Artificial fly
[1] Artificial flies may be constructed to represent all manner of potential preys to freshwater and saltwater fish, including aquatic and terrestrial insects, crustaceans, worms, spawn, small baitfish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and even birds.
The technique involves attaching small pieces of feathers, animal fur, and other materials onto a hook in order to make it attractive to fish.
Imitations do not always have to be precisely realistic in appearance; they may derive their lifelike qualities when their fur or feathers are immersed in water and allowed to move in the current.
Attractors, which are often brightly colored, seek to draw a strike by arousing an aggression response in the fish.
The Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle was published (1496) within The Boke of St. Albans attributed to Dame Juliana Berners.
[5] The 1652 4th edition of John Dennys's The Secrets of Angling, first published in 1613, contains the first known illustration of an artificial fly.
The term fly is applied by sea fishermen to a certain arrangement of feathers, wax, etc., which I am about to describe the manufacture of, and which may be used with considerable success in mackerel, basse, and pollack fishing.
As aquatic insects such as Mayflies, Caddisflies and Stoneflies were the primary prey being imitated during the early developmental years of fly fishing, there were always differing schools of thought on how closely a fly needed to imitate the fish's prey.
[11] Today, some flies are called attractor patterns because in theory, they do not resemble any specific prey, but instead attract strikes from fish.
The huge range of fly patterns documented today for all sorts of target species-trout, salmon, bass and panfish, pike, saltwater, tropical exotics, etc.
Flies have been named to honor or celebrate fellow anglers: Royal Wulff, Jock Scott, Quill Gordon, Adams; named to describe their color and composition: Ginger Quill, Gold-ribbed Hare's Ear, Partridge and Orange; named to reflect some regional origin: Bow River Bugger, Tellico nymph, San Juan worm; named to reflect the prey they represent: Golden stone, Blue-wing Olive, Pale Morning Dun, Elk Hair Caddis, White swimming shrimp; named to reflect nothing in particular: Woolly Bugger, Crazy Charlie, Club Sandwich; and, more often than not, named to evoke the designer: Copper John nymph (John Barr), Clouser Deep Minnow (Bob Clouser), Brooks' Montana stone (Charles Brooks), Parks' Salmonfly (Merton Parks), Carey Special (Colonel Carey), Dahlberg Diver (Larry Dahlberg) or Dave's Hopper (Dave Whitlock).
The well-known trout fly Coachman was originated by Tom Bosworth, who drove Queen Victoria's coach[14] The Royal Coachman was first made by John Haily, a professional fly dresser living in New York City.
Fellow fisherman and conservationist Dan Bailey insisted that he call them "Wulffs" and began tying them under that name.
The following categorization with illustrative examples is derived from the following major artificial fly merchants offerings.
Wet flies have been tied in a wide variety of patterns to represent larvae, nymphs, pupa, drowned insects, baitfish and other underwater prey.
One example would be Barry's Carp Fly,[32] which resembles the familiar thorax-plus-tapered-abdomen structure of many nymphs, albeit in an enlarged and bushier format.
[34] Several of those, like the family of so-called "headstand"[35] flies, represent the most significant departures from traditional freshwater designs in many years.
[citation needed] Egg flies are all designed to resemble the spawn of other fish that may be encountered in a river and consumed by the target species.
Tube flies were originated in Aberdeen, Scotland by fly-dresser Minnie Morawski for Atlantic salmon anglers around 1945.
Tube flies have been widely adapted to fly patterns for a variety of cold water and warm water species and are extremely popular for steelhead and salmon in the Pacific Northwest and northeast United States, as well as saltwater species along the Atlantic, Florida and Gulf Coasts.
