Conversations: Morgan Lyle on simple flies

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA rods, lines, and flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. So in today's Tenkara Cast, I've got with me the author, Morgan Lyle. A lot of people in the Tenkara community have heard his name. He's written a lot of articles about Tenkara for different publications. and now he's the newest author of a really cool book called Simple Flies, 52 Easy-to-Tie Patterns That Catch Fish.

1:03And we're going to be talking a little bit about the idea of simple flies, simple fly fishing, and that kind of thing. So thanks so much for joining me on the call here today, Morgan. How's it going? It's going great, Daniel. Thanks for asking me. It's a real pleasure. Yeah, so congratulations on getting this book out, 52 easy to tie patterns but as I've learned in my recent history here putting a book together is definitely no easy feat you did a terrific job with this book and tell us how was the work of putting the book together it was a lot of fun and you're right it's a project no question about it but it was very enjoyable to do I got to talk to a lot of very cool and interesting people and do some interesting theories about why very simple and impressionistic tries work as well as they do, works in many cases just as well and often better than the more detailed and complex slides. I got to also go back and review things that people have written in the past on this subject. It turns out that that's the conversation that's been going on for a long time. That was one of the most fun things to discover really, that people have been talking about whether it's better to keep it simple and impressionistic or to be as detailed as you can. That's been going on since at least the 1850s that I know of, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was being discussed before that. Wow, yeah, and that's one of the things that I really liked about the book. You really bring in some good history, you know, like the tires that, you know, have kind of advocated for simple flies well before the advance of Tenkara here in the United States. What is the, like when you talk about the 1850s, like one of the earliest references to simple flies.

2:49What is one of the earliest references or who is one of the earliest advocates to simple flies? One of the earliest champions I came across was a man named W.C. Stewart in Scotland, and you might be familiar to a lot of your listeners. He's the guy who invented the Stewart's fighter. Well, actually, he publicized it. It's a pain to say he didn't invent it, but he knew the guy who did. But, you know, it's nothing more than a very simple wet fly. It really is a fly that's very much in keeping with the Tenkara mindset. Just a simple starling hackle and some brown threads. That's it. He didn't even really take the trouble to try to make it very pretty. It looks a little unruly and a little messy. He was almost the only fly he ever used. And he was like one of the most famous fishermen of his day. And he was very widely read, very influential. So, and he had some fairly snarky things to say about people who were, you know, kind of obsessed with the relentlessly changing flies and trying to always have the perfect fly for the situation on their line.

3:56You know, he had a pretty interesting take on it. Oh, man, I wish I could have met him. I suspect I would have gotten along with him just fine. Yeah, I think he would have definitely been down with the Tenkara movement for sure. Yeah, in the book, of course, it's not all about tenkara flies. I mean, there's all kinds of different flies, different categories that the listeners who are familiar with fly fishing will recognize, like dry flies, nymphs, and wet flies, and that kind of thing. As opposed to, you know, if somebody's completely new to fly fishing, and maybe they've just kind of discovered fly fishing through tenkara, we really haven't talked about all these different categories. You know, the thin cattle flies tend to be a little bit more like a soft tackle kind of wet fly, very generic, but they can fish in a lot of different ways. Can you tell us, you know, like also the categories of flies that somebody might find in your book? And also, what is the, in your opinion, what is one of the simplest of the categories, if there is one? Well, honestly, the book is kind of divided into really a very traditional arrangement for a fly-tying book or a fly-fishing book, dry flies, wet flies, nymphs, and streamers.

5:12And it occurred to me as I was writing it that streamers, actually, could be thought of as among the most simple ways to do it because all you really need to imitate a bait fish, a small fish is to tie something along in slender to a hook. You've got lots of different things to choose from to do that with, whether it be a bucktail or saddle hackle feathers from a rooster or strips of rabbit fur. But honestly, once you attach that material to the hook, you're 90% done. You could fiddle around a little beyond that if you want to, but I don't think it matters all that much after that point. I think once you've got your streamer set up, you're in business. But another interesting thing that occurred to me during the writing of the book is that some of the most successful nymph patterns that people use also tend to be some of the simplest flies. And of course, the obvious example is the killer bug, which is really nothing more than just a little yarn on a hook. There's no tail, no abdomen, no wing case, no hackle, none of the stuff that's traditionally associated with trout flies.

6:27And yet it works great. I mean, that was the fly that inspired the book. When I started experimenting with the killer bug, I was really surprised and happy. And I began thinking about this whole question of, how can such a simple fly be so effective? And of course, the killer bug was invented by a fairly well-known guy, a man named Frank Sawyer in England. He was a river keeper on the Avon River. He took care of a private stretch of the river that belonged to an association for retired military officers, a pretty high-level fishery. Frank Sawyer was an expert fly fisherman and an expert fly tire. He was fully capable of making flies with tails and abdomens and thoraxes and wing cases and tackles and all that stuff, and he did. Yet in this case, he chose to make a fly out of nothing but yarn on a hook, and it works great. So that was really the kind of thing that inspired me. And another interesting point about nymphs, right? I don't know if any fly gets examined more closely by a trout or by any species of fish than the nymph, because the way you fish them is you just sort of drift them along at the speed of the current, along right on the, close to the bottom of the stream as you can, where presumably the fish get a really good look at it.

7:43and you might think that if any fly needed to be especially realistic, it would be a nymph because they're the ones that, you know, they're the most visible to the fish, and yet these simple impressionistic nymphs are just terrific. Interesting. Yeah, and I like what you mentioned about, you know, the simplest fly being a streamer because you just kind of tie something on top of the hook shank and, you know, it essentially becomes something that might look like a streamer if it's a little bit longer. it would be like a bait fish. And it kind of reminds me actually of my very first fly that I've ever tied. I have a very vivid memory of it because I was about 14 years old or so. And, you know, I grew up fishing. I grew up doing all kinds of fishing with bait and then like lures. And at one point I looked at fly fishing. A friend of mine in high school was doing some fly fishing. And honestly, I actually looked at it and was like, oh, this looks way too complicated. You know, like my lure works totally fine. But I think I went home and probably for who knows how long, a few weeks or a couple months, I probably started thinking about how cool it would be to create this lure.

