Welcome Peter Hayes!

[t.z.]

You can come to Norway ... sort of a time machine in itself ;-)

[Graeme H]

Yeah one's playground learnings are never forgotten and frequently useful esp as you get older and second childhood beckons, Graeme. Thanks for the support if that's what it was!

I don't think I could handle a second childhood. I haven't outgrown my first yet and having another overlapping on this one would be mayhem!

(Definitely support. Your response is exactly how one should deal with Paul in an argument. ))

Cheers,
Graeme

[Massew]

Hi Peter. I've read Outside the Box with great interest. To me it's one of the best fly fishing books ever, although I cannot say I've read them all. It was an eye opener for me och I think it's essential. I have promoted and recommended it to others, for instance by writing a letter to the editor of an fly fishing magazine in Sweden and the letter got published. A picture of the cover of your book was printed with the letter and I hope that sold a few copies for you. I felt quite geeky doing that but considering all the myths that have become truths that need exposing it also seemed important to tell people about your book.

Do you have to deal with any heated discussions with anglers because of your book? The sunken tippet comes first to my mind but you have already written some about that.

Cheers, Mathias

[jphasey]

Hi Peter. I've read Outside the Box with great interest. To me it's one of the best fly fishing books ever, although I cannot say I've read them all. It was an eye opener for me och I think it's essential. I have promoted and recommended it to others, for instance by writing a letter to the editor of an fly fishing magazine in Sweden and the letter got published. A picture of the cover of your book was printed with the letter and I hope that sold a few copies for you. I felt quite geeky doing that but considering all the myths that have become truths that need exposing it also seemed important to tell people about your book.

Do you have to deal with any heated discussions with anglers because of your book? The sunken tippet comes first to my mind but you have already written some about that.

Cheers, Mathias

Hey thanks Mathias--
I'm just delighted to have followers among the thinking flyfishermen of Sweden, where most are thinkers!
No, never heated discussions, I'm a pacifist.

The floating tippet is the only point that the few picky people pick on, and most of them are judging it coming from stillwater fishing, having moved to rivers later and brought the sunk tippet with them as it were.

Skues and the flyfishers of his time, Pre-War, floated their tippets. Writing in the 50s, Bernard Venables in Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing shows every tippet floating and Mr Crabtree never once says Peter shouldn't fail to sink it--and he would have done if the practice was current then, for sure.
It came later.
Tippet sinking seems to have grown up as part of the UK stillwater/reservoir revolution in the Post-War period, and moved on to rivers innocently but erroneously.
But my main point in writing the book was to encourage people to question everything, since the fishing book industry, with only a few wonderful exceptions, seems to have always been dedicated to repeating itself.
Good to hear from you!
Yrs,Peter

[jphasey]

Halford's not on your list then?

Halford knew everything there was to know about flies, trout, and fly fishing at the time, including :-
Through autopsies with Marryatt: that 90% of trout food was nymphs;
Through his study of the work of Pictet, McLachlan, and Eaton, and his working friendship with the latter: how flies grew from egg through many instars to adult nymphs and how they 'hatch' at the surface.
Through keeping nymphs in aquariums till they hatched: how the process worked, what it looked like.
Through watching fish: that visible trout actively feed on nymphs below the surface.

However, he chose to preach to the world (and largely succeeded) that what was beneath the surface was beneath contempt for a gentleman. Gentlemen would only use floating flies. Only a cad would use a nymph. Nymphing was in fact not fly fishing.

Marryatt, the greatest fly fisherman of the time and a total charmer whom everybody looked up to, could not dissuade him and declined to share authorship of his books or membership of the Flyfishers Club with him.
He was unpersuadable.
And he was, relatively to others, an unsuccessful angler.
He set back fly fishing for several decades.

Fish with him? And learn what? How to have a closed mind?
No, at that time, Marryatt would be my man, and I'd expect a mind-expanding day of laughter and discovery.
Cheers Paul.

[Massew]

Hey thanks Mathias--
I'm just delighted to have followers among the thinking flyfishermen of Sweden, where most are thinkers!
No, never heated discussions, I'm a pacifist.

The floating tippet is the only point that the few picky people pick on, and most of them are judging it coming from stillwater fishing, having moved to rivers later and brought the sunk tippet with them as it were.

Skues and the flyfishers of his time, Pre-War, floated their tippets. Writing in the 50s, Bernard Venables in Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing shows every tippet floating and Mr Crabtree never once says Peter shouldn't fail to sink it--and he would have done if the practice was current then, for sure.
It came later.
Tippet sinking seems to have grown up as part of the UK stillwater/reservoir revolution in the Post-War period, and moved on to rivers innocently but erroneously.
But my main point in writing the book was to encourage people to question everything, since the fishing book industry, with only a few wonderful exceptions, seems to have always been dedicated to repeating itself.
Good to hear from you!
Yrs,Peter

Hi Peter, thank you for your reply. I think that many Scandinavians are awfully good at coming up with new fly patterns but equally bad at including any colour that is not obviously there. The colour claret, for example, is virtually non existent over here but at the Isles many use it, and with great success. I think we need to get better at that, and I try in my own way.

I don't remember reading about the difference between still waters and rivers, regarding the tippet of course, and I think I need to reread Outside the Box soon. There were other revelations that impressed me but now I cannot seem to recall them.

Cheers, Mathias

[jphasey]

Mathias, you're not wrong! I wrote FFOTB in the context of river fly fishing and recommended floating your tippet in that context.
With 20::20 hindsight I should have said "this doesn't go for stillwaters" and wish I had!
We have a stillwater Claret Dun, maybe you do too?
Best,Peter

[Massew]

Hi Peter, I'm glad you told me about that bit about stillwater fishing. I would have looked myself silly.

Claret Dun is common here but I think most people tie it plain brown, or like I do, brown with a hint of orange. From now on claret will be there too. I mostly use that colour in terms of midges and I like to experiment with different shades of blue (with much thanks to what I have read and discussed here at SL) for just about any kind of dry fly.

Cheers Mathias

[jphasey]

Hi Peter, I'm glad you told me about that bit about stillwater fishing. I would have looked myself silly.

Claret Dun is common here but I think most people tie it plain brown, or like I do, brown with a hint of orange. From now on claret will be there too. I mostly use that colour in terms of midges and I like to experiment with different shades of blue (with much thanks to what I have read and discussed here at SL) for just about any kind of dry fly.

Cheers Mathias

AAAARGH! BLUE! How can that be right?

Mind you, I have trace memory that Skues experimented with blue macaw feathers for nymphs.
But then, like kingfisher feathers, it's not a colour, but a refraction of light seen as blue in the air by the human eye, but not necessarily in water by the fish eye...

Hmmm if I invented a blue fly I'd name it 'the Conundrum'.

Yrs, Peter

[John Finn]

Not wishing to be one of those picky people Peter ,but I have a big interest in this tippet floating versus sunk theory.Why don't the same principles apply in still water ? Surely the reflection of the sunken tippet would be more obvious especially in calm conditions. Granted it would disappear in the window as the trout approaches.......John