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| Summer River ~ Watercolor by Doris Loiseau |
Hope everybody is wintering well & not struggling too badly with now-unraveling resolutions made on new year's eve. Resolving to be in the moment, I didn't make any this year.
The procession of winter storms has kept me off the water, so nothing to report there.
Doris drew contributor's names out of the hat & those of you who won stuff have been contacted. All who contributed to SHJ in 2019 will receive quality, signed prints of 'Summer River', a watercolor by Doris Loiseau that appears in my book, 'Upper Columbia Flyfisher'. If you have donated to SHJ & don't receive a print within a few weeks, contact me & I'll get one out to you. Thanks to all of you who've donated. You make it possible to keep this little niche of the angling world up & running, free of ads. Soft~Hackle Journal represents a unique form of engagement principle journalism. Rather than special interests paying for content or me beholding to them for a job, SHJ operates sort of like an honor vegetable stand with a can you put whatever you want into. At the end of the year we draw contributor's names from a hat & names drawn receive any booty donated to SHJ over the year. And everybody receives something. What comes around, goes around. Possibly a world-saving economic model in this.
Note to new writers: If you are a new writer with aspirations to break into print but haven't crossed that threshold yet, & you think you have a story, article or poem ready to submit & would like to try it here, contact me: columbiatrout@sbcglobal.net
Like I said, storms have been keeping me off the water here on the coast, & temps up on the UC are currently near the dead-O-winter single digits. Friends report I'm not missing anything. So nothing left to do but sit near the fire & swap stories. Pour yourself a wee dram. Here's one from 2019:
A Crossing
Note to new writers: If you are a new writer with aspirations to break into print but haven't crossed that threshold yet, & you think you have a story, article or poem ready to submit & would like to try it here, contact me: columbiatrout@sbcglobal.net
Like I said, storms have been keeping me off the water here on the coast, & temps up on the UC are currently near the dead-O-winter single digits. Friends report I'm not missing anything. So nothing left to do but sit near the fire & swap stories. Pour yourself a wee dram. Here's one from 2019:
A Crossing
Preface: Had to change some
names and leave certain details out of this story.
The Fall trip to B.C. with Doris was meditative. Somehow, she is an iron shield
against the rabbit-hole events and wild characters I attract. If there is one
crazy person in a crowd of 10,000 that person will walk up and start talking to
me. They find me. But have to admit I do make a lot of friends that way. I'll
talk to anybody.
So pretty smooth trip up
north with Doris. Went to Ainsworth hot springs. Enjoyed a
delightful lunch in Kaslo, where I dutifully traipsed after Doris
while she poked through every shop on Main
Street.
The trip with Doris was a lot less exciting than the day-trip I took in mid-summer with the editor of a prestigious sporting magazine (Rolls Royce of sporting journals – pays $700 for a mere 1000 words) who'd booked a trip with me, wanting to meet and fish. So, O boy, the editor is coming to fish. I was a little nervous I admit – a little brown man wannabe writer like me rubbing elbows with a chieftain of the publishing industry.
The trip with Doris was a lot less exciting than the day-trip I took in mid-summer with the editor of a prestigious sporting magazine (Rolls Royce of sporting journals – pays $700 for a mere 1000 words) who'd booked a trip with me, wanting to meet and fish. So, O boy, the editor is coming to fish. I was a little nervous I admit – a little brown man wannabe writer like me rubbing elbows with a chieftain of the publishing industry.
The editor arrived at camp,
and he seemed like a nice guy. He set up his kit and looked to be an efficient
backwoods camper, and I loosened up some. In correspondence the editor had
indicated he’d like to catch a bull trout, so I was planning to take him up to
fish the Slocan River, above the border in B.C., the
next day.
Morning lit to a cloudless,
July day and already heating up when we crossed the border. We drove almost to
Nelson, then up the Slocan river for 20 miles where we found a turnout along a
good looking run. It was hubcap-bright and hot by the time we pulled off and
got our gear together, rigged, and our waders on. We looked like well-equipped
spacemen waddling through the bushes toward the river, already sweating.
The editor went upstream, I
went down. The trail downriver didn't go far, ending at a back-eddy where a
pair of young couples cooled in the water, naked as the day they arrived in
this world. Okay, no thing. I’ve been there. But I was out of uniform and
didn't want to upset the vibe pushing through their space, so decided to turn
around and join the worthy editor. Then, upstream, blocking the trail the
editor took, was a large and lively family group, also naked. I minced through
the group sunning on the bank – "hi... hi... nice day for a dip...
hih-hih... ya'll have fun eh..."
