 1963 by the New York Herald Tri­bune de­scribed Fly Tying quite simply as “the best fly-tying text­book that ever has been published.”

Shaw was a meticulous perfectionist who never sacri­ficed quality for quantity or speed in fly tying.  She was one of history’s finest fly tyers, and her client list read like a Who’s Who of mid-century American angling.  Shaw was quietly but conspicuously a pioneer among fly-angling women.  She was, for example, the first female mem­ber of an exclusive all-male Chicago angling club, and she was the first woman to be feted with an honorary luncheon at the prestigious but all-male Angler’s Club of New York.  Shaw won numer­ous awards for her lifetime achieve­­ments, including the 2002 Federation of Fly Fishers’ Buz Buszek Award, an inter­national honor that is perhaps the most prestigious in all of fly tying.

The Light Cahill is one of many strikingly beau­ti­ful wet flies in Helen Shaw’s 1989 book Flies for Fish & Fish­er­men.  The Light Cahill is a classic winged wet that imitates emerging duns of several related may­fly spe­cies.  Light Cahills are widespread in Wisconsin and hatch sporad­i­cally from about early June until mid-August.  Fish a Light Cahill with a down-and-across swing or drift it just under the surface with little twitches dur­ing a hatch.  Your own “enjoyment of the new lei­sure” should be greatly im­proved.

Copyright 2023, Rusty Dunn

Light Cahill Wet Fly

For a Light Cahill dry fly, replace the tail with light ginger rooster hackle barbs, set the wings upright and di­vided, and add a collar of light ginger dry fly hackle in front of the wing.  An effective wet fly imitating most mayfly species can be tied by varying the hook size and body color to match a natural.