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| William 'Bill' Shuck |
There is a sad, empty space in our game today with the recent passing of a great man, angler & fly tier, Bill Shuck.
I met Bill at the Flymph Forum where he was a highly respected & honored member. We became friends & correspondents, Bill assuming the role of a kind & insightful mentor. He was a brilliant man with an inquiring mind & we discussed many of our shared interests, including politics, architecture, literature, life, & of course angling & fly tying. Serious health issues toward the end of his life kept Bill from being able to do much physical activity, however that didn't stop his active mind. An English & Literature teacher, Bill was a man of letters, so in the last days of his life spent his time corresponding with & entertaining his many compatriots.
During the span of time I knew him, Bill sent me quite a few photos of his flies & also writings, some of which are now published in this month's issue as a memorial to him & his work. An acolyte of Jim Leisenring & Pete Hidy, fishing the same water as Leisenring, Bill Shuck was considered by many, including myself, as one of the American masters of the flymph style. You will note the influence of Leisenring & Hidy reflected in Bill's style. I joked with him that he did Leisenring better than Leisenring &, ever humble, of course he denied it. Bill was a supportive reader & contributor to SHJ, & this edition is dedicated solely to his memory. He will be missed immensely.
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| Just Emerged PMD ~ Bill Shuck |
Bill's Flies
Looking at Bill’s
flies we see something at once familiar, ‘classic’, one might say, while at the
same time we see they are fresh, reflecting an evolved re-shuffling of classic elements
resonant to the core of our flyfishing brains. We might ask ourselves: “Gee,
why didn’t I think of that?”
There are some who might define Bill Shuck as a
‘neoclassicist’, & I would agree that is fair, in the most positive sense,
yet mainly to describe the appearance of his flies. As a soft-hackler, I see
Bill Shuck’s level of craft as a bar to aspire to. As an angler/guide fortunate
to spend a lot of time peering into water, as well as a variety of other folk’s
fly boxes, Bill’s flies reveal to me that his time on the water was well-spent –
I see regional influences, function & form coalesced to graceful
syncopation. These are not fanciful, but informed designs, well done. Bill had an angler's eye for a killing bait. Plain & simple, these are soft-hackle flies
meant to be fished. The flies of Bill Shuck are what effective soft-hackle wetflies look like.
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| March Brown ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Grey Tenkara Kibari ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Allsumer Spider ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Easter March Brown Splymph ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Cow Dung ~` Bill Shuck |
Bill Shuck on Leisenring's
Cow Dung
"Looking through various
listings of patterns tabulated by fly fishing writers over the years, “Cow
Dung” appears frequently, appearing in the literature at least as far back as
1836 in Alfred Ronald’s “Fly Fishers Entomology”. The insect it is intended to
mimic is a true fly (order Diptera),
which have a single pair of wings that originate behind the legs and lie flat
and crossed when the insect is at rest. Despite this, all the images I have
seen of dressings show the same profile as that traditionally used for winged
mayflies, with only the concession of having the wing slanted back at a severe
angle.
Also, various dressings call
for body color ranging from lemon to green, with materials varying from worsted
(crewel) wool to peacock herl. This seeming discrepancy can be explained by the
fact that while the male dung fly common in Britain is a yellowish orange, the
female is a dull olive. There are also differences about the material to be
used for the wing, with at least one specifying dark mallard wing slips. I
attribute this to the fact that the wings of the dung fly are a color best
mimicked by slips from the secondary wing feathers of the landrail, a bird that
is today universally protected. (Until the starling was declared endangered in Britain and
placed on the protected list, Veniard used to sell starling wings dyed brown as
a credible sub for the landrail; even those are in short supply these days.)
I have relied pretty much on
Jim Leisenring’s version of the pattern as put forth in “The Art of Tying the
Wet Fly” :
Cow Dung
Hook: #12, #13 (I used a
Mustad 94840, Size #12)
Thread: Orange
silk
Hackle: Ginger similar to
body color
Body: Yellow crewel wool,
seal fur, or mohair mixed with a little brown fur to … give the whole a dirty
orange tinge (I used a blend of 85% yellow wool, 10% medium orange seal, and 5%
medium brown Aussie possum)
Wings: Landrail (slips)
slightly longer than body sloping back close over body with glossy side out (I
used Veniard dyed brown starling as sub)
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| Saddle Tip Done Buzz ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Literal Blue Dun ~ Bill Shuck |
Bill Shuck ~ Baby Sunfly
"An English clergyman, Rev. Edward Powell, fished streams in
the Shropshire region in the Welsh borderlands of England on a regular basis during
the 1920’s – 1950’s. He is credited by author Christopher Knowles in his book (Orange Otter, Medlar Press, Ellesmere, England
2006) and others with developing as many as 26 fly patterns that were
especially killing on these waters. He named one of these the “Baby Sunfly”
since it was a smaller, slightly modified version of a D. Lewis pattern called
“Sunfly”. It was strictly a generic pattern, as Powell was convinced that fish
mostly just wanted black and brown flies. The original dry fly pattern was
(more or less) as follows:
Hook: Sizes 12 – 18
Thread: Brown or black
Tail: Black or coch-y-bondhu cock hackle barbs
Body: Dubbed rabbit face, from triangle of nose & eyes,
very dark, tied full
Rib: Brown thread, 3 turns
Hackle: Black or coch-y-bondhu cock hackle, as many turns as
possible
It is interesting to note that the fur used for the body of
the fly was the quite dark underfur found on the face of the English rabbit,
not the better-known-to-fly-tiers English hare -- a different critter. It is
necessary to trim away the grey/tan outer portion of the fur to get at the
dark, bluish black underfur.
Answering the challenge of a fellow member on the Flymph
Forum site, I’ve attempted to tie this pattern as a soft hackle wet fly. I’ve
tied it on a vintage Herter’s 423 TDE hook, Size #14 using Pearsall’s Gossamer
#17 brown thread. The tails whisks were taken from an iridescent black feather
found at the back of a coch-y-bondhu hen saddle and the collar is a combination
of that same black feather and a black and “red” feather from further up the saddle. Since I do not have an English rabbit
mask, the body is a blend is a blend of hare’s poll and black wool spun in #17
Gossamer on a Clark block."
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| Allgrouse ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Comparadun ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Sculpin Muddler ~ Bill Shuck |
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| May We ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Deleatidium ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Leisenring Pale Watery Dun ~ Bill Shuck |
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| Songbird Sulfur ~ Bill Shuck |
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| White Fly Spider ~ Bill Shuck |
So long Bill. It’s been good to know you. You gave a lot.
Your great work & humanity will not be forgotten. We stand on your
shoulders now, & aspire to someday stand with you in that perfect stream ~