Caught up to the editor
yonder swinging a nice tailout and took a position above him.
Across the river was a neat,
log homestead – grassy slope down to the water – and then the cabin door swung
open and out stepped a long-haired guy, sans clothing, followed by a full-bushed
redhead and they bounced down the lawn and jumped in the river splashing and
laughing, casting distance away from us.
The editor kept his eyes on
the fishing game, casting stiffly, his mouth a straight slit offering no
comment.
Though murder, plunder and
mayhem barely raise an eyebrow, and we’re probably the world’s greatest
consumers of porn, Americans tend to be Puritanical faced with natural nudity,
so, sheepish, feeling somehow responsible for exposing the editor to naked
people and obliged to say something, I emoted: “Everybody in the whole damn
valley is running around naked today!” By way of apology.
Bare-ass locals swimming in
the river everywhere, and too bright to fish anyway, I thought it might be a
good idea to guide the editor up to New Denver for some refreshment. New Denver is a funky little assemblage of well-preserved
Victorian false-fronts at the end of Lake
Slocan, once a booming
mining town, now home to a diverse population of mountain hipsters of various
stripes. We found an arty little coffee bar with outside seating and I got a
coffee and the editor got a chai latte.
We sat in the shade of a big
Canadian maple where some locals were hanging out. The editor, though pleasant
and engaging, if engaged, hadn’t volunteered a whole lot about anything, so I
didn’t have a good handle on him yet. I sensed he was out of his usual element
and unfamiliar with the local culture. He sat prim in his chair, knees
together, back straight. Me and the two locals at a close-by table slouched,
legs outstretched.
The editor and I started
making small talk and the friendly locals nearby overheard us and recognized us
as Americans and, entertaining no hard feelings, joined in, welcoming us to
their turf. They were Harmony and Gadget.
Harmony reminded me of my wife and her friends, same tribe, she was fetching,
young for her age, yoga-toned, sun-browned from nearly constant gardening and
outdoor work. Her hands showed it, the nails trimmed short in the way of
industrious mountain girls. She wore a breezy India-print skirt and slinky tank
top. A hint of refined mischief inhabited her eyes. She
had a lust for life.
Gadget was a talker and,
turned out, a talking machine, and that started to worry me because I know what
that can lead to in this part of the world. The art of conversation isn’t dead
in the lonesome northern reaches, and sometimes it gets people excited and the
talk turns to nefarious action. I sensed trouble, but the editor was really
warming up to Gadget and they talked and talked while I flirted with sweet
Harmony, secretly fretting about the direction things were liable to go in. The
people of eastern B.C. really do have too much time on their hands
Among a lot of other things
we learned about Gadget, he played guitar. “Hey, either of you guys play
guitar?” The editor shook is head. And, foolishly, I said: “A little.”
“O man!” Gadget kicked the
excitement up a notch. “You have got to meet Johnny Hurricane! He pointed
to a weathered, cedar false-front across the street. “C’mon! Me and Harmony are
on our way over there, you guys come with us. You’ll love it.”
The situation was unraveling
swiftly, getting away from me, and I protested – “Uh… we’re supposed to be
fishing…” But it was no use because they were up and on their way with the overly-compliant
editor blithely in tow.
Johnny Hurricane lived
upstairs in the old building that had been a mercantile in olden times.
Downstairs, a sizeable room, once the store, had been converted to
a combination local hang-out spot with a small stage for Saturday night jams, a
guitar shop with a work bench for repairs, and a sort of guitar museum. The
walls were decorated with an assortment of valuable old guitars, paintings by
local artists, and the jackets of old blues albums. A pool table dominated one
corner of the room, close by an assortment of upholstered Victorian chairs and
couches where a handful of locals lounged smoking reefers. There was a lot of
smoke.
It was too late. We were already down the rabbit-hole as soon
as we walked through the door. The fishing trip had come to this… this den of
hedonism, and I gave up any chance of ever having anything I wrote accepted by
The Journal – after this.
A couple of well-fed, hand-polished
cats lay curled like hothouse orchids on one of the couches. Harmony walked
over and picked up one of the kitties, snuggled it, kissed it on the mouth and
sat down with it on her lap, then fished around in her bag and drew out a
spliff as big as a cigar and lit it.
