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THE PIONEER SPIRIT
I have recently been reading a number of historical fly-fishing treatises covering not only the origins of fly-fishing on the continent but also the early history of fly-fishing in the America?s. The one thing that has impressed me is the resourcefulness and pioneering spirit of those early fly anglers. It has caused me to wonder where that spirit has gone in our modern day.
This was another very interesting piece, Trav. I'm currently co-authoring a book project with a gentleman who taught himself to fly fish when he was 9 years old. It took him 3 years to catch his first fish on a fly rod. That was in the mid 1950s. That turned into a 30-some-odd year career as a professional fly fishing instructor and guide...and counting. And the theme of the project is how everything he's learned he learned from someone else. So it is sort of a history of American fly fishing through the eyes of this one angler. And MAN am I learning a LOT! It's one of the coolest things I've ever done in terms of history/writing projects.
Trav, the things we learned through what used to be called "the School of Hard Knocks" we earned and they were ours forever, to share or not as we saw fit. The discovery, the "Aha" moment was also ours when we learned the why of it. I think thats the missing piece in a lot of stuff today. People understand the how, but are fuzzy on the why. That's a large piece of the puzzle missing.
Great article.
REE
Ron and Trav,
Do y'all think this is a general truth about a lot of things...not just fly fishing? I've talked to several of my elders about this...folks who understand education, training, and business performance...and they all have the same basic observation: a lot of "cookie-cutter" type superficial knowledge learned in classrooms or brief training sessions and not much real-world experience-based understanding of the how's and why's of their fields of endeavor. For example, yesterday I had a conversation with a guy with over 40 years of retail sporting goods experience about this very thing. He commented that virtually nobody in a sporting goods store today has anything more than a very superficial knowledge of their products, the sports they are used for, etc. and that the store managers rarely have any interest in sporting goods at all; but are guys/gals with MBA's who are only concerned with the bottom lines of spreadsheets and some basic principles of retail management they learned in a classroom in business school from someone else who learned them in some other business school and so on. He said it has been about 15 years since he has seen a sporting goods store manager who got into the business 10 years or so prior and worked his way up through the business because he had a love for sports and recreation, learning the products, people, vendors, reps, consumers, market trends, etc. of the business firsthand. He said when he got in the business, the standard employee discount was 50-70% so that employees would buy and use the products - thus learning all about them firsthand. Today, a 10% employee discount is considered a "benefit." And back then, a guy could work in retail sporting goods and raise a family (meagerly, but it could be done). Thus, he could stay in the business and a store could retain employees. He routinely got Christmas bonuses = an extra month's pay. Now, these stores can't even keep a college kid or high school grad for very long because they find better pay and benefits somewhere else. And the smart ones are hiring retirees on social security who only want part-time work at low pay and no benefits who look like they've been doing it forever and ought to know what they are talking about.
Again, this is just one example. And I chose it because it's one we can all identify with easily. I'm really not trying to pick on sporting goods stores. Pick a pharmacy. Pick a department store. Pick an auto mechanic's shop. Pick your local heating and cooling company. Look at your local schools! Most classroom teachers look like they should still be in school themselves. As soon as they can, they get a masters in administration and leave the classroom for one of those non-teaching school system jobs that outnumber classroom teacher jobs nowadays.
Seems to me we're suffering a general lack of experience-based wisdom throughout our society. Someone graduates from school having gone straight through their BS and MS and we call them an expert. And we elect a President who has never truly been in charge of a single thing before.
I think we've lost all appreciation for much beyond the superficial.
As a kid I became interested in fly fishing in the mid 1960s. I found an old bamboo fly rod with a sticky fly line in a small storage closet in our garage. My dad did not fly fish but had bought it for worm fishing in small streams. He told me he tied 50 feet of mono on the end of the fly line. The fly line never got out of the reel.
My only casting instruction was from an indian barber in Upper Pennisula of Michigan(Grand Marais) He showed me how to hold a book under my arm while casting. He also showed me how to tie an extremely sparse squirrel hair streamer that as he said was a killer on the brook trout in the area.
I got a cheap Herters vice and hooks and my main reference book was Joe Brooks fly fishing book. I had lots of feathers and fur because we hunted and all our friends hunted. Later I got a book by Polly Rosborough"Tying and Fishing the Fuzzy Nymphs" which greatly transformed my tying & fishing.
It interesting in hindsight how long it took meto be proficient at casting and tying more or less struggling on my own. A fishing buddy and I got a friend interested in fly fishing and in just a few years he casts and ties like a pro.
Neil:
I love your article, yet I am really glad that those good old days are behind us...
I miss some of what you and I grew up with (I was born in 1949). But I am glad that over the past 60 years many things have improved for the better.
