Thinking Of Teddy

“Flies without wings are often very killing, and some that I have tried with a soft feather twisted in front of the cock’s hackle have done good work. I got the idea first from a fly that was sent to me from England.” …”They are not pretty, but give an impression of life in the water.” Theodore Gordon, Forest & Stream, March 28, 1903

I wait for sunlight to breach the gray dawn… Some fourteen inches of fresh snow awaits my efforts to clear a path to the world. I will soon venture forth to begin the toil…

While that snow fell, I sat down with Gordon’s Notes and Letters finding the answer I sought early in the historic volume. So, Halford did include at least one of the soft hackled dry flies in his missal to the father of Catskill fly tying! I can understand why Gordon tied and fished the style, for he understood how necessary the image of life was to how the new German browns perceived his flies back in 1890.

Two hours, shoveling, sweeping and piling, and at last the vehicle is free. The plow left a three-foot-high furrow behind it, which took no little effort to remove. I worked slowly, ever conscious of the rapid beating of my heart. I lost a friend years ago, shoveling too much snow back in Chambersburg. I hope you have good fishing ever after Jan!

The snow still falls of course, and I am thankful that this morning’s installments have been light. It was fun winding the hackles around that quill bodied fly yesterday, as I hope to see it’s mayfly on the water some seventy days hence. In the Golden Age they called it Iron fraudator, though in my generation the entomologists have decreed it to be Epeorus pleuralis. Since the fly emerges near the bottom of the stream, the winged dun swimming to the surface, it seems this soft hackled dry fly might be particularly suited, that extra movement enticing an interested trout.

I tied mine tailed with the soft, barred fibers of the wood duck’s flank, with the coot’s covert feathers’ fibers longer than the dark medium dun cock’s hackle’s. Picturing the fly struggling in the current, well set down into the film and froth brings a smile. I think old Teddy would smile too.