Gadget introduced me and the
editor all around. Though the place served no alcohol, there was an ornate bar
fronting one wall, where Johnny held court, posted behind the counter like your
friendly bartender. He was an old blues player and had done a stint with John
Lee Hooker. We learned he currently had a band:
Johnny Hurricane & the Storm Riders. I asked him if any of the
guitars on the wall were for sale and he said no, they were his personal
collection hanging there for people to play, and he invited me to try them out.
I found an old Martin
acoustic and brought it down, already perfectly tuned and with amazing sound. I
sat on the couch and picked a bit, entertaining Harmony and the kitties.
Admittedly, under normal
circumstances I wouldn’t have minded hanging out at Johnny’s playing the
guitars, but right then all I could think of was damage control and hustling
the editor out of there before he was gassed to brain damage. I figured he must
be ready to go by now, hung the Martin back up and wandered over to the bar,
where I found Johnny and the editor engaged in deep conversation. Johnny saw I
was done playing and put some music on, the wall speakers suddenly blasting
Howlin’ Wolf – “…we be down by de firehouse shakin’ dat wang dang doodle…” And right then everybody in the room lit a
fresh reefer.
You could’ve cut and served
the smoke in that room. And it was the smoke of some very, very potent stuff.
You didn’t need to be smoking. Just breathing I already felt like I was on an
acid trip and I was worried about the editor, who seemed unphased and not ready
to leave.
Turned out Johnny and the
editor were both experts on little-known clandestine spy operations of WWII and
going at the obscure subject like long-lost brothers. While I stood there
listening to them Gadget and Harmony slipped away. Finally, after what seemed
like eternity, the spy talk lapsed and Johnny said: “I don’t know who you guys
are but I like you, so I’m gonna show you everything.” And with that he reached
down behind the bar and brought up a three-pound brick of hashish and presented
it to the editor, inviting him to take a whiff. The editor, to my everlasting
shock, took a big ‘ol whiff and pronounced, nonchalant: “Hm. That smells like
the really good stuff.”
(And O Jaysus I’m shitting my
pants now, fearing the Mounties would bust in at any moment, arrest the lot of
us and confiscate me and the editor’s fishing gear and the editor’s rented
Subaru to boot).
“A-Yo _______, we need to get
going if we’re gonna make the border by five….” I announced.
Johnny says: “Oh, hey, before
you leave let me give you something.” And he bent and put the hash away and
came back up with a couple of Johnny Hurricane & the Storm Riders discs and
presented them to us as gifts. I tried to pay him but he absolutely refused to
take anything.
Leaving town we drove slowly
by a farmer’s market set up in the park. We saw Gadget on a stage playing
guitar, a girl accompanying him on fiddle. We also noticed Harmony strolling
among the vegetable booths.
Driving down toward the
border in afternoon rose light, the windows down and the car flooding with the lush joss
of high summer – the road following the glacial-blue river sparking and
unskeining lovely beyond thought – the editor pushed Johnny Hurricane & the
Storm Riders into the player – and it was good, pure D, top-shelf blues rock.
Johnny ripped.
It was better than good, we both
agreed.
“Great day,” the editor
pronounced. Where we going tomorrow?”
The Reel News
Continuing UFO research.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a29875104/ufo-research-evolution/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a29875104/ufo-research-evolution/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
America, populated. Posner walking.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-extremely-fast-peopling-of-the-americas?utm_source=pocket-newtab
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-extremely-fast-peopling-of-the-americas?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Posner walking.
Australia burning.
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/01/banality-apocalypse-australian-fire/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
American Wetfly Masters ~ Dave Hughes
Had a good time fishing with Dave Hughes & Rick Hafele this past summer. Before leaving, Dave gave me some of his favorite soft-hackle patterns straight out of his box.
American Wetfly Masters ~ Dave Hughes
Had a good time fishing with Dave Hughes & Rick Hafele this past summer. Before leaving, Dave gave me some of his favorite soft-hackle patterns straight out of his box.
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| Green & Partridge ~ Dave Hughes |
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| Waterhen Bloa ~ Dave Hughes |
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| Tups Variant ~ Dave Hughes |
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| Partridge & Yellow ~ Dave Hughes |
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| Hares Ear ~ Dave Hughes |
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| Dave, sporting the latest in fly fishing fashions. |
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| Dave Hughes ~ Canadian Reach |
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| Hook ~ Doris Loiseau |
The Essential Hook
As hooks are essential
to our game, and how a hook performs in the water while fished is important to
the downstream approach, I think a brief history and discussion of hooks
salient to our discussion of trout spey, or at least, interesting in itself.