Being a "Junior Grade Old Fxxt", I am trying to avoid starting sentences with...."When I was your age, we didn't have.....!" I enjoy most of the modern conveniences we have today. Sometimes I wonder about, such as now that I have 999 channels on my television (had only 3 channels back in the 50's), why I cannot find anything worth watching? Growing up, I use to go to the local movie house every week, now there nothing at the movie complexes worth seeing?
If not for the Personnel Computer, and the Internet, I would not have found FAOL! Never learned how to Tie Fly Patterns (using Al Campbell's 60-part "Fly Tying Series" or "Fly Of The Week"), "Build a Graphite Fly Rod", Improve my Fly Casting, or Improve Fly Fishing knowledge! I would not have taken "Fish-In" trips to South Dakota, Catskills, Idaho, or Texas!
I do have my own paperback copy of "Noll Guide to Trout Flies...and how to tie them" by Raymond R. Camp I found it is a Used Book Store, and I have found it useful and interesting. Yet without the help of Al Campbell's instructions on Fly Tying, I would have been lost. Without Ron Lucas explaining "Atlantic Salmon" or "Just Old Flies" I would not have learned about a Past that I never knew, and how we stand on the shoulders of so many who shared the same passion that they past on to us, to pass forward to many future generations. We live in the present, and wisdom & knowledge that use to sit on dusty shelves in the archives of various Libraries, is now readily available to anyone who wants to know.
Recently I read an article in the 2009 Fly Tyer (Winter) magazine, on the "Hewitt Skater" pattern. I became fascinated with the fly pattern and the man who originated the pattern; Dan Rupe gave me one of those flies at the 1999 FAOL Fish-In at Hill City SD. I did not know then the importance of that fly pattern or the life of the person who created it (Edward Ringwood Hewitt (1866-1957) and just who he was.
I found out some amazing things! He was a very rich man, from a wealthy family, also the orginator of the "Bivisible" fly pattern, an author, inventor, chemist, and during his life was a major player in many of our countries leading company's, colleges, and other public institutions!
I am always surprised when during my searches of the World Wide Web, that FAOL articles keep appearing, as part of my search!Through fly fishing and this site, I am learning more about a history that I have never known!
Today with modern technology that we have, the "Knowledge of the Whole World" is at our finger tips! All we have to do, is reach out, and find what we wish to know!
I do not know what the future will be like, but with access of all past, the future has to become better educated, as to the successes and the failures of those who came before us, and how we can better correct past mistakes, to give a brighter future for those who are not yet born!
Parnelli:D
I'd not want to turn in what I have now for the older ways. But still, it is vital to know where we came from in order to understand better where we are and where we can head toward.
I have to agree with Parnelli.
I don't think the pioneering spirit has gone anywhere, it's still present, alive & well here in America and around the world. It's just that fly fishermen aren't struggling to learn how to cast & tie flies like we used too. We have many, many books, magazines, the internet & the like brimming with good, solid information to help the beginner. Now the cutting (and bleeding) edge stuff is done in learning how to catch new species of fish, learning new & improved methods of tying & then fishing your flies, pushing the boundaries of the sizes of fish that can be caught. Lots of innovation is taking place in other aspects of the sport too.
If anything I think innovation is taking place at a far faster pace these days because we can share ideas much more quickly that ever before.
It has been said that there is nothing like the good old days and there never was! I am not suggesting that fly fishing schools, fly tying classes, the information explosion, the Internet, and all the other things that we have today are not valuable tools. JC and I began offered a comprehensive fly fishing school back in Michigan in the late 60's, and I have taught fly tying classes, done a good bit of writing, edited a national fly fishing magazine, and long been a strong proponent of education. My point is, and I believe that it is valid, is that there is a difference between having information and knowing what to do with it.
I would have relished having some of the things that are available to the modern fly fisher back when I got started. However, I question whether or not it would have been as meaningful. I have spend enough time around other anglers to know that there is a vast difference between knowing and doing. Like many of the 'old school' anglers of my generation we learned by doing and when we did something that worked we learned from it, and when we tried something, and it failed, we learned from that too.
Today's anglers are the best equipped, and most technically savay group of anglers that have ever picked up a fly rod. At the click of a mouse they can access the accumulated knowledge of the ages, but I wonder at what cost? Would they be better anglers, and more important, have a better appreciation for the sport if they had to apply themselves to learn these things?
Speaking for myself I would not trade my years of trial and error for a library filled with fly-fishing books, an I-phone that gives me instant updates on the flies that are hatching on my favorite trout stream, and streaming video of a champion caster demonstrating how to do the double haul.
But then, that's just me.
The Chronicler