Guest Blogger: Mary S. Kuss, Life-long avid angler, licensed PA fishing guide (retired), founder of the Delaware Valley Women’s Fly Fishing Association
Many fly fishers, arguably, carry too many flies. For me, a major driver of this phenomenon is having a “desperation fly” save the day after all of my reliable favorites have failed. Once that happens I can never bear to be without that fly again. My fly boxes contain quite a few of those one-hit-wonders. I carry them around like a collective security blanket, but almost never use them. Knowing that I’m lugging around an excessive quantity of flies has not inspired me to thin them out, though. I guess I can’t get past the notion that at some future time any one of them might perform magically for me once again.
The polar opposite of this situation occurs when an angler chooses to carry and use only a single fly or fly pattern. Perhaps the best-known example is the “One-Fly” contest. The basic rules are simple. A team of anglers draws a beat on a river, and each participant chooses one fly to use for the duration of the contest. If you lose that fly, it’s game-over for you. The team that catches the most total inches of fish wins. There may also be individual awards. These contests are commonly done to benefit some charity or other, often involving stream conservation. So whether you approve of competitive angling or not, it is for a good cause.
Sometimes an angler will observe a voluntary one-fly restriction simply to satisfy curiosity. One of my early fly fishing mentors loved to fish in the Catskill Mountains of New York. He and his wife kept a trailer at the Twin Islands Campsite near Roscoe and spent almost every weekend of trout season there. One year Charlie decided to conduct an experiment. He fished as usual for an entire season, using a variety of flies, and kept track of how many hours he fished and how many fish he caught. The following year he repeated this process, but used a #16 dry fly exclusively. When he compared the results, the catch rate per hour was nearly identical. Notably, he did not continue the one-fly approach but went right back to what he’d been doing before. I guess it was too boring to use only one fly pattern all the time.
Another situation in which a one-fly approach is sometimes taken is the traditional Japanese angling method of Tenkara. The modern iteration of this technique involves a long, very light-weight graphite rod and a line which may or may not be tapered, which is attached directly to the rod tip along with added tippet material. There is no reel. Although a variety of flies can be fished using Tenkara, the traditional patterns are unweighted, soft hackle wet flies with the hackle reversed so that the concave side of the feather faces forward over the hook eye. This tying style provides a unique breathing effect in the hackle fibers as the fly is fished. As with conventional fly fishing, it’s not terribly difficult to learn basic Tenkara technique. In fact, Tenkara is easier for a beginner to learn because there’s no line-handling skill involved. Except when landing a fish, you could just as well keep your off-dominant hand in your pocket.
Those who reach the advanced level of Tenkara can very accurately place a fly in promising spots and hold it there, activating the hackle fibers with subtle twitches of the rod tip and extracting fish with surgical precision. These accomplished practitioners are referred to as “Tenkara Masters.” Many of them are known for using only one fly pattern, which may be named for them. They have embraced the philosophy that mastery of technique is far more important to angling success and satisfaction than the mere act of selecting a fly from a box holding dozens of patterns.
I’ve been slowly evolving toward minimalism with flies for quite a while--in terms of the flies I actually use as opposed to those I carry around with me. That “security blanket” thing really is impeding my progress. I don’t think I would ever voluntarily choose to restrict myself to only one fly pattern. However, I’ve often thought that if I were limited to only one fly I could catch just as many freshwater fish as I do now if I used nothing but the classic Green Weenie—not including variations, just the unweighted version consisting of nothing but medium fluorescent-chartreuse chenille on a size 12, 3X-long hook. Yes, I know, it’s a junk fly. Go ahead and sneer if you must. I am very familiar with the contempt that is heaped upon this lowly fly, although in my humble opinion the Squirmy Wormy is several notches lower on the tacky fly scale.
