Steelhead Flies - Chris Mann
This second part of the book concentrates on the flies used for steelhead, the sea-run rainbows of the West Coast of North America and, more recently, the Great Lakes area of the Mid-West of America and Canada. Many of these flies could also be used for Atlantic salmon fishing and indeed many of them are. It can also go the other way around: many steelhead flies started life as salmon flies and the on-going love affair of steelhead anglers with Spey and Dee-style flies has had the ironic effect that many old classic flies no longer used for salmon fishing are used on a regular basis for steelhead fishing.
In general, steelhead flies can be differentiated from salmon flies by the more exuberant use of colour and the liberal application of modern, flash materials. There are also some colours such as purple and pink that are used for many steelhead flies and which are rarely, if ever, seen on salmon flies. Some of these differences may be due to the generally more aggressive behaviour of steelhead themselves but much of it has to do with the natural conservatism of salmon anglers. Steelhead anglers are also far more likely to use floating and surface effect, waking flies than salmon anglers.
It could also be that the conservation of fish stocks play a role here: catch and release of fish at a time of diminishing natural runs has been much more readily adopted in North America and fly fishing for steelhead has been seen much more as a contest of skill and cunning rather than of a matter of numbers of fish caught. This has led to the phenomenon that steelhead flyfishermen, using floating flies in summer and winter, have been prepared to accept catch ratios compared to the number of hours fished that would simply be seen as unproductive in Europe.
In this part of the book I have also included many of the classic Spey and Dee flies from Scotland. Although they were originally designed solely for salmon fishing, it is undoubtedly true that today they are far more likely to be used by steelhead fishermen than by salmon anglers and for this reason they are included here.
One fact that stands out immediately when one looks at a range of steelhead patterns is the number of multiple entries that one meets from a comparatively small number of flydressers. Names such as Glasso, Lemire, McNeese, Garrett, Van Denmark, Butorac and Johnson, amongst others, appear again and again in the lists.
This is no accident. Steelhead anglers have always spread the details of their fly patterns much more widely than most salmon anglers and that the steelhead angling community is small by Atlantic salmon standards. Also, most of the waters that are fished have public access, so that there is a much greater degree of knowledge about who is catching what and which flies are being used. Steelhead anglers also meet each other on a much more regular basis. I have taken account of this phenomenon by including an appendix to the index in which fly names have been cross-referenced to the inventors' names for those flydressers who have multiple entries in this directory.
There has also been much more information on steelhead flies published recently in books than has been the case with Atlantic salmon flies. In recent years, authors of books about steelhead flies have included Trey Combes (2), John Shewey, Bob Veverker, Art Lingren, Matt Supinski, Forrest Maxwell, Deke Meyer, Troy Bachmann, Bob Arnold (2) and the Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club, in addition to the huge amount and wide range of information published on websites on the internet and passed around at public gatherings such as fly fairs and conclaves.
All this is in great contrast to the small numbers of Atlantic salmon anglers who have either published books or are well known to the wider angling community. It must be concluded that steelhead fly fishermen are less secretive and take pleasure in passing on the results of their experience to their fellow anglers.
468 pages.
