New Review of Selectivity from UK

Taken from 'Salmo Trutta'- The UK journal for Wild Trout'- thanks Terry Lawton!- come and fish the Delaware, Muskegon, Letort, Missouri etc. mate in August- will take a little chink of the agnostic armor off!...lol

Read more »

Posted in: english fly fishing , gray drake lodge , Selectivity book , selectivity dvd

Selectivity Snippets....the Unpublished Chapters- History_Vol 4- "The First Trout Hunter Rock Star"-Part 1

( 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.

Read more »

Posted in: Blue winged olives , chalk stream , english fly fishing , Frank Sawyer , gray drake lodge , nymphing , river Avon , Selectivity book , selectivity dvd

Selectivity History- Vol_4- Waller Hills- Artistic Eloquence with Empirical Observation

A Masterpiece- I have read it a dozen times!!!

John Waller Hills -- artistic eloquence with empirical observation

Major John Waller Hills was the perfection of the British aristocracy. Having been honored in World War II and having an illustrious career in British Parliament, he chose to pursue these later life in search of the wiley trout of Britain's Hampshire chalk Stream country. He had access to all the prime beats of the River Test and with his affiliations with land barons, the Houghton Club and privy to private beats held by British nobility. Unlike the standard English country sporting gentleman, who was in search of easy quarry both by fly rod and gun, who was tucked neatly into his britches and Wellington boots, Tattersall and tweeds, Hills was an observant naturalist who spent as much time logging notes and diaries as he did tying on flies.

In his two highly acclaimed books, “History of Fly Fishing For Trout”,and ,”A Summer on The Test”, (1921-1952), he used to ask of authorship: one as a fly angling historian looking at the development of the sport and its flies; the other as a magnificent prose and observation on his days along the chalk streams on the world's most magnificent trout waters. For all selective trout anglers the Test chronicles should be read over -- and -- over which I have. Each time you read this magnificent and endearing account of the life of a fly angler and the pursuit of highly selective fish, you gain more insight into a world in which we don’t often“ stop to smell the roses’, in the heat of fishing pursuit.

In his”History”, Hills made great observations on the development of the dry fly, wets and nymphs. His giving credit to the modern establishment of the dry fly in the early 1800s to G.P.R.PULMAN, and with his work”Vode Mecum of Fly Fishing For Trout”, (18510, Hills gave accolades to Pullman for the first total dry fly concept of false casting to dry the fly in casting the fly to float over rising, surface feeding trout. Whether Pullman's account of false casting was to drive the fly or line, or to keep either floating, is still up to interpretation.

In Hills”History”, he had opinionated views on the whole Hallford versus Skues controversy. On Halford's views, Hills goes on to say:

“if he is to be criticized is because like most reformers he overstated his case. He considered that the dry fly has superseded for all time and all places all other methods of fly fishing, and that those who thought otherwise were either ignorant or incompetent. He did not realize and perhaps it is impossible that he should have realized, that the coming of the floating fly did not mean that previous experience and  previous knowledge were as worthless as though they had never been; but that meant that from then onwards fly fishing was divided into two streams. The streams are separate, but they run parallel, and there are many cross channels between them.”

As for Hills's comment on Skues development of the nymph he writes;

“Since Minor Tactics appeared, there has been another noticeable movement, the use of imitation nymphs. The underwater life of flies is much better known than it used to be, thanks largely to Hallford, and the names of the olive dun, the blue-winged olive, the iron blue and pale watery dun have been identified and are being copied. And those copies are not taking the form of traditional sunk flies, with head and tail, wing and hackle, but are being built on new lines, copying more closely the original. These are now being used extensively and with success on the shyest chalk stream trout.”

However, Hills's major contribution as an empirical selective flyfishing founder lies in  his observation on the natural world of the trout. He weaved the beauty with science like no other writer and describes the new Machiavellian selective fly anglers goal to observe, listen, watch and enjoy spectacle and hand. Hills writes:

“So much has been written about the scenery and surroundings of fishing, but a late comer in the field is reluctant to embark on it: so much good areas to which he cannot hope to obtain, so much bad into which he may easily fall. But, after all, scenery amd surroundings can hardly be omitted, for I doubt whether anyone thinks of his great days without at the same time recalling not only the weather which must be always be a permanent part of the picture in the fisherman's mind, but also the scenery. You remember the look of the river, the green of the reeds, the wind blowing over the thick bed of sedges, the long line of rustling poplars. And while most rivers are beautiful, especially to him who follows the river and not the road, there is quite particular charm about those of Hampshire and Wiltshire. It is hard to describe, but we all feel it, deep down in our beings. We may belong to the north and would not belong elsewhere if we could; but when May and June come we are caught and swept by a longing for those gracious and lovely valleys, which is not satisfied till we go there.

