A week or so ago we hosted a "Tie and Lie" Day here at Fly Fishing Only. One of the guys here tying (Dave Martel) was tying wets and commented about the techniques he was using to tie them. The methods were some he picked up from the book "Wet Flies" by Dave Hughes. It reminded me of the book and how much I had enjoyed reading it, learning from it and putting the flies and fishing methods he outlines to work. The flies and fishing techniques are effective. On the left are links to fishing and tying a Flymph - one of the four types of wet flies Dave Hughes covers in this great book.
Dave Hughes relates in the first chapter how luck threw three people his way.
They were "Sylvester Nemes, author of that 1975 classic The Soft-Hackled Fly",
"Pete Hidy, coauthor of the 1941 book The art of Tying the Wet Fly" and
Rick Hafele with whom he coauthored Western Hatches in 1981. And as a
bonus later he was to fish with and learn from Polly Rosenberg.
This book was published in 1995 and doesn't get a lot of press today but it is a great book and draws heavily on the knowledge those people passed on to him. He has broken Wet Flies up into Soft Hackles, Flymphs, Winged Wets and Fuzzy Nymphs.
I built this little review of the book around the chapter 6 Tying Wingless Wets: Flymphs and chapter 12 Four Men and Their Methods. On the left and below there are links to see how to tie a Ginger Flymph, Some Notes on fishing Techniques.
When it come to wets Hughes subscribes to the theory that the traditional winged wet fly with its stiff quill sections came into favor not because of their fish catching ability as much as because of the eagerness of the Brook Trout to take that style of fly. But today, Brown Trout are more often the target species and Brook Trout waters have faded. Brown's aren't as eager to take a traditional winged wet fly as the Brook Trout. Enter Jim Leisenring and Pete Hidy. Two who did much to improve on the traditional winged wet fly.
Part of what they did was get rid of the wing, and focus attention on the body of the fly. They sought animal fur that had life in the water and narrowed their list of favorites down to furs still used today - Hare's Mask, Muskrat Body Fur, Mole and Australian opossum. All, I'm sorry to say, items that are getting harder to find. Hughes goes on to say that because of allergies he himself uses a product called Hare's Ear Plus which is a washed natural fur and synthetic blend.
However, if you have no allergy to Hare's Ear here is a paragraph that is representative of the casual pearls of knowledge that are all through the book
"You can also shear various parts of the hare's mask, and blend and store them separately in zip-loc bags. For example, shearing the ears and half of the hair between them, called the poll, will give you a superb tannish dubbing. Shearing the cheeks and face will give you a somewhat darker dubbing. If you shear the remainder of the poll and blend the fur to mix the guard hairs and underfur, you'll have a dubbing lighter than the other two. Thus you achieve a range of light, medium, and dark dubbings, tan to brown, that covers lots of fly-fishing situations."
I've explained to a lot of people what it is you do with a Hare's Mask but I've never done it quite so succinctly. So browse around and check out the pages on tying and fishing Flymphs. I tried to faithfully relay some of what I got out of the section on Flymphs. Remember Hughes has broken Wet Flies up into Soft Hackles, Flymphs, Winged Wets and Fuzzy Nymphs. This information is just a small part of two out of seventeen chapters.
For another peak at what this book offers visit the pages on tying and fishing the Flymph, one of 4 types of Wet Flies covered in the book, and enjoy.
This is a book you should own - even if you don't tie! Here's you chance to own this book. Call us at (207) 453-6242 or e-mail us and send you phone number to us and we'll call you. You can e-mail us by clicking here.