Keep in mind our
Neolithic ancestors, free from regular jobs and needing to eat, had few things
better to do than think up clever ways to catch meat. At whatever vague point
in the distant past somebody crafted a fishhook small enough, I suspect it
swiftly followed that some canny fisher-gatherer, having observed large
Neolithic trout eating bugs from the surface of the local river, started
playing around with dressing a hook to create a fake bug.
The earliest hooks were
simple gorges, a straight section of wood or bone sharpened on both ends.
Curved hooks made of wood, bone, shell, thorns and cactus spines followed the
gorge, early on. Evidence suggests hooks, like a lot of things that simply make
sense, developed simultaneously wherever Neolithic humans found fish. Hooks
carved from snail shells dating from around 23000 B.C. were discovered on Okinawa. The ancient Polynesians made long sea journeys,
supplying themselves with fresh fish caught on feathered lures rigged on shell
or bone hooks, trolled behind their voyaging catamarans – much like modern tuna
feathers.
Though there’s no
description of the hook in his journals, Northwest fur trader and cartographer
David Thompson describes natives catching a breakfast of trout from the upper Columbia, fishing a lure
made from a tiny piece of softened buckskin – a chamois fly – tied to a line
braided from three long horse tail hairs.
I carved a #10 hook
from a juniper crotch, as the Norwegians once did, and though fat, it was small
enough to tie a fly on; and I can see that a smaller, more effective version
might be carved from shell or bone. All of the above leads me to think the
concept of an artificial ‘fly’ likely predates metallurgy.
The earliest metal
hooks probably followed with the advent of copper smelting at the dawn of the
Bronze Age. The earliest bronze hooks we know of were found in Egypt, dating from 3000 B.C.; and copper
fishhooks were known to the Americas prior to European
incursion.
Here’s a theory on the
origin of steel fishhooks:
War, and the tools of
warfare, have always served to advance the technologies of humanity. And though
the art and science of catching fish inspires a powerful impetus to
advancement, I suspect it may have been the development of chainmail armor,
traced back to 500 B.C. Persia,
that provided the first iron fishhooks. Anecdotal, but I offer this here as it
strikes me as logical enough to consider: In the production of chainmail, a
length of metal wire is bent into a U-shape. When enough of these are made to
form the protective halberk, they are linked together and the U pinched
closed to a ring. The early metal fishhooks were simply a bent piece of wire
sharpened on one end. So where is our Dark Ages angling ancestor going to
procure these? My bet would be it was a visit the local armor smith – who
probably had a good sideline going selling fishhooks, or wire for making
fishhooks. And I wouldn’t disallow the possibility that, once the process of
making wire was developed, the fishhook may have immediately followed as an
obvious product, predating chainmail armor and, possibly, leading to its
development. If the wire smith happened to be a fisher, it may have. Whatever
the case it is interesting, considering the evidence suggests iron hooks
appeared at about the same time as chainmail armor.
Steel hooks were not
yet in commercial production in mid-1400’s England when Dame Juliana Berners
fished and wrote, so it likely follows the sporting abbess maintained more than
a nodding acquaintance with the local armorer.
The manufacture of
barbed commercial hooks arose in Norway and the British Iles.
The manufacturing towns of Limerick, Aberdeen
and Carlisle lent their names to hook styles
we know today. Initially, these were ‘blind’ (eye-less) hooks, available in
sizes #2 to #14. If you wanted to tie smaller than #14, you simply tied smaller
on the #14 hook – still a useful concept when fishing water holding large trout
feeding on wee flies.
The old hooks were
permanently lashed to braided horsehair leaders and, beginning about 1715,
short ‘snoods’ (snells) of drawn silkworm gut. The fly is tied over the
snooded, or snelled, hook. The snood (about 6” long) is attached to the leader
with a loop-to-loop connection. The silkworm’s silk producing gland can be
stretched to about a maximum of 30 inches, and at that length fairly weak, so
the main length of leader was usually made of braided silk thread. Spain, with a climate suitable to raising
silkworms, became the major source of drawn silkworm gut (and we see a warming
of trade relations between Spain
and Britain
during that era).
The
advent of eyed hooks didn’t come about until the 1830’s, when a die set
developed for stamping eyes in sewing needles was applied to hook making.