The thing to understand about the Weenie, or any fly for that matter, is that how the fly is fished is at least as important, if not more so, than the fly itself. I was once part of a group of friends who took a week-long trip to every May. We spent a lot of time fishing the special regulations stretch of Kettle Creek. During one of those trips, for no apparent reason, the Green Weenie seemed to be the only fly that was working consistently. All of us were using them, and catching scads of trout. With the exception of Don, whose aesthetic sensibilities would not allow him to resort to such a low-brow, hideously ugly fly. After two fishless days, he finally relented. Don was a highly accomplished nymph fisherman, so I assumed he would fish the Weenie as he would any nymph. When our paths crossed in mid-morning, I asked how he was doing. “Skunked,” he said. I asked if he had tried the Weenie and he said yes. I was perplexed. After a few more questions, he revealed that he had been fishing it as if it were a streamer. He assumed that anything that was so obviously an “attractor pattern” should be cast out and stripped back. Once he started fishing it like a nymph, he caught plenty of trout.
I suppose that one reason I fish the Weenie as often as I do, aside from its undeniable effectiveness, is that it’s often still on my leader from the last time I went fishing. I use a combination rod/reel case that enables me to reel the fly all the way up to the rod tip, take the rod apart at the center ferrule, and slide the entire assembly into the protective case. When I am ready to fish again I simply pull everything back out of the case, reassemble the rod, and pull the fly and leader out from the tip-top. I once decided that I should not make the Weenie the first fly I’d try on every outing. Yet it would often be the last fly I used. Eventually I reasoned, “If it’s already on the leader, why fight it?”
Odd though it may seem, I find fishing the Weenie very liberating. I have great confidence in its effectiveness, and when it’s on the business end of my leader I am free to focus on other factors like reading the water, approach, and presentation. I am not distracted by puzzling over whether a different fly might bring more strikes. Because of extensive experience fishing this fly I know instinctively how and where to cast it, what to do to achieve the fine nuance of presentation that will be most deadly, and even when to initiate a hook-set.
Despite all of that, it would be boring to fish nothing but the Weenie. I will always enjoy hatch-matching when the opportunity presents, swinging a wet fly, working a Woolly Bugger or other streamer, or especially seeing a rise to my dry fly. But sometimes, if all I want to do is catch a few fish, one fly is all I need.
Guest Blogger: Mary S. Kuss, Life-long avid angler, licensed PA fishing guide (retired), founder of the Delaware Valley Women’s Fly Fishing Association
One-Fly vs Many
Many fly fishers, arguably, carry too many flies. For me, a major driver of this phenomenon is having a “desperation fly” save the day after all of my reliable favorites have failed. Once that happens I can never bear to be without that fly again. My fly boxes contain quite a few of those one-hit-wonders. I carry them around like a collective security blanket, but almost never use them. Knowing that I’m lugging around an excessive quantity of flies has not inspired me to thin them out, though. I guess I can’t get past the notion that at some future time any one of them might perform magically for me once again.
The polar opposite of this situation occurs when an angler chooses to carry and use only a single fly or fly pattern. Perhaps the best-known example is the “One-Fly” contest. The basic rules are simple. A team of anglers draws a beat on a river, and each participant chooses one fly to use for the duration of the contest. If you lose that fly, it’s game-over for you. The team that catches the most total inches of fish wins. There may also be individual awards. These contests are commonly done to benefit some charity or other, often involving stream conservation. So whether you approve of competitive angling or not, it is for a good cause.
Sometimes an angler will observe a voluntary one-fly restriction simply to satisfy curiosity. One of my early fly fishing mentors loved to fish in the Catskill Mountains of New York. He and his wife kept a trailer at the Twin Islands Campsite near Roscoe and spent almost every weekend of trout season there. One year Charlie decided to conduct an experiment. He fished as usual for an entire season, using a variety of flies, and kept track of how many hours he fished and how many fish he caught. The following year he repeated this process, but used a #16 dry fly exclusively. When he compared the results, the catch rate per hour was nearly identical. Notably, he did not continue the one-fly approach but went right back to what he’d been doing before. I guess it was too boring to use only one fly pattern all the time.
