Quote:
A Look at Renegade Variations
Bruce Staples
Have you ever looked at a fly and wondered "Where on earth did
that thing come from?" Finding the answer to that question can be
another fascinating aspect of fly fishing. The answer to this
question for the Renegade and its progeny is a creativity story
typical in the art of fly tying.
The Renegade was conceived in 1928 by Taylor "Beartracks"
Williams for an evening of fishing on central Idaho's Malad
River. Fore and aft patterns were not new, even then. They were
conceived in Europe centuries before. But Beartrack's pattern, tied
in his Sawtooth Shack fly shop that 1928 afternoon in Gooding,
Idaho, would become the world's best known of this type. White
hackle in front gives high visibility and brown hackle lends
physical and artistic balance. Williams could not have chosen a
better material than peacock herl to form the body. It remains, in
this age of hi-tech synthetics, a consummate attractor of fish.
Williams' Renegade produced whether presented wet or dry.
Thus, within a handful of decades, its popularity spread
worldwide. Incidentally, the Beartracks Preserve on Little Wood
River, purchased by the State of Idaho from the Hemingway
family, is named for Williams who went on to be the chief guide
at the Sun Valley Lodge and to be a fishing companion of Ernest
Hemingway. Williams died in 1952.
Fly tiers admire each others work, but they also consider that work
to be springboards for self-expression. Thus began the alteration
of Williams' Renegade. The Reversed Renegade and Double
Renegade made appearances. The Renegade Nymph came out of
Colorado. There have been a number of claims on creation of the
Royal Renegade. An Eastern Renegade was created on the other
side of the Mississippi. Henry's Lake got into the act with the
Henry's Lake Renegade, Half-Assed Renegade and Over-Wing
Renegade. Their origin is obscure, but not so for the Super
Renegade. Ardell Jeppsen of Labelle, Idaho created it while in a
hospital recuperating in the winter of 1959-60 from polio. He
named it "The Hooligan" and kept it a secret. It had the
Renegade's white front hackle, peacock body and brown hackle.
To these, Jeppsen added a white chenille rear body segment
followed by a rear grizzly hackle. But someone spilled the beans
and offered it commercially as the Super Renegade. It went on to
be modified into a bewildering assortment of body colors and
hackle combinations. While these were evolving, a Buster
Renegade (red quill fiber tail and optional white rib) appeared in
Page 2
the Island Park-southwest Montana area and loquacious Stan
Blaylock offered his Blaylock Bug, no more than a Renegade in
which peacock herl butts form legs behind the front blue dun
hackle. No wonder Terry Hellekson in his "Popular Fly Patterns"
calls the Renegade probably the most used fly in the West and
declares that one cannot keep up with its variations.
And so it goes in fly tying where the Renegade's story is familiar.
The Humpy/Goofus Bug, the Muddler Minnow, the Wulff
patterns, the Sofa Pillow and others have started family trees that
have become convoluted to the extreme. But now such stories
will not require decades. Use of the internet makes it possible for
a fly tied in one place to be realized around the world in days. So
variations will come even faster than Terry Hellekson exclaimed
for the Renegade. This is certain to intensify the fun and
fascination in fly tying where modification is the name of the
game
It's also listed in the Encyclopedia of the Fly Tiers Art.