GOING FISHING with Kotare

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33728, 28 December 1974, Page 11

GOING FISHING with Kotare

Anglers have been tying artificial flies for at least 1800 years. So it’s not surprising that so-called new patterns, and new methods, often turn out to be as new as an AngloSaxon war-club.

Old books on fly-tying, ancient tackle catalogues discovered in that old box in the roof. Uncle Wilberforce’s parchment - partitioned leather fly-books brought over from England in the late 1800 s, reveal patterns and dressings that some contemporary fly-tiers might have thought up to then belonged to them alone. Luckily for anglers, though not perhaps for fly-dressers, patterns can’t be patented.

Let’s say some American dreams up a fly which works wonders in his local Wyoming stream. He calls it the Whiz Kid. Sooner or later, unless he is utterly secretive, Whiz Kids will flood the Wvoming scene. It’s unlikely, but if the pattern proves consistently irresistible to fish. Whiz Kids will be whizzing all over the world.

For a time they will enjoy a vogue disproportionate to their real worth, for if one thing is certain about 90 per cent of most

new trout flies it’s their tendency to an early obsolescence, like this year’s fashions for women.

But quite likely, Whiz Kids handed reverently as the latest modem marvel to anglers in Taupo, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Hampshire, or Hanover, for example, will be recognised respectively as a traditional Sticky Tiki, Jenkins the Milk, Baggy Haggis, Test Cricket, or Herr Dog. Patterns and dressings are international property. If anyone did manage to patent a fly which, by reason of its sudden phenomenal success among fish or fishermen, looked like making a fortune for him, he really couldn’t stop others trying to make their fortunes with it too. They would merely give the pattern another name, or fractionally vary the dressing.

So I am not likely to bring the wrath, or even the legal counsel, of English fly-dressers down on me by revealing the dressings of their seven favourite reservoir lures for rainbow trout, or of raising Mr Keith Draper’s hackles, so to speak, by telling you that one of the English patterns, the Baby Doll, is the inspiration for an entirely new lure, the

Dolly, to be marketed shortly in this country by Tackle House.

Undoubtedly, all seven of the English patterns to follow will take New Zealand rainbows and at times brown trout too.

Polystickle: Fish-shaped body built with turns of polythene strip backed with raffine (synthetic garden raffia), cut to fish tail at end; red wool throat under polythene body; beard hackle in various colours (black or orange or red). Sweeney Todd (after the Demon Barber): black squirrel wing, black floss body ribbed with silver tinsel; magenta throat; beard hackle only (dyed red cock hackle). Missionary: silver mallard overwing tied on flat, white chenille body ribbed with silver tinsel; tail and beard of cock hackle dyed red.

Baby Doll: white wool built as fish-shaped body, with four strands along top to form the back, and a short fish tail teased out at end. Muddler Minnow: tinsel body, oak turkey tail and wing with small quantity of black squirrel too; head spun deer hair clipped to tight ball shape. Note that this is the Eng-

lish variety of the original American pattern, which is dressed much more sparsely. Appetiser: The wing is a combination of white marabou herl and grey squirrel (on top); body white chenille ribbed with silver tinsel; tail and beard hackle a mixture of hot orange and medium green dyed cock hackle fibres and silver mallard, mixed. Church Fry: grey squirrel wing, hot orange floss body ribbed with silver tinsel; throat magenta, beard hackle hot orange cock hackle fibres. These and other lures currently tied for rainbows in the new English reservoirs generally follow thinbodied American bucktail and streamer styles rather than the fatter dressings favoured for New Zealand rainbow lures. Red or hotor hot-orange beard hackles are a feature of many flies. They represent the gill-rakers of small fish. Heads, seemingly, are always dressed with black silk rather than with other colours.

The English angler John Kelley, who brought these popular reservoir patterns with him on his present visit to New Zealand, is taking back with him tying techniques for some of the local lures.

On his part, Keith Draper, the Taupo professional fly-tier, has modelled a new lure on the English Baby Doll, which imitates the fry of English coarse fish. This particular pattern, unlike most of the others, is too fat for Mr Draper’s purpose—to have it imitate the slimmer outlines of smelt and some other small New Zealand fishes. The New Zealand version of the lure will be called a Dolly-. It’s dressed in the same way, but the colour of the black will vary.