8:52You know, at the time I was actually trying to create lures out of plastic and rubber and that kind of thing, which is messy and never turned out very good. But I was like, how cool would it be to tie something like out of a feather and have the same kind of effect? in my very first fly I just had for reference all I had was a few images of you know these things that were feathers tied onto the hook and I had no idea how they were done but at one point I had a hook on my hand a bear hook and literally I'm sitting on the in the living room and there's a pillow down pillow and a feather popped out and I literally got this down feather from the pillow and I tied it onto the hook shank. And I have no idea if the fly still exists in Brazil where I left a little collection of my first flies, but I just tied it by hand using a little piece of thread and a feather. And when I think about it, it does remind me of a streamer, actually. And that's probably the simplest fly I've ever tied because I didn't do anything to it.

9:56Well, sure. And yeah, your instinct had you tying essentially Marabu streamers before you had any idea what you were doing. Absolutely. What is one of the simplest flies you think you have tied? I mean, maybe between the 52 or maybe one of your earliest flies before you started making them a little bit more complicated. Well, you know, when I began tying flies, I had a book. I had the Orvis fly tying manual, which really was very good. And I suppose I probably followed the same progression most people do. I think it was probably a woolly bugger, which continues to be maybe the only fly anybody really needs. And again, I keep coming back to the killer bug because it is just so simple. A little bit of wire on the hook for a little bit of weight and also to sort of bind down the yarn at the back end of the hook. That's it. You don't even use thread. There's not even any thread involved in tying. So I suppose for just sheer utter simplicity, I'd have to give it to the killer bug.

10:59And again, honestly, you know, if you didn't have any fly except the killer bug, you'd still catch plenty of fish for the rest of your life. And you can make a dozen of them in a half hour. It's very cool. You know, that's another thing too, Daniel, another aspect of simple fly tying that I kind of like. aside from any aesthetic question, aside from any question about how well a simple fly works compared to a complicated one, the fact is, I just don't really have, at this point in my life, the physical space or the time for very involved fly tying to take up a big space in my life. I really like the idea of just being able to whip up a few flies that I'm going to need for the weekends fishing or the next day's fishing without it taking a lot of time and without having had all kinds of junk spread around me. And I think a lot of people are sort of feeling that too, you know, it just fits in your life a little better. Not to say that, you know, you know what I mean? And you and I have talked about this before, you know, and I have tried lots of more complicated flies in my life and I've enjoyed doing it, but I don't know, somehow it suits me now for for the point i'm at in my life and the situation i'm at in my life the simple fly tying really just kind of feels right and it fits in well yeah and i i totally get that because i think um you know a lot of people myself included uh you know i have gone through this progression of you know maybe starting simply uh both in my regular fishing as well as fly fishing and then over time things started building up and building up and getting more and more complex and part of it was actually really good because it was a tremendous learning experience but both with my fly fishing as well as my fly tying things started getting crowded you mentioned physical space you know I used to tie like I started fly fishing when I was about 14 or so and then I discovered Tenkara when I was 27 26 27 and you know in those years I my fly started getting more and more complex which is fun there's a really fun aspect to that hobby of tying flies and making these elaborate patterns maybe i'll spend 20 minutes time mayfly that was i wouldn't call any of my flies that i've tied in my life very realistic uh but in that direction you know trying to make something that was as realistic as i could make it essentially or as intricate as i could make it but things started getting complicated i would go to the fly shop and just buy all these materials and I ended up filling up all this space you know with with materials and then they fly around and I used to live in a really tiny apartment when I was in the in the middle of most of my fly tying and it was messy you know it was not really good and I think part of me just kind of got a little bit I felt a little bit cluttered you know with all of those materials and and then I discovered Tenkara just by half-stance but all of a sudden like all of those materials that I had accumulated over the years they they kind of became redundant in a way and I ended up giving a lot of it away I kept a good good amount I kept them one kind of wooden box that I would say is about probably 18 inches wide by you know 10 by 6 or something you know It's got some kind of random materials in there just in case I decide to try to whip something a little creative.

14:35But I think my flies became much simpler when I discovered Tenkara. And I discovered that people were using real simple flies to, you know, just thread. And feather is all I need. So nowadays my entire kit, when I travel, when I do presentations or demonstrations, I'll carry a little Ziploc bag that's like 8 by 10 maybe. and it's got a little like pheasant kind of cape or you know a pheasant neck it's got a rooster hackle so those two feathers a little different from each other peacock curl and two different colors of thread and hooks and that's all i carry with me so it's i think there's something to be said about the physical space and then feeling like things got cluttered after so many years Yeah, there really is something to it. And a term that I kind of borrowed from a guy who's influenced me a lot in recent years is a writer named Bob Wyatt. And I really recommend his book. It's called What Trout Want, The Educated Trout and Other Myths.

15:37published by Stackpole Books, and I think it came out in 2013. And just what a delightful book. And he's a little provocative and a little iconoclastic, but he's a very, very accomplished angler and writer and artist. And the term he uses is essentialist. And, you know, there's just a few aspects of any good fly that seem to be the things that trigger the response of a fish to bite, You know, the things that, you know, just sort of a little bell goes off and the fish thinks food or maybe food, which a lot of times maybe is good enough because there's only one way to check and that's to grab it. So things if they were convinced it was food, you know. But so, yeah, and I think, you know, you mentioned a couple of different kinds of feathers and the thread for the body. Peacock hurl is one of those, I think, an essentialist material. and beyond all that I really think you're getting into stuff that sort of amuses the fly tire more than it interests the fish I really think I think so too a lot of times what are the what are the simple materials there's actually a in the beginning of the book there's a section where you talk about the materials uh you know tying simple flies uh tools materials and techniques what are the the most essential materials that people need if you were maybe if you were to narrow it down to, I don't know, three or four materials.

