I guess I've been a fan of quill body flies since the day
I caught my first trout on a Quill Gordon. Over time I've
become an even stronger believer in them, having good
success with Art Flick's Red Quill at Hendrickson time
on our Mad River. A.K. Best visited our fly shop here a
few years back, but I missed his presentation. I got
there in time though to see some of the prettiest
Ginger Quills he'd left behind after the show, with
hackle tip wings, and began tying his flies in earnest
then. From time to time, my interest in quill bodies
seems to get rekindled, and now I'm back to them again.
On receiving a batch of flies I'd ordered from my friend
Alice Conba from Ireland a couple of weeks back, my
interest was again peaked when I spotted her Dark Olive,
a quill bodied wet tied in her inimitable style. I've
been tying these and variations of these ever since.
Here's an Olive I've done in a similar vein:
There is an elegance to Alice's flies that is difficult
to replicate. I know, I've been trying for two years,
on and off. Her flies are quite compact, and very
beautiful to my eye. They are, for me, some of the most
difficult flies to tie well. The wings don't extend much
past the bend of the hook, the hackle not much past the
point. Her long trademark tails extend so gracefully
upward. Every section of these flies present challenges,
especially if one is tying them on her short-shanked
Kamasan B175 hooks. So it is with some trepidation and
yet with considerable pride that I show these flies, done
in her style. The Bowman just cried out to be done this
way, and if you look closely at the artist's rendering
in Mary Orvis Marbury's book, you can see the British/Irish
influence in this fly. It almost looks like one of Alice's,
and so I made the connection.
One of the major differences between Alice's quill body
flies and A.K. Best's flies is that Alice uses stripped
peacock quills, dyed appropriately, while A.K. Best uses
stripped hackle quills. The overall effect is pretty much
the same, or seems so to me. I find these flies to be
very effective, and look forward to trying some quill
bodied wets on the Mad River here as soon as I can get
out there. Here's a variation of the Red Quill that I'm
quite sure I'll fish as an emerger:
Mary Orvis Marbury says this about the Bowman:
"The Bowman is a quill gnat, i.e. a fly having the
body made of a strip of quill. It was named after
Mr. William H. Bowman, of Rochester, N.Y., associated
as Fish Commissioner for the State of New York with
General R.U. Sherman, R.B. Roosevelt, Eugene Blackford,
and Seth Green, men well known to the angling fraternity
for the efforts they have so constantly and generously
made to further all fishing interests. Mr. Bowman is a
skillful fisherman as well as an able fish commissioner.
A fly indorsed(sic) by his name is without doubt good."
There's little doubt in my mind that it's a good fly,
and I'll be proving that shortly. One could make a
connection between this fly and the Quill Gordon, but
to my mind they are very much two different flies.
The Quill Gordon I see as an early season fly, much
darker than this one, larger with different wings,
and my feeling about the Bowman is that it might work
later in the season for the lighter colored hatches.
I guess we'll find out. Here's the recipe for the Bowman
(shown at the top of the page):
Tail: Light dun
Body: Natural stripped peacock herl
Wing: Light mallard (coot used in this example)
Hackle: Light dun
Credits: Favorite Flies and their Histories
by Mary Orvis Marbury; Alice Conba, who's taught me most of
what I know. If you'd like to see Alice's flies, I'd suggest
a visit here:
/flytier/aconba/aconba.htm
About Eric:
I started fly fishing as a teen in and around my hometown
of Plattsburgh, New York, primarily on the Saranac River.
I started tying flies almost immediately and spent hours
with library books written by Ray Bergman, Art Lee, and
A. J. McClane. Almost from the beginning I liked tying
just as much as I liked fishing and spent considerable
time at the vise creating hideous monstrosities that
somehow caught fish anyway. Then one day I came upon a
group of flies that had been put out at a local drug store
that had been tied by Francis Betters of Wilmington, N.Y.
My life changed that day and so did my flies, dramatically.
Even though I never met Fran back then, I've always
considered him to be one of my biggest influences.
I had a career in music for twenty years or so and didn't
fish much, though I did fish at times. The band I was with
had its fifteen seconds of fame when we were asked to be in
John Mellencamp's movie "Falling From Grace." I am the
keyboard player on the right in the country club scene in
the middle of the movie. Don't blink. It's on HBO all the
time. We got to meet big Hollywood stars and record in John's
studio. It was a blast.
So how did I wind up contributing to the Just Old Flies
column on FAOL? I'm not sure, it was something that I simply
wanted very badly to do, and they let me. Many of the old flies
take me back to the Adirondacs and my youth, and I guess I get
to relive some of it through the column. I've spent many happy
hours fishing and tying over the years, and tying these flies
brings back memories of great days on the water, and intense
hours spent looking at the flies in the fly plates in the old
books and trying to get my flies to look like them. And now,
here I am, still doing that to this day. ~ EA
|
