9:47 AM
Matthew Supinski's Gray Drake/Selectivity/Nexus Blog
( The master on his knees...all modern day guide dudes/dudettes need to worship this mans wisdom!-especially nymphomaniacs !) image Terry Lawton UK
(gillie's hut- a guide pad!-Mick Hall- Australia Image)
As promised...next volume...enjoy!
THE SELECTIVE TROUTMAN’S FIRST WORKING ROCK STAR- FRANK SAWYER
Carrying on the tradition of the nymph master G.E.M. Skues,
along with the poetic eloquence of Hill’s natural observations, Frank Sawyer
came to be what many would consider a
selective trout rock star!
Sawyer had meager beginnings. Born at the Millhouse village
of Bulford on the banks of the famous River Avon and Wiltshire, he was destined
to be a man of the River and its trout. He had no other choice than to be
troutsman master. What St. Francis Assisi was to be animal world, Sawyer was
his beloved Brown trout of the Avon River. Being from English farming stock, he
worked hard as a youth always to find time every day to observe an angle for
his beloved trout. At the young age of 18 in 1925, he received a “under –Keeper”
apprentice job with the tutelage of River keeper Fred Martin, who is employed
by Lieut. Col. Bailey. This was a magical stretch of the River Avon which
yielded large Brown trout, magnificent hatches and unparalleled English
countryside beauty. Today, rockstar”Sting”, has his $7 million, 17th-century
manor house located on the same location where Sawyer apprenticed his keeper
ship -- rockstar coincidence!
What made Sawyer such a gallivanting selective fly fishing
Epicurean was that he was for the first time, a well-paid empirical angler
whose job as a River keeper/guide on aristocratic waters allowed him the
ability to write books, create flies, develop fly rods, travel the world in
search of trout and attend prestigious dinners, partaking of fine gourmet food
and spirits, and in a Mozart -- like fashion. Simply put, a true modern day fly
fishing rockstar.
His two great works,” Keeper of the Stream”, and “ Nymphs
and the Trout” (1952-1958), produced highly observant and analytical writings
about the natural world he was”one with”, seeing as his job as a River keeper
not only provided him employment, but gave him all the time necessary for
observations that would take several lifetimes. Sawyer writes passionately:
“A river keeper's job
is to assist Mother Nature, and Mother Nature can be capricious. She has to be
studied, and studied thoroughly before she can be assisted, or she strongly
resents interference. To be successful in producing either trout or insects, or
both, it is first necessary to know something of the habits and lifecycles of
these creatures, to learn of their food, their environment, and their enemies.
Here is the most interesting part of the River keeper's life.
In rivers, as
elsewhere, one thing preys upon another, forming a vast cycle in which one
creature is the food of something else. In rivers usually the smaller animals
are the food of those which are larger. So it is necessary to start at the
beginning with the first living creatures and, putting first life at the bottom
of the ladder, work patiently towards the topmost rung. It is the tiny things
-- the young -- which need the most assistance, or life in every instance
commences in a very humble way.
In this manner only
can Nature be assisted. If a suitable environment is made for the smaller
animals, then it will also be suitable for those that are larger, and so on up
the scale. If one is to keep trout in the river without feeding them
artificially, then that river must produce trout food, and if one is to produce
successfully the insect life provides a means of existence for the trout, one
must first make sure that for the insects, too, there is food.
The sport of dry fly
and nymph fishing for trout depends largely on fly life, a large percentage of
flies are bred in the river. So it is also necessary to assist in the
production of the species of fly which is of most value from the fisherman's
point of view; flies which will, in the completion of their lifecycle, be
present in and on the surface of the water to form an attraction which tempts
the trout rise to the surface to feed on them.
Each season of the
year has its attractions as the weeks change to months so change the character
and appearance of the river, and the life of the river and riverside creatures.
The river keeper need never be lonely, for he learns to understand and
appreciate the wildlife which are his constant companions, and as he sees the
fruits of his labors all around him he gets a certain satisfaction.” (KEEPER OF
THE STREAM)
Though known for his fish catching abilities, Sawyer was a
trout environmental naturalist, learned how all the elements of the chalk
stream ecosystem must come perfectly into a fine tune harmony. He manicured the
waters vegetation like a greenskeeper of a golf course. He built deflector dams
to speed up water and create gravel spawning areas. He understood how all the
manicuring he did, in combination with weather and the season, all needed to
intertwine into a perfect biological harmony.
“The fact that weed
beds can help was brought home forcibly to me when a sudden and very heavy
storm swept part of the Upper Avon Valley late on June. Thousands of gallons of
draining from several roads and farm tracks entered the River at the head of the
long reach of shallows -a surging volume of rainwater which, as it washed down
the chalky tracks and lanes, down the sides of the hot tarred roads from the
hills, and into the gutters and drains of the village, a change to the color of
very dirty milk and was impregnated with the filth. As such it was being
discharged into the river.
The level of the river was lower than usual at
that time of year I watched in disgust as the filthy muck mingled with the
clear water of the hatch pool -- watched until, from bank to bank, water
quickly change color and then swept with the current downstream. Such water was
unfit for anything to live in. I saw the dorsal fins of several grayling break
the surface while hordes of minnows and other small fry crowded to the edges of
the river where water, out of the reach of the currents, had remained clear.