17:03I don't know if you want to put a constraint on yourself like that, but what do you think are the materials that every angler should have in their little fly tying kit? Well, I've got a few favorites. I like, I think you'd mentioned sort of pheasant, you know, neck or breast feathers. I think the pheasant tail, the fibers of a pheasant tail are just absolutely critical. We talked about Frank Sawyer a moment ago. He also invented the pheasant tail nymph, which, by the way, the way he invented it, is not really the way that you generally see it these days. He tied that fly with nothing except a few pheasant tail fibers and a little length of wire. Again, no thread, no hackle, no part control for the thorax or peacock roll for the thorax, strictly just thread and wire. There's something about that pheasant tail material. It's got the right texture and the right color and a little bit of iridescence. It really makes it an outstanding imitation of a lot of real bugs.

18:07I think if you're fishing someplace, it's got a lot of small mayflies, like blue-winged olives, sulfas, as we call them here in the East. I mean, a pheasant tail is just a spot-on imitation of those bugs. I would say pheasant tail fibers are certainly a material I wouldn't want to be without. A little bit of fur, and then all you need is just hair, hair, hair, fur. Yeah, just hair, hair, fur. The hair from a rabbit's ears and face. You could buy a hair's mask, as they call it, and make your own. You could buy a little package of it, but it's great stuff. And as far as hackles go, I'm just blown away by how lifelike and realistic Partridge Hackle looks with the little speckles, it's got the little black bands on it, very soft, and it wiggles like crazy in the water, and it looks like such a real bug. And I'm sure that a lot of, well, the old English soft hackle patterns, many of them employed um partridge hackles that stuff is fantastic i wouldn't want to be without that and um and then for dry flies i i like fine deer hair to to make a wing and you know something to keep the fly afloat again going back to bob wyatt there's a couple of flies in the book that he sort of you know turned me on to in his writing and they're all i use for dry fly fishing now and i do a fair amount um and and i really don't make too much effort to try to imitate what the may flies look like on the water because you've got you know just this little thing with a little bit of deer hair keeping it afloat and a little hair's fur body pretty much all you need those are those are you know pretty much my uh my favorite and for streamer fishing i love using rooster feathers something about the way that those feathers wiggle around in the water it's amazing how much they they look and behave like a like a real fish and just sort of shimmying in the water yeah what am talking about mayflies and not necessarily needing to make the mayfly very realistic. One of my favorite little jokes if you will is a you know like a lot of times as anglers and I went through this phase of time realistic kind of mayflies and using all kinds of materials but then like when you know we have a mayfly for example that has the three little tails like little fibbits at the end and as a fly tire maybe you get this three little kind of you know like little fibbit kind of nylon materials, and you try to imitate the three little tails that some of the mayflies have, but then we forget that there's an old big old hook sticking out on the back as well, which would make it four little tails, if you will.

20:51Right, and one of the tails is made of steel. Exactly, and kind of heavy as well. So sometimes our obsession takes us into this thing that we try to imitate it, and we forget that the hook is also a part of the fly as well. The hook is absolutely a part of the fly. Although, you know, I think what we need to remember is that fish don't know what a hook is, although there's, you know, it's debatable whether they, after they've been caught once or twice, they start to figure out what a hook is. I'm sure that's possible. Bob Wyatt addresses that question at length. I haven't really figured out an answer yet. But I think despite the presence of the hook, I don't think the hook puts them off. I don't think they're looking to say no. I think they're looking to say yes, and that's the point that Bob Wyatt makes. And if they see something on that slide, and quite frankly, I suppose the tail could maybe be the thing that closes the deal. I don't particularly think it's true that you have to have three perfectly aligned mayfly my tail, but maybe it's a segmented body or maybe it's a wiggly hackle.

21:53I think if those things are there and they say, you know, bug to the fish, they're not that concerned about the hook, at least not until they bite. And that's a great way to put it. You know, I'm glad you bring it up. I think that's a really good way to do it, to say it. Like the fish are in general trying to say yes, as opposed to trying to say no. You know, my theory is that, you know, a fish's role is try to maximize the food intake. And if you ever watch footage of fish underwater, for example, you're going to see them grabbing leaves and rocks and they're spitting it out, but they're giving it a try. You know, as long as it's not spooking them, you know, as long as it's not really putting them off. And very often, of course, we'll see rejections in the last second and that kind of thing. And usually when I see that, a fish is obviously interested in my fly. So therefore, in my opinion, the fly is right. But then there was something in the last second that kind of turned them off. And I typically attribute it to my technique.

22:55Maybe my drag wasn't proper. But of course, you know, I don't know anything really. I don't know what a fish is thinking. It could be the, you know, it needed to have three tails and it didn't have any or something. you know luckily uh we don't have uh you know an algorithm that says exactly what you know turns fish on or off i think absolutely it would take all the fun out of it and you're right you know those little refusals really can be a mystery you know it he liked it right up to the last second of what happened you know yeah but i doubt if he was counting the tails or you know checking to make sure the rib was the right color thread or anything like that but who knows and you know and that kind of brings me to kind of the question you know something that's being in my mind a little bit and and we'll talk a little bit more about the some experiences that i had recently too but what is your definition of simple flies because we also kind of have to you know in probably in a few seconds we'll start talking a little bit more about the idea of simple flies versus simple fly fishing and how in tenkara like you know one fly or any fly is kind of okay but what is your definition of a what constitutes a simple fly in your opinion the way i approached it when i when i started doing the book was more or less that any fly that's made of say three things or fewer and and preferably two or fewer and i'm talking about the materials you tie onto the hook i'm not counting the hook in that and and uh and also i sort of think of things like for example a bead head or maybe a little bit of lead wire on the hook i I don't really count those.