Though bait fishers – now able to easily fasten heavy linen or braided horse
tail lines to the eye – were probably thrilled, the early straight-eye hooks weren’t
well-received by flyfishers, as the gut snell leaders they preferred didn’t
pass through the hook-eye parallel to the hook-shank. Turned-eye hooks, up and
down, didn’t arrive on the scene until about 1879, the eyes turned to
accommodate a snell (not, as is popular myth, to create a lever to improve
hooking). Snelled hooks track and hover well, the fly remaining aligned on a
horizontal plane while fished. Wetflies tied on hooks with turned eyes,
particularly down-eye, tend to tip or roll (in some cases, screw) when fastened
to the tippet by the eye and fished under tension, as in swinging or stripping.
Also, when fastened by the eye, turned-eye hooks may hinge from the horizontal
posture, as the tippet, with use, has the propensity to align on plane with the
hook eye.
(In the early 1960’s,
having long ago gone over to eyed hooks and nylon leader, my grandfather gave
me a small, sheepskin wallet containing a few of his old wetflies, snooded to
short gut snells, dating from when he was a young fly fisher. I remember there
was a McGinty, a Silver Doctor, a Red Ibis and a Parmachene Belle. At the time
he didn’t see them as having any particular value. To him they were just old
out-dated gear, so he gave them to me to “use up” during my early excursions to
the local brook. To me they were gold. Not gold to be saved – gold to be spent.
If you dunked the wallet before fishing the wool held water to moisten and relax
the stiff gut snells. My first fly-caught brookie came on the McGinty. That was
a favorite while it lasted. And the Silver Doctor killed the first rainbow).
Hooks with turned eyes
eventually became available in a wide range of styles and sizes, and gained in
popularity. With the advent of nylon tippet, the propensity to roll or hinge
was overcome with the use of a turl knot, the tippet passed through the hook
eye then fastened around the head behind the eye (possibly the reason for the
long, conical heads we see on Leisenring’s flymphs and spiders, making room for
a turl knot). The turl was seen as a logical way to achieve the positive tracking
of the eyeless snood. Though there are still savvy anglers using the turl knot,
it began to diminish from general usage in the 1960’s, as new anglers came to favor
knots that are quicker and easier to tie and, I suspect, the original reason
for the turl began to fade in the collective memory. As gut snells were
replaced by nylon monofilament, the old straight-eye hook did gain popularity with
soft-hackle purists wanting to duplicate the positive tracking attribute of the
old snells, along with the ease of being able to fasten the tippet to the hook
eye.
*
‘Form follows function’
is an abiding principle in designing flies for swinging, though, taking the
whole affair into consideration, form and function do coalesce when considering
a hook design. We want a hook that will track well, stick and penetrate the
fish’s jaw, and hold the fish throughout the battle, yet also possess a shape
suggestive and appropriate to the fly design and purpose.
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| Canadian Reach Redband ~ Bruce Kruk |
From the Tying Bench
Some Winter Flies for Trout Spey
Rusty Rubber Legs
These may be dressed in color combinations to suit. The
rust-orange version featured here is my favorite, simulating golden stonefly
& also good when October caddis are present. An all black version is
killing where salmonflies are present.
Hook: #4-#8 (Most often, I dress mine on #4)
Thread: rust-orange
Body: rust-orange & black or brown variegated chenille,
weighted under the body
Legs: rust-orange variegated rubber
Spruce Variant
Hook: #6-#8
Thread: wine
Abdomen: copper tinsel tip & red tinsel
Tailing: golden pheasant tippet
Thorax: peacock herl
Wing: yellow-dyed squirrel tail
Hackle: brahma hen
Camp Dog
Hook: #6-#8
Thread: wine
Tailing: peacock swords & red cock saddle whisks
Rib: copper wire
Body: orange tinsel
Palmer: red hen saddle or shlappen
Half-Wing: golden pheasant tippet
Hackle: rear collar – red guinea hen; front collar – black
hen
Irish
Coachman
Hook: #6-#10
Thread: wine
Tip: copper tinsel
Tailing: golden pheasant tippet
Rib: gold wire
Body: peacock herl
Palmer: brown shlappen
Hackle: cock ringneck pheasant church window body spade
Mickey
Finn
Hook: #4-#8
Thread: black
Tip: red tinsel
Rib: silver French oval
Body: silver tinsel
Topping: yellow bucktail / red bucktail / yellow bucktail
Optional: jungle cock cheeks