Another situation in which a one-fly approach is sometimes taken is the traditional Japanese angling method of Tenkara. The modern iteration of this technique involves a long, very light-weight graphite rod and a line which may or may not be tapered, which is attached directly to the rod tip along with added tippet material. There is no reel. Although a variety of flies can be fished using Tenkara, the traditional patterns are unweighted, soft hackle wet flies with the hackle reversed so that the concave side of the feather faces forward over the hook eye. This tying style provides a unique breathing effect in the hackle fibers as the fly is fished. As with conventional fly fishing, it’s not terribly difficult to learn basic Tenkara technique. In fact, Tenkara is easier for a beginner to learn because there’s no line-handling skill involved. Except when landing a fish, you could just as well keep your off-dominant hand in your pocket.
Those who reach the advanced level of Tenkara can very accurately place a fly in promising spots and hold it there, activating the hackle fibers with subtle twitches of the rod tip and extracting fish with surgical precision. These accomplished practitioners are referred to as “Tenkara Masters.” Many of them are known for using only one fly pattern, which may be named for them. They have embraced the philosophy that mastery of technique is far more important to angling success and satisfaction than the mere act of selecting a fly from a box holding dozens of patterns.
The Greenie Weenie
I’ve been slowly evolving toward minimalism with flies for quite a while--in terms of the flies I actually use as opposed to those I carry around with me. That “security blanket” thing really is impeding my progress. I don’t think I would ever voluntarily choose to restrict myself to only one fly pattern. However, I’ve often thought that if I were limited to only one fly I could catch just as many freshwater fish as I do now if I used nothing but the classic Green Weenie—not including variations, just the unweighted version consisting of nothing but medium fluorescent-chartreuse chenille on a size 12, 3X-long hook. Yes, I know, it’s a junk fly. Go ahead and sneer if you must. I am very familiar with the contempt that is heaped upon this lowly fly, although in my humble opinion the Squirmy Wormy is several notches lower on the tacky fly scale.
The thing to understand about the Weenie, or any fly for that matter, is that how the fly is fished is at least as important, if not more so, than the fly itself. I was once part of a group of friends who took a week-long trip to every May. We spent a lot of time fishing the special regulations stretch of Kettle Creek. During one of those trips, for no apparent reason, the Green Weenie seemed to be the only fly that was working consistently. All of us were using them, and catching scads of trout. With the exception of Don, whose aesthetic sensibilities would not allow him to resort to such a low-brow, hideously ugly fly. After two fishless days, he finally relented. Don was a highly accomplished nymph fisherman, so I assumed he would fish the Weenie as he would any nymph. When our paths crossed in mid-morning, I asked how he was doing. “Skunked,” he said. I asked if he had tried the Weenie and he said yes. I was perplexed. After a few more questions, he revealed that he had been fishing it as if it were a streamer. He assumed that anything that was so obviously an “attractor pattern” should be cast out and stripped back. Once he started fishing it like a nymph, he caught plenty of trout.
I suppose that one reason I fish the Weenie as often as I do, aside from its undeniable effectiveness, is that it’s often still on my leader from the last time I went fishing. I use a combination rod/reel case that enables me to reel the fly all the way up to the rod tip, take the rod apart at the center ferrule, and slide the entire assembly into the protective case. When I am ready to fish again I simply pull everything back out of the case, reassemble the rod, and pull the fly and leader out from the tip-top. I once decided that I should not make the Weenie the first fly I’d try on every outing. Yet it would often be the last fly I used. Eventually I reasoned, “If it’s already on the leader, why fight it?”
Odd though it may seem, I find fishing the Weenie very liberating. I have great confidence in its effectiveness, and when it’s on the business end of my leader I am free to focus on other factors like reading the water, approach, and presentation. I am not distracted by puzzling over whether a different fly might bring more strikes. Because of extensive experience fishing this fly I know instinctively how and where to cast it, what to do to achieve the fine nuance of presentation that will be most deadly, and even when to initiate a hook-set.
Despite all of that, it would be boring to fish nothing but the Weenie. I will always enjoy hatch-matching when the opportunity presents, swinging a wet fly, working a Woolly Bugger or other streamer, or especially seeing a rise to my dry fly. But sometimes, if all I want to do is catch a few fish, one fly is all I need.