24:30I think those as sort of being part of the chassis of the fly. So I'm thinking about the dressing, you know, and yeah, one or two or three materials and simply constructed without a whole lot of fussing around. Although I have to admit there are a couple of things in my book that are a little fuss at the time. But once you do a couple of things, they become more simple. But that's how I would think of it. You know, talking about the one material, and I'm not sure, I don't think I saw this fly in your book, and I don't know the name of the fly, but I'm going to look it up and I'll put it on the podcast page, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast, is this one little fly that is tied with a single CDC feather, and I know you have the CDC and elk fly in your book, but this one is like you get one CDC feather and you brush the fibers back, you essentially make it kind of rounded shape. And then like what is the thickest part of the stem becomes like a little sail, if you will.

25:32And then the rounded kind of feather becomes what would probably be perceived as the tail by the fish. I'm going to look it up and I'll try to put it online. But it's like I always remember when I was tying, trying to tie these intricate mayflies and I was, fussiness is probably the right word in there because they were probably using three materials, but very fussy to tie, you know, like a very particular kind of manners and the tails were done in a proper way. And then I came across this little, you know, the single C2C feather fly. I'm sure maybe you know the name of it, but, and I think that kind of made a turn for me and it happened to be right before I discovered Tenkara where I realized that my flies didn't have to be all that fussy, and that fly was beautiful, and I loved how it landed and floated really nicely and that kind of thing. And I don't know what that pattern is, so I think you've stumped me a little there, but I'll be eager to see when you post it on the site.

26:34I'll be sure to look it up. But CDC feather is another one of those things that just really has very nice properties for imitating living things. I think that's the absolutely key factor, you know, is to come up with something that looks and seems like a living thing. That's the essential quality a fly's got to have, that it's something alive. And I think when you, you know, when you start fussing with things and adding stuff in the name of making a fly more realistic, I think you're sort of increasing your chances that you might get it wrong and you might end up with something that, you know, it might look cool, but it kind of looks like an inanimate object instead of a living thing. And in fact, there's what I thought was a very cool quote. This guy was a great interviewer. This man named Walt Young in Pennsylvania, who's the guy who invented the Walt's worm. Super, super simple mints, but a very effective mints. I mean, the guys who fish, you know, the competition fly fishers who go to the big tournaments and stuff use it very, very often because it works so well.

27:35And Walt Young uses it himself to great effect. And again, this is a guy who's an expert fly tyer and won lots of competitions making really beautiful detailed flies. But what he became famous for was this ultra, ultra simple thing. When I interviewed Walt, he said something that I thought was very, very interesting, and I'll read it to you now. He said, I think simple is almost always better in fly tying if for no other reason than it gives the trout less to find fault with. I like that. That's a good point. Yeah. I like that a lot. You know, you put a lot of stuff on there. It could look like a little statue of a mayfly, but, you know, fish don't eat statues. Fish eat real bugs. Nice. I like that very much. That's a great quote. I'm going to have to put that up later on the page for this conversation. Because, yeah, I think giving them fewer things to find fault in is, you know, usually, you know, when we talked a little bit earlier about fish trying to say yes to things, And all of a sudden, there's maybe an extra material there that kind of gave you more drag or too much body or kind of moved a little funny way.

28:40And all of a sudden, they get really kind of turned off because of that. So that's a good way to put it. And this little fly that I just referred to, I'm going to do a little bit more research on it later. But, you know, it's one C to C feather and like just a very quick research. It looks like somebody called it the mirage. fly uh you know so it's um i don't know if that's the name that is uh commonly used but it's uh also it might have been created by a tire called agostino roncalo so uh i'll look it up and i'll put it on uh on the page with our conversation because it's an interesting world pattern cool name yeah yeah i think so i mean the guy's name is cool but i mean the fly that's the garage You're right. Fly. Yeah. So, yeah, but, you know, talking about simple flies versus simple fly fishing, because, you know, I think there's a huge difference, you know, between simple flies and the idea of simple fly fishing that comes with Tenkara.

29:45And I know, like, the first time I met you, actually, was when you and I both met Dr. Ishigaki on the same day. It was back in May of 2009. uh dr Ishigaki my teacher had come to talk in the catskills fly fishing center museum out in new york that's your home grounds uh not too far from you and you know i traveled from california at the time to come and meet him and you know and i think we all kind of dropped our jaws a little bit when he was doing his little fly tying demonstration and you know and then i remember him tying this fly really quickly using sewing thread that is literally from a dollar store that he bought in japan and some real cheap brown hackle he tied a fly in on average he ties a fly in about 50 seconds or so but i remember in the cat skills fly fishing center and museum which for you know maybe some of our listeners will recognize but for those of you who haven't heard of the cat skills the cat skills it's kind of like the cradle of modern fly tying in the United States.

30:53Would you agree with that, Morgan? I would. Well, I know it's been called the birthplace of American fly fishing, and I know that hasn't sat so well with some people across the state line in Pennsylvania, which could also have some claim to that title too. It happened in a lot of places, I suppose. But, yeah, I think that's probably true. A lot of the fishing and the fly tying that we recognize today was pretty much developed in that area. Yeah, so that's one of the places where there's a lot of really cool, if you will, innovations in fly tying, or at least some really kind of intricate patterns, some really recognizable patterns came out of the Catskills. But there comes Dr. Ishigaki, as far as I know, who's the first person to come to the United States to talk about this Japanese method of fly fishing called Tenkara. And he tied the fly really quickly. And I believe somebody asked him, like, so what is next? You know, he came kind of like implying that, hey, you came all the way from Japan. You must have a bunch of flies to show us. And then he responded.

31:54It's like, this is the only fly I use. And this is the only fly I've used in the last 10 years, he said. And I remember there's a little bit of a murmur kind of going around in the room, you know, and some people left it off. And like a lot of most people there coming from this rich fly tying tradition were completely aghast, you know, at the fact that somebody could be using one fly in 10 years. What did you think of that experience of hearing this guy who we can call Tenkara Master saying that he hasn't, hadn't changed flies in so long? It was a really remarkable experience. As a matter of fact, I start the book off with an account of that day and the introduction. It's stuck with me ever since then. And yeah, it was very interesting. As you say, that juxtaposition of just utterly simple with literally a museum to some pretty involved fly tying. And what people's response to it was at the time, I'm honestly not sure, but I know it certainly rang a bell with me.

