When I was judge in the WTO (World Tuscany Open) fly tying competition the first year it was held, I got into a huge dilemma when I was doing my work as a judge in my search for the winning flies. There wasn’t a category of realistic flies at that time. We were with about 10 judges and a few other judges had exactly the same problem.
Imagine you looking at one of the most beautiful and realistic flies you ever seen but the fly surely would have serious problems to cast or to fish with. You also know that the fly wouldn’t catch many fish either because the fish simply wouldn’t take that fly. That makes judging a real hard job and that is why the organizers now also have some special categories for realistic flies.
You have many flies in the world that catch more fly fishermen then it ever would catch fish. You have flies as real art, you have realistic flies, semi-realistic flies and then you have the fishing flies.
When I am asked to pick the best fly from a fly box, I surely would grab the fly that would catch the most fish in my point of view. It doesn’t mean that other flies are tied bad or useless but that’s the way I am thinking. Right now I only make flies to catch fish but it wasn’t always that way.
I only can speak for myself and what I have seen happen with other fly tiers that I know very well too. When I evaluate my own fly tying I must confess that it went through several stages. And I have seen this happen with a lot of other well know fly tiers as well.
When I started fly tying in 1976, I started with shoulder hackle flies. Simple flies like the Red tag, Palmers, Greenwelsh Glory, Wickham Fancy, Panama’s and so on. I was actually a real purist (dry fly only) until 1981.
First while fishing in Scandinavia so much and when I got involved more and more into synthetic fly tying materials and the Swedish fly tying styles my fly tying started to change a lot too, mainly because I really WANTED to copy the flies from my Swedish friends that caught so much more fish then my own patterns did.
then since 1981, I went through another but real big fly tying stage in my life. A stage in which I only wanted to fish with my own tied or own designed flies. After that I got into tying nymphs and quite seriously too. First the real heavy nymphs, then unweighted nymphs and I really wanted to catch all fish with them. In the late eighties I even got spider mania and was into Yorkshire spiders for a while. Then I dabbled for about 7 years in full dressed salmon flies which I didn’t do so bad but far from those people you see at the shows today. The reason why I stopped is simple, my wife gave them away to her friends to put them on their dresses or hand them in their ears and I simply got a lot more fish with ahirwing salmon flies. Much much more!
Then I tied a year mainly streamers. Tied hundreds of saltwater patterns for sea trout fishing in the Battic sea, dry flies for salmon, Inconnu flies, The lake trout flies and on and on. Over all the years I used thread and feather like crazy and tied most Parachutes and realistic fishing flies to match the hatch.
So I do realistic flies a lot but except the full dressed salmon flies, I never went really into ART flies, simply because I think it is another hobby. Oh don’t misunderstand me. I have a lot of respect for the Art fly tiers and I learn a lot from them. Tying very realistic and art flies is really great, especially to improve your fly tying skill and share your skills with other people. When you really want to get into art flies you must have loads of time and a real good source from which you ge tmaterials. Anyway, tying art flies helps you a lot to teach other people how to work with feathers and hackles. I love to tie realistic flies but only when they will attract the fish and catch fish of course. What I mean is fishing flies.
When I tie flies, for me personally I always keep a few things in mind and at very high priority. When I want to copy a fly from another person I want to know the thoughts behind the fly and why certain materials were used and so on… When I tie to match the hatch, size, mobility, shape, color, durability and silhouette are my priorities. For example: A streamer that can’t pulse and can’t move it’s materials well I never would tie.
A nymph that mainly live on the bottom I never would tie without leadwire and free swimming larva I only want to tie with very mobile legs.
I will try to give you a sample how I see match the hatch. It doesn’t mean that as I see it, will be the perfect way but what I try to show you is that most of my flies are tied with deep thoughts behind them and in a perfect harmony between natural and synthetic fly tying materials.
that is the real free swimming larva
and this is how I copied it in 1985. The fly is known as the Caseless caddis
I make 3 versions depending on the waters that I meet;
1 layer leadwire
1 and a 1/2 layer leadwire
and 2 layers of lead wire
how to tie the entire pattern you can find at:
http://www.danica.com/flytier/hklinken/caseless_caddis.htm
OH Dron I would judge YOUR Cricket into the fishing flies. Foam because high floatation and because the pheasant tail legs what creates the mobility.. [:D]</font id=“purple”>
have fun
Hans
