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As Egor Mustad grinned into the gentle glade,
his reflection was disturbed by a swirl and
ripples on the surface. His drooling image,
which had been making faces back at him for
several moments, was now gone and in it's place
the fleeting visage of a small fish returning
to the depths. Glancing upstream and pulling
his animal skin garment tight so it wouldn't
get wet, he fastened his good eye on a tiny
'thingy' drifting toward him. Crouching there,
he watched as the object sprouted wings and flew
off. Had the fish not taken a fly from the surface,
he would not have seen it! As luck would have it
a duck had been bobbing about upstream and a side
flank feather had become loose and was now also
drifting into Egor's vision.
And thus my friends was born the idea which would
launch a thousand silly hats and long sticks.
Those of you who mistakenly think those drab
examples attributed to some obscure Nun are wet
flies must remember this. They are very simple,
basically a hook with some stuff on it and a
feather tied back, about the same thing Egor
tried to produce with his strip of sinew, a
carved hook of wood and a duck feather. A simply
made fly which floated just as the thing he saw
the fish take. Unequivocally, the first flies were
dry! But the hook was not too good so he invented
metal instead and made a hook out of some.
Well, let me tell you this. The hook worked a lot
better, but it did not float so Egor Mustad gave
up and invented golf and bowling. Over a few more
eons fly-fishing languished, remaining unchanged as
all of his floating fly patterns, which had floated
and worked so well, now sunk. Little did he know
he had also invented, wet flies!
And there you have the answer to those flies of
the old lady from the Church. Misfits at best,
they were used for many years as they were until
Sir D. Conrad, (the first) invented 'hackle.'
This stuff (feathers from the back of a chickens
head) when wound circularly about a sinking hook
shaft will float the thing! Alas, if only
Egor could be with us today; to see how
his dry-fly evolved into the gossamer wisp of
delight it is to the intelligentsia.
To think how history is made. One fish, a hatching
mayfly, one Egor and a duck feather. I have read
that if senility had not intervened he was going
to write a book too, he may have but (history is
unclear on this point) don't count on it. ~ James Castwell
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