33:04But the idea of one person using one simple fly sort of throughout their career is not entirely new either. A fly that I wish that I'd had in the book, but our mutual friend, Jason Plass, who has the Tenkara Talk blog, did a nice piece on a little thing called the Teeny Nymph, which is utterly simple. Again, it's a one-material fly. It's just a little bit of pheasant tail fibers wrapped onto the hook in a certain way. and Gin Tini says that that is the only fly that he's ever used from, I guess, the early 1960s to today. He's caught all kinds of fish on it. I think it says a lot about ... It comes down to presentation over pattern. It's not so much the fly you have on, but how you fish it. But again, W.C. Stewart, who we talked about at the beginning, only used the one fly. So, you know, I think, yeah, I think maybe by sort of relieving yourself of having to worry about having the right fly all the time sort of frees up your mind and your ability to fish better.

34:18Yeah. Yeah. And talking about the teeny nymph, actually, there's a great, yeah, I know Jason talked about it. And there's also, you know, I'm assuming people that are listening to this like to listen to podcasts. But April Vokey, the very famous fly fisher woman, the famous fly angler and guide out in British Columbia, she's got a nice podcast called Anchored. And she actually did one of my favorite interviews probably that she's done with Jim Taney himself, you know, about his business, the use of the fly. And I believe, don't quote me on this, but because it's been a few weeks since I listened to it. But I think he might have even caught shark with it. I mean, he's got all kinds of fish species using this incredibly simple fly. And that's a fly that I'll put on our podcast page as well as a link to April's episode with Jim. But that was a great conversation to listen to as well. That's terrific, and I'd be eager to hear that too. Good for April. Yeah, that's a great interview to do. And yeah, I think you're right.

35:18I think Timmy does say that he's caught various saltwater species on that same fly. What are the flies that, I mean, I know you have 52 flies in the book. Should I assume that you carry each one of those in your box? or what is how many flies do you or patterns do you typically carry with you when you go fishing you think you know i got it i usually have a bunch of flies in boxes in a backpack in the car but actually on me when i'm in the water i've usually got one box of nymphs and another and we're talking about trout fishing now i've got a box of nymphs and then i've got another box of dry flies and emergers and sort of catch-as-catch-can. I'm never as organized as I'd like to be. But I know that I own and I have tied a lot of flies that I will never fish. And I will continue tying flies and probably never fish most of them. I think you end up just fishing a handful of patterns anyway. Even people who don't necessarily think of themselves as essentialists or simple fly fans i think we all you know end up going the same way so um yeah i have with me usually quite a few flies uh how how many i actually end up using on the stream three or four in a typical day i suppose and what do you think you know and i i'll kind of share my experiences to a lot of people you know in the tenkara community anyways has have heard of the the story that i like to or the philosophy of any fly, you know, also referred to as the one fly.

36:59And the idea behind that is, you know, in Tenkara, and that's what Dr. Ishigaki shared with us on the very first time that you and I both met him, the Tenkara angler in Japan, he's not really concerned about imitating a particular bug. He's really more focused on the technique and the presentation. And I thought that concept was incredibly interesting because, you know, to me it's um when i go fishing uh i just don't like thinking too much about what i'm gonna tie next and then it becomes this kind of second guessing game of you know like is this fly gonna be the one is that fly gonna be the one and you know at that time i used to change flies all the time and and i started thinking about as well well if i'm changing flies 20 times in a day and it takes me three minutes to change a fly it's gonna be an hour of fishing time that i just completely wasted by changing flies. So the concept really appealed to me and kind of like you got the quote in your book too. And I always like to say it because I am the kind of guy that really goes to a restaurant and I absolutely hate seeing a bunch of options in a menu. Like recently I went to a Asian fusion restaurant and it literally was about a phone book thick because actually they try to cram every single Asian cuisine into this one restaurant. And later on, I learned that they actually have a chef or a cook from each one of those countries.

38:21But it terrified me. It was like I told my wife, can you please choose something for me because I would eat anything. And it's the same thing kind of goes for my fly tie. I mean, if I always had somebody just kind of handing me a fly, I've got no problem putting on whatever it's going to be on. But I like the idea of just having this, you know, very few patterns or few variations of a pattern, if you will, and not having to think about it. And it kind of gives me, personally, I think it kind of gives me a little bit more room to focus on what could I do a little bit better with my technique, you know? Is there, like, a way that I could entice the fish with this fly? And I like to share the story. Like, some people might have misinterpreted, you know, the writing that I've done, I think, as thinking that I was being dogmatic about using one fly or, you know, and that kind of thing. But I think the concept, and you've alluded to this, like the fish want to eat something.

39:23And I think that the fly that is in the water is the one that's going to catch fish in the end. You know, if it's presented properly, if the fish is eager to eat, I have never claimed to say that that is the way to do it or that that's better than any other way. It's just kind of a philosophy that the biggest value of that philosophy for me is to show that there's a different way of thinking about fly fishing. You know, it's not all about imitating a bug. There's people, there's a group of people in a different part of the world that are thinking in a different way. And I kind of like the idea of studying that. But what do you think about that idea of any fly is okay? Do you think there is any merit to that at all? I really do. And I guess the way I put it in the book is that, you know, in the sort of traditional Western way of the Western school of thought of fly selection as it is today, I think at the same time we're expecting too much and too little from our flies.

40:24Too much because, you know, we have this idea that, oh, gosh, I've got to pick the right one and it's got to be perfect, you know, and different from all the other thousands of flies that have been tied over the years. and we're expecting too little from them because almost any fly can be the right fly in the right situation. You've got to trust your fly. I had a thought in my mind, and it just sort of flitted away from me, as they often do. Well, I'm reminded of a—I had spoken to a guy, and I don't have him in the book, but I sort of wish I had. Very cool guy here in New York. His name is Warren Williams. He was a guide on Great Lakes Steelhead River here in New York State. He was involved in the competition fly fishing scene. He was very heavily influenced by the European competition guys who obviously take their fish catching very seriously.

