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

by Rusty Dunn

The winds of change are often gentle at first, but they freshen with time.  Little by little, old ideas fade away, replaced by new ones.  Only hindsight reveals when the transition actually occurred.  For wet fly fishing in America, the winds of change began in 1941 with publication of The Art of Tying the Wet Fly by James Leisenring.  This 81 page treasure introduced British-style soft-hackled flies and methods to American an­glers.  It was published just three short years after Ray Bergman’s 1938 blockbuster book Trout, which included a lengthy examination of wet fly fishing.  The col­ored plates of wet flies in Trout are truly mag­nificent.  Page after page, row after row, hundreds upon hun­dreds of brightly colored flies.  Legendary flies, such as a Leadwing Coachman, Parmachene Belle, and Green­well’s Glory.  Smartly dressed sol­diers in a vin­tage army, almost all of which were tied with down wings of matched quill slips.  Where are these flies today?  Mostly, they’re in the unturned pages of old fly tying books and the untraveled corners of old fly boxes.  The wet flies pictured in Trout are fossils of a bygone era.  Headstones of former champions.  Lei­senring brought a new style of wet fly to America, one as old as fly fishing itself. Read More

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

by Rusty Dunn

Ahhhh … April in Paris.  The good life.  Chestnuts in blossom.  A sunny sidewalk café.  Spring’s warm embrace.  Could anything be finer?  How about the warm embrace of a knock-your-socks-off spring cad­dis hatch?  One that jolts you from winter’s coma.  One that reveals just how many trout a stream really holds.  One with frenzied fish nosed up in the rif­fles, chasing pupae, slashing at emergers, nip­ping at your toes.

Spring is caddis time in trout country.  A succes­sion of hatches in April and May offers some of the best dry-fly fishing of the year.  The main event begins in mid-April with the American grannom, a group of Brachy­cen­trus spe­cies found all over the coun­try.  In the west, they’re called Mother’s Day cad­dis, and hatches are legendary.  In the east, they’re called grannoms, black caddis, apple caddis, or shadflies.  Around here, grannoms, black caddis, or (incorrectly) little black caddis are the most common names. Read More