Although anglers have been fishing with thousands of different flies, both wet and dry, for many, many years, fly fishing as we know it is a product of merry old England.

Around the turn of the 19th century, two English anglers, Fredrick Halford and G.M.E Skues, were both members of the Houghton Club, an exclusive fly-fishing organization, headquartered in Stockbridge, U.K. The club has a limited membership and owns 14 miles of the River Test. 

Frederick Halford promoted the use of the dry fly; Skues promoted the nymph. There was fierce competition between the two, with each professing that their method was the best. Both authored several books on their preferred method of fishing. 

What’s most significant about this period of time—specifically the early 1900s—is when Frederick Halford began corresponding with Theodore Gordon, the father of American fly fishing. Later in life, Gordon lived on the banks of the Neversink River, in a section that is now under the Neversink Reservoir. He is famous for the quill Gordon dry fly, which he invented. 

Halford and Gordon exchanged flies, which I believe led to the development of the Catskill school of fly tying.

 Like all sports, fly fishing has evolved over the years since Halford and Skues made their contributions. But despite the evolution of fly rods, fly lines and leaders, flies have essentially remained the same. By this I mean traditional Catskill flies, such as quill Gordons and Hendricksons, are still tied in the same manner as they were in Gordon’s time. The exception is that the quality of dry fly hackle has improved dramatically since that time. 

What has not evolved is the dependence that anglers place on fly patterns and fly hatches for their fishing. That’s because fly fishing is so steeped in the philosophical history of fly patterns in relation to the different species of mayflies, that all too many anglers think only in those terms when fishing. We can thank the British angling community, including Halford and Skues, for that. 

All too often, anglers do not fish when they arrive at a river and no flies are hatching. So instead of tying on a nymph, wet fly or streamer, they either don’t fish or go off to another river to look for a hatch. That is sad, because trout fishing as a sport is about more than fishing the dry fly.

Many years ago, before I began to fish with flies, whenever we went fishing it was to try and catch fish. That meant we would use any legal method, including bait, to try and creel a few trout. I recall using small angle worms, crane fly larvae, salmon fly nymphs (in Montana) and a variety of spinners, such as Mepps and CP Swing, to catch trout. One of the positive by-products of fishing with all these different baits and lures is that we learned to read water—learned where trout lived and fed. 

While we don’t keep many trout these days, choosing instead to release them, I still like to catch them whenever I go fishing, even if there’s no surface activity. That’s why I’ll try nymphs, wet flies or even streamer flies if there’s no surface activity. 

For example, a few years ago during Hendrickson time, we were fishing one of the Catskill tailwaters; there were no Hendricksons. It was a cool day; the flows were up. I had waded to a turn in the river, where the head of the pool was quite shallow. At the time I was using a 5 weight, 8 1/2-foot bamboo fly rod. So rather than leave the water and go home or check a different river, I cut my tippet back to 4X and added a size eight streamer of my own design. I cast fly across the pool and let the fly swing with the current. Using this technique, I moved four brown trout and landed three. If I didn’t fish streamer that afternoon, it would’ve been a completely fishless day.

Upon another occasion, during my first trip back to Montana, we were fishing the Madison River just outside Yellowstone Park. I realized after a day on the water that due to the time of year, which was mid-September, there would be little dry-fly action. There were no hatches. So I stopped in at Bob Jacklin’s fly shop and purchased several salmon fly nymph imitations, a few in size 8 and size 10. 

The next morning, I walked up the Madison until I found a beautiful pool just inside the Yellowstone Park boundary. I cast a brace of those salmon fly nymphs—one size 8, one size 10—into the head of the pool and let them drift along the bottom. It wasn’t long before I hooked a very nice brown.

 The message here to all fly fishers is that if you pursue trout with the dry fly only and don’t find surface activity, they try other methods. There’s nymph fishing, dead drift along the bottom, hanging a nymph off a large dry fly or strike indicator and letting that rig drift into a likely holding area, or casting a medium-size streamer across and down to see what happens. Implementing some of these techniques when flies are not hatching will make you a better angler, and you’ll likely catch a few trout. Fly fishing does not always have to be about hatching flies.