 In these happy valleys each season is a charm of its own.   There will come days in May when the olives will sail down in fleets.  As April runs into May, the valley changes greatly. The yellow-green of the young willows, bright green of the reeds, the blue-green of the iris, the vivid green of some water weeds -- these are seen simultaneously. May too is the month of the hawthorn, and thorn trees flourish particularly well on the chalk. And to the chalk stream fisherman Junr is the best month of all, for would not if he could choose a windless day in June? It is the month of the meadow flowers, and through the different shades of green are less marked and are merging into the summer sameness, the  yellow iris makes the banks a garden, the wild rose stars the hedges.  As summer goes on in the rest of the world grows dry and dusty, the valley remains green and cool. Running water is everywhere: racing in a miniature trout stream by the roadside; feeling deep brimming carriers, rivers in themselves; trickling and percolating over the fields. The Valley is a delight all year!”

Hill’s anecdotal accounts of the selective will trout become ever more enticing as his observations spin the reader delving into the essence of the poetic beauty of events such as a chalk stream mayfly hatch is meticulous in his insect identification. He used a narrow throat scoop and petri  dish and kept them in vials for taxonomic documentation. When he describes an evening on the River Test, you feel like you were there:

“But  it was now past six o'clock: in the spent fly began to come on the water. All over the surface mayflies were to be seen; they were in clouds in the air above, busy egg - laying, now dipping down and just touching the top of the stream, then rising in the air, then dipping again. They got thicker and thicker, and so did the bodies of dead mayflies floating down. If you're I followed an individual egg - layer, you noticed, if you could pick her out from the swarms of her companions, that her trips through the air got shorter, and her visits to the water more frequent, and that, instead of just brushing the surface in order to lay her eggs, she began to sit for a second or so upon it, until the time when she could rise no more. Then her work done, her store of six or 7000 eggs safely laid, the future of her race assured, she settled on the surface and sailed down upright; but soon she would give a shiver, one of her wings would collapse on the water, until finally she died and fell flat, wings extended in the form of the cross. Thicker and thicker grew the mass of fly over the water, more and more numerous those carried down by the current. At first those floating were present in all stages, sitting upright, or half collapsed, or dying, or dead: but soon the dead predominating, until all that could be seen with their bodies, the dead fly, the spent gnat. These came down in ever-increasing quantities. In the backwaters in eddie's they were packed nearly solid. In the main current, the quick swinging stream of the lower Test, they were separated only by inches. All the broad river was covered, and bore them seawards like a moving carrier. Now all these had escaped the attacks of trout and grayling, and the swifts andswallows and wagtails and warblers and chaffinches and many other birds which prey upon them: all of them had escaped, and had reproduced their species: when you looked at the countless thousands which floated down in the small time during which you saw only a small part of the river, you realized the quantities of them which had survived were so vast that the assaults of all their enemies made no appreciable impression on their numbers”      (SUMMER ON THE TEST)

Read more »

Posted in: chalk stream , english fly fishing , gray drake lodge , John Waller Hills , River Test , Selectivity book , selectivity dvd

LET IT RAIN- LET IT RAIN- LET THE LOVE RAIN DOWN ON YOU!

(Dr. Dave with his first steelhead and what an awesome hen-2:30 p.m.- rain- in a very deep hole known as swallows run-she was not yet thinking of gravel yet!)

Eric Clapton had this one pegged! Eric an amazing fly fisher- owns 150 PLUS (last time press checked) cane rods. He is a true British gentleman fly fisher and has private water on England's River Test in chalk stream Hampshire country.When I had a brief stint working in London in the 80's at the Ambassador Hotel,I'd fish the chalk stream country like the Rivers Avon ,Whyle, Kennett and Itchen- provided I had an invitation to fish these very expensive private club hallowed waters where Halford and Skues started the sport of dry flies and nymphs . I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Clapton and entertaining "slow hand" when he was at the Omni Sagamore Resort- when I was a Corporate Food and Beverage Director guy. How does this pertain on this blog- Because "we are praying for rain"!!!!!!! - SO BROTHER ERIC, LET IT RAIN DUDE!

On a FANTASTIC NOTE- Dr. Dave Johnstone hooked and landed a 'big hard hen" - at the bottom of the ninth! No more steelhead virgins in this boat!!!

And- btw- amen the Lord has risen!

Read more »

Posted in: chalk stream , english fly fishing , eric clapton , hampshire , Itchen , michigan steelhead , muskegon river , muskegon steelhead , Test