41:25And he had really changed his thinking about whether it's wise to try to imitate insects. If you do manage to tie a fly, it's a perfect replica of all the real insects in the stream, which are themselves pretty well camouflaged and pretty hard for fish to see. And, well, you know, congratulations, you've just made another one that's probably not going to be noticed. his way of thinking was that a fish can't eat a fly. It hasn't noticed. And he wants actually to draw some attention to the fly and not even just to get drift flies, but only in the service of getting the fly down deep. But he likes to fish as flies with some action and to sort of, as you said a moment ago, entice. And I think that's one of the things that always appeals to me about 10-car fishing is the emphasis that's on, you know, giving the fly some movement in the water. That's the invitation, that little jigging you do with the soft hackle wet fly.

42:25I think that is very often what's responsible for catching, not just making little carbon copy imitations of real insects. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And also what I always like to tell people about tenkara flies. I mean, before I really got into using the reverse hackle, soft hackle kind of wet flies that are very commonly known in tenkara, of the sakasa kebari as we call them. I used to use an outcare catas all the time and that worked you know and it's but then I started kind of playing around with the idea of one fly is okay or any fly is okay and I eventually settled on the reverse hackleton kind of fly because I think there was a few things to be said about it. I mean first it's a real simple very quick fly to tie. I mean it uses two materials maybe three if you use peacock hurl. It's thread, feather, maybe peacock hurl and then the other thing too is that they don't imitate anything in particular at all but what they do is that they suggest a variety of different bugs that might be in the water any given moment. If you kind of fish it like a dead drift and maybe the hack opens up a little bit more it's going to have a little bit more profile maybe it kind of imitates a you know like a mayfly but it could also pass off as a cadas you know if it's kind of moving along in a stream and the fish has to react quickly.

43:48But if you give emotion, it might be looking just like a nymph that is trying to break free, come up to the surface or go onto a rock, for example. So they don't imitate any particular. They're not imitative flies, but they're very suggestive of a huge number of bugs that are out there. So I think making these suggestive flies that are just kind of giving an impression is going to be, in a way, much more versatile, and it kind of helps you keep your fly fishing simple as well. And then, like, the other thing that I do pay attention to, and I think it's important, is size. So, like, Dr. Ishigaki, you know, he's famous for kind of using any fly or one fly, but, you know, both him and I, we have different sizes in our boxes. And especially if the water is moving kind of fast, and maybe bigger water or murky water, will put on a bigger fly that kind of has more visibility to the fish as you mentioned uh you know the guide was interesting kind of giving it some action to just make it very visible and i think there's something to be said about that as well i agree but you know i i should point out too daniel that i i don't you know entirely uh discount the whole notion of hatch matching because i i think there are situations where fish just get very very used to eating an insect if they're in an environment where there's just a lot of that particular insect. Sometimes, I think you really do have to use something that is at least close to that insect and the most important characteristic is its size. It's a great point that you bring up about having different sizes applied.

45:31The example that comes to my mind because it's here in the east probably the best known and lots of them, of course, in the western U.S., but here in the east on the Delaware River, very cold river because it's a tailwater below a very large impoundment with a very tall dam and it's got mostly wild fish in it and a lot a lot of mayflies and they just have really prolific hatches almost every day and the fish really do get used to eating a particular thing and i don't think that if if you show them the wrong fly they necessarily are thinking oh well that's that's not a fly that that's not the kind of fly i'm supposed to eat i just don't think it registers as food with them you know i think it just looks like another thing floating along in water or on the water. As you mentioned before, there's all kinds of junk floating around and sometimes they'll grab it and see what it is. But when they get used to seeing, for example, a size 16 sulfur mayfly and they've eaten hundreds of them every day for the past six months, you can understand how they'll be interested in eating things that resemble that. I think there probably are times where it's wise to try to present them something that's about the right size of what they're accustomed to eating and the right shape to an extent.

46:44I think it's kind of folly to think that you're ever going to create a perfect imitation of something. But there is a place for hatch matching for sure. You know, and I'm glad that you bring it up because it's actually something I wanted to talk to you about as well. Like, you know, there's part of me that's kind of been turning around a little bit and actually this is kind of funny. So one of our, there's a teacher here in Leadville, Colorado, Mark Cole. And Mark has been teaching at Colorado Mountain College here. He teaches a fly fishing guide course. And at one point he joined a group clinic that I did in Rocky Mountain National Park. And I was talking about the idea of one fly. The concept was still very new to me, but I was playing around with it. and he's a he's a very good note taker so apparently he's got that in his notebook where i said on that particular day uh i don't have the best memory of it but it's it's in writing but i said that the the one fly you know idea works until it doesn't and you know and it's and i've had like a few experiences now that you know like i was estimating the other day I've been using essentially four variations of one fly, the ones that are available on our website.

48:05There are two that are size 12, Sakasa Kebari, reverse Haco style flies. There's a size 8 and there's a size 16. And I've been using those four variations for just about five years now, actually. We're getting close to that, if not five years. And I'm estimating about 400 days of fishing, give or take, just for a simple math. and so far I've actually had you know and I fish all over the country and a few different countries as well for trout and out of those 400 days of fishing I've had four days in and out of those four days there's two particular rivers where I really didn't think I could get my fly to work you know again I fish also with some of the most experienced anglers in the country and those are the only four days that I've seen somebody definitely catching more fish than I was by using a different fly, different rig and that kind of thing. So in general, I think it works but I think the main thing that I like to tell people, you know, again, it's a different way of thinking about it and if he appeals to you, definitely give it a try.