Here and there flies hatched, to struggle and flutter about for a while before
floating away, trapped in the surface film.
Fearful for the
safety of the insect life and trout farther down the river, and with the
intention of watching carefully anything that might happen, I went toward a set
of controls a mile downstream. The mayfly season had finished but so far no
weeds had been cut in this particular reach. All dominant, great masses of
flowering ranunculus were spread across the surface from bank to bank -- masses
which at intervals were so dense that passage of water through them was
impeded, and where clear spaces were almost negligible. Into these weed beds
swept the dirty water.
I walked slowly to
keep pace with the discoloration, but as it passed from weed bed to weed bed I
could see it was gradually clearing. Halfway down the reach in a short length
clear of weeds, the river bed showed plainly. There I waited. After half an
hour the gravel bottom was still visible, though the water had clouded a
little. The danger I had feared was passing away.
Retracing my steps
and going upstream quickly, I came upon cloudy conditions. After the first
hundred yards I could no longer see the gravel bottom -- a farther quarter of a
mile and nothing but the tops of the weed-strands was visible, and at the pool
above, the volume of filth entering from the ditch and increase. Once more I
went downstream.
It became increasingly obvious the dense
masses of ranunculus were acting like a great filtration plant. The widespread
fronds and tresses were gathering and absorbing the filth from the water acting
like great strainers to purify the river and render it once more fit for the
aquatic creatures to live in”
Around 1928 when Sawyer became the head - keeper on the
River Avon’s “Officers Club Association”, which later became the”Services Dry
Fly Fishing Association”, natural Brown trout reproduction had been greatly
reduced due to habitat degradation of farm riparian grazing, silt run- off,
agricultural pollution and the degradation by the British Army Tank maneuvers
on the Salisbury plain.( Note: In the 1950’s, a similar situation of military
maneuvers in attentional chemical discharges into the groundwater occurred on
the hallowed Au Sable River of Michigan and has had long term toxic effects on
its wild trout). Through his amazing work as a fish culturist,, Sawyer stripped
spawning males and females of their milt and eggs, and raised them to fry stage
in holding rivers and carriers. Around 100,000 fry were restocked in the river
each year from 1930 to 1953, which accounted for many large selective Brown
trout that came to the fly anglers presentations.
Sawyer lived and breathed his beloved River Avon and created
a dynamic selective trout world that by today's standards would be hard to
duplicate. He writes:”
“In face of this kind
of thing is easy to understand why few rivers at the present time mind pure,
wholesome condition required by nature to enable regeneration of trout take
place, and why we have to resort to certain artificial methods to assist in
maintaining a stock. Of these, the most widely practiced is to catch up trout
of both sexes when they are in the right spawning condition. The female is, by
gentle pressure, stripped of her eggs in the male is similarly treated for
fertilization, then both are returned to the water unharmed. The eggs are laid
down in hatcheries where, if the simple task of fertilization has been properly
carry out, a very high percentage will hatch into alevins and eventually become
fry.
As one delves into
nature, so more and more things become apparent. At first one wonders why trout
should choose to spawn in winter, and then why the freshly hatched fish should
be encumbered by an ungainly yolk sac, but in all nature there is a reason for
everything and in trying to assist her we must find out these reasons and try
to follow them through.
First, the spawning. It becomes obvious that
during winter the temperature of the water drops to its lowest point of the
year – to a point when all animal and vegetable growths are at a standstill. The
increased water supply welling from the springs cleans all the foulness of
rotted vegetation from the gravel and with the additional aeration this
cleanliness is maintained for eight or 10 weeks. Trout eggs laid in the gravel
during this time will remain clean and well, aerated and are unlikely to be
affected by animal or vegetable growths
Trout fry need a
certain food during the first month if
we are to help them through this precarious stage then we must find out just
what this food consists.
Some say this initial food consists mostly of
plankton, but my own studies have proved otherwise on the Avon. March is much
to be early for movements of the plankton to take place; this happens in the
warmer months of April and May. In autopsies I have carried out on little trout
during this first month of feeding I have found food in them has been
exclusively the larvae of midges.
My careful study of
small wild trout convinces me that they depend entirely on water-borne animal life. They poise themselves in mid water and just
wait for food to come to them. I like to think that nature provided these
creatures solely for the food of baby trout, for I cannot discover another
reason for their existence.”(KEEPER OF THE STREAM)
Sawyer was gifted
with explaining politically and with a sense of natural order how his trout river
functioned in perfect harmony with the natural world. As the early 1950s saw
the River Avon deteriorate at a rapid pace, Sawyer instituted the”Great Clean Up”!., a
program, whereby through dredging and silt -- traps, set up carrier feeders
that cleaned and purified the gravel and added vegetation for insect life and
enhanced natural trout spawning areas. Quickly the river returned to its former
glory and produced an amazing load of natural reproduction. Insect life
rebounded in a big way and the River Avon was one of the best fishing chalk
streams in all of England. Sawyer later experimented with the introduction of
“chalk limestone buffers”, which clean the water, broke down organic matter and
created an incredibly explosive venue for creating insect and crustacean life,
which made for fat and fast growing trout.
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