49:13And based on my odds, I would say that 99% of the time it works And that's kind of my, you know, very fairly accurate math. Four days out of 400 days of fishing. The idea of one fly has worked, but the other four days it didn't. Well, 990 is a pretty good batting average. So, yeah, I wouldn't mess with it. Well, you know. You've got it pretty well dialed in there. And again, though, talking about the Delaware River, that same Delaware River, I do remember one time fishing. and it might have been something to do with the character of the water I was fishing. The Delaware is best known for, you know, having pretty long, flat pools. But there are a few ripples, and I like them. In fact, I was fishing with the Tenkara rod, and there was one of those little sulfur hatches going off with, you know, just lots and lots and lots of these size 16 little yellow mayflies. They were everywhere, and trout were eating them. You saw them rising to them. and I wasn't having much luck trying to imitate them and just as much for the hell of it as anything else.

50:15I tied on a size 12-killer buck, which looked nothing like them. It looked nothing like their nits, and I did catch fish on it. So, I mean, you know, there you go. Well, you know, in my experiences today being interesting, as a matter of fact, one of the experiences was just this last week, and as a matter of fact, with Dr. Ishigaki. So I think you enjoyed learning about that one because this was actually the same river. We went to the North Platte outside of Casper, Wyoming. And Dr. Ishigaki came here. I wanted to take him somewhere where there's a lot of good fish, but the fishing is really challenging. And both he and I had a great conversation last week before we went up there about the idea of always learning something new. And like in one point, he was talking about how he recently kind of got shown something new by somebody who was using dry flies only in Japan. and you know I mean he's 67 years old I think yeah 67 years old right now and he's more than willing to admit that he's always learning something new so we went out the the day after we had this conversation we went to the North Blatt River outside of Casper Fremont Canyon kind of area and I was I was actually there in March with a friend of mine Doug who is also a guide and that That day in March when Doug and I were just fishing by ourselves, I had a real hard time with the one fly.

51:39I mean, I fished it for, it might have been like almost two hours, like an hour or something. I caught one fish. And in the meantime, I think Doug had had like five or six fish. You know, and I'm definitely not beyond or above changing flies if something's definitely working much better. So Doug gave me this fly. I think, I believe it was called a mayhem. I'm going to look it up and I'll put it on the podcast page as well. A little tiny nymph at a time. And Doug is a guide in the area, so he knows the water. And he put that on for me and I've got no qualms about it. And I started hooking fish and I was like, well, okay, this is definitely, you know, a very, very clear difference. And then Dr. Ishigaki and I went back this last week, you know, and we're at the end of August here. So a few months later, I thought, well, maybe, you know, maybe the flies are going to be different. the bugs are going to be different we might have a chance with the tin cut of fly and we did hook a few like i think two or three fish between the uh it was five of us fishing there uh we hooked two or three fish on the tin cut of flies but clearly uh it was like another uh a heavier kind of nymph uh i think it might have been like a pheasant tail nymph or something with a bead head that was catching a lot of fish for doug and a couple other people that were with us uh dr Ishigaki is only here for a couple of days he's like yes please put this on for me because you know he was also not above changing the flies and i think the idea goes back to that he and i have pretty similar personalities i mean when we're fishing we kind of like to kind of keep the fly on but hey if somebody's catching more fish and we're trying everything we can and we're not enticing the fish there's something to be said about that so i'm i'm kind of i think i'm completely there with you uh you know i think um you know and based on my formula so far 99 percent of the time you work or most of the time it most depends on the places too right that you fish your work boulder creek where i fish i've got no qualms using a fly those fly the thing kind of flies year-round pretty much but um you know if somebody's kind of showing me something different i'll i'll try it and another experience that i'll share too and i made a little video about that one besides the North Platte, the only other river in time that I've had that kind of experience happen was on the Eagle River, also here in Colorado.

54:05And we were doing some TV filming. And essentially the guide that was with us, you know, for the day, he was catching clearly more fish than we were. He was using like an egg pattern with something kind of off of it. And I was like, okay, we're only here to do filming for a couple of days. We've got to have some fish, otherwise it's not a very interesting video. So I changed, and I caught plenty of fish as well as the host of the show. But at the very end, it was really interesting. The video is on the website, and I'll put that up. At the very end, we're done filming. The crew is kind of wrapping up, and I'm like, why could I not get this flight to work? And I started cycling through pretty much every technique that I could think of, like dead drifts, pulsating the fly, pausing in a couple of spots. And eventually I remember this one technique that a teacher, Sakaki Barasan in Japan showed me, where he would drift the fly twice over a certain good-looking spot.

55:06And on the third time, he would make the fly stop above that spot that looked really good. And all of a sudden, maybe something else changed in the water. I didn't see any actual bugs hatching or anything like that, But I did that technique, and I started hooking fish after fish, and within about an hour and a half to two hours, I probably had about nine fish caught exactly on the same technique, which was really kind of an interesting experience for me. It's like, you know, I changed the fly for a couple of days, and I eventually kind of figured out a technique. But who knows, something might have changed underwater too. So it's, I mean, personally, it's such a wonderful thing to be able to, like, continually learn and try different things. But at the same time, when I really want to keep it simple, keep four variations of a fly in my box, you know, something about that. Yeah. The variables really are the most fun part, you know, as you said before. Thank goodness there isn't an algorithm, you know. It's a living thing, and, you know, you never know quite what they're going to do or what they're going to watch. and now like you know in terms of your you know besides like you know the delaware river being challenging like do you find like that there's like certain kinds of waters that you can kind of go with very almost full confidence that pretty much any fly works or do you find it's more perhaps seasonal or times of the day i mean how do you how do you go back and forth i guess between this idea of hey any fly is okay and maybe i have to experiment a lot there are times when i'm just in the mood for for uh fishing to obviously rising fish on pretty flat water um and if that's the case then i'll use dry flies or emergers i'll use very simple ones those bob wyatt patterns that i mentioned before and i'll use them with great confidence um but i think the kind of water that I enjoy the most is what we call pocket water, which is water with lots of rocks and riffles and lots of features to it and fairly swift currents and eddies and just a lot of interesting features in the water itself. In those cases, I think you could do pretty well with a pretty wide range of flies. kebari are a fantastic choice. Just about any nymph you'd want to use is probably a good choice. A nice bushy, visible dry fly that I can see with my increasingly worsening eyes. I always enjoy being able to use big dry flies. So yeah, I think in cases where the water is moving fast and there's a lot going on sort of hydraulically in the environment, I think you can get away with an awful lot of flies there. It all comes down to presentation there.

57:52If you can get a fly near a fish and have it sort of behaving as a living thing might behave, I think the fish will give it a chance. Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. And, you know, I think with, it seems to me like with your book, To Simple Flies, you know, I think we kind of covered all these themes, if you will. But it seems like you kind of want to share a message with people. Is there like something that you really want to share with people about flies? I don't want to tell anyone how to tie or how to fish because this is something we're all doing for fun. I think maybe it might be a good idea not to take it all quite so seriously. That might be a takeaway you could get from the book. But as we said earlier, fish are interested in yes, not no. They want to eat. And I think have a little more confidence in the fly that you've got. and just be more aware of just what an effective thing a very simple fly can be.

58:58And don't, you know, you sort of hamstring yourself if you're constantly worried that you don't have the right fly on. You know, guide something that's reasonable to use, but then fish it and fish it well, you know, enjoy it. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. And, you know, I like to always tell people, it's like, you just have a little bit of you have to believe i think there's there's this element in fishing that sometimes we dismiss it uh called luck uh but there's another one that is much less talked about which is belief uh you kind of have to have a certain amount of belief on the fly too and uh and you might start going towards confidence you know having confidence that the fly works and i at one point like a friend of mine was kind of talking to uh you know to a fish researcher and talking about like why is it that we have like you know we spend all this time kind of changing flies and we start selling you know on different flies and a lot of times it's a self-fulfilling kind of self-reinforcing cycle you know you catch a fish and it's like that's the fly that catches fish and then like you use a fly for a little bit and I see that very commonly with tenkara flies people that are almost everybody here of course is new to tenkara so they use the tenkara flies a few times or a couple of times or maybe an hour, they don't catch fish.

1:00:19And all of a sudden it's like, well, this fly doesn't catch fish. And it's, you know, so we have to kind of, I think you put it well, you know, like having confidence that this, you know, simple patterns can catch fish as well. That's a good way to put it. Yep. Yeah. Confidence, a little faith in the fish. It's a, you know, it's a little bit of a, you know, sort of a little, you got to enforce a little psychological discipline on yourself. You know, don't get sucked into that vortex of, you know, finding the silver bullet fly. You've got a reasonable fly on. You're in the game. So, you know, keep fishing. Fly in the water. Yes. Well, and I think based on my experience this last week, I'll recommend that people go fishing with a buddy and you can try different flies. And if somebody else is catching a lot more fish than you are, then maybe kind of change it. But unless that happens, you know, it's very often I go fishing with groups of people. And, you know, and I've many times I've been fishing with people that are like obsessing over matching a hatch.

1:01:22And we're all catching the same exact numbers of fish. It's kind of been rare in my experience. You know, like I talked about the challenging experiences that I've had. But I've had way more experiences where, you know, sticking with one fly versus changing flies every few minutes is producing almost the same result. You know, so it's, I think when you talked about it depends on your mood, you know, if you want to experiment and change all the flies that you want, fine, that's completely okay. But if you want to kind of relax a little bit more, give yourself a chance to do that. I think that can work really well too. Absolutely. And again, like I say, you know, this thought has occurred to people before you and I. and those of your readers who do get a chance to get a look at the book I think they'll appreciate what W.C. Stewart had to say on that subject and what Jane Tenshaw had to say and Ted Trueblood these are people who've come to that same conclusion some pretty significant fishing effort and Morgan I'll definitely put a link a picture of the cover of your book on our website tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast where people can find you But if you want to tell our listeners, do you have a website?

1:02:34Where can people connect with you or find your book? I do not have a website besides my blog, The Fly Line, and that is always a good place to find me. And that's just theflyline.wordpress.com. Beyond that, you can find it in all the places you'd expect to find a book. There's the large online retailers, which most of us know what they are. Stackpole Books has its own site and you can certainly buy the book through there Chris Stewart is carrying some copies at Tenkara Bum and that's a good place to look but I don't think it's too difficult to get your hands on and there is an e-book version available too if people prefer that format Excellent, yeah so make sure to put a link to your website theflyline.wordpress.com as well where people can check out your writing and your experiences with Tenkara as well Simple Flies and hopefully they'll learn a little bit more about it. It's a great book. I'll admit there's a lot of books that have been coming my way since I took on Tenkara and for the most part nowadays because my path has been a little bit different from what is being written about in general. I kind of shied away from a lot of books but I was really impressed by the quality and just how much value I think you offered in the book.

1:03:54And I'm very honored to have been included there. I like a nice little chapter on Tenkara, which I think is a fun chapter that I'm glad you included in there. And I was going to say, yeah, I think your listeners would be interested to know that there is a sidebar and a good interview with you. And you do really say some very cool things. And it's one of my favorite parts of the book. And it's a really interesting read. And I'm sure people will enjoy that. And honestly, you know, Tenkara, the whole Tenkara movement was itself a big part of the inspiration for the book. And it's all over the book, as I say. The book leads off with Dr. Ishigaki and the Catskills, and Tenkara goes right through it like a thread through the book. But thank you very much, Daniel. I appreciate you alerting your listeners to the fact that it's there. And if people get a chance to read it, I hope they enjoy it. But it's always good talking with you, man. I'm glad you called. it's been a lot of fun oh yeah thanks so much for making the time it's a great conversation it's uh you know flies i always like to think they're such a small little thing they're so diminutive diminutive but there there's so much to be said about them and it's uh it's always fun to talk about flies uh it's always my one of my favorite topics really and within fly fishing so thanks again for joining us and uh you know making the time to talk about simple flies simple fly fishing sharing Tenkara and participating in one of the early episodes of the Tenkara Cast.

1:05:21I'm very grateful to be here. Thanks again, man. It's great talking to you. Thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast. I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu. Check out his music at takenobumusic.com. We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music on our website, www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. And until next time on the Tenkara Cast.