Sitting at my tying bench yesterday and found myself wondering, “What is it about fly rods and double guns?”

There sure seems to be an affinity between them and the sports they are tools of.

Thoughts?

A penchant for making things more difficult and expensive???

craft and craftsmanship

It helps fill the time, you fish when you can't hunt and hunt when you can't fish. The tools you choose to use depends on what you enjoy.
Mike

Never got to me. While I have loved upland hunting with a vintage double over an English Setter or two for sixty years, fishing to me is my five foot Shakespeare Ugly Stick, an ultra light spinning reel and a small pixie. While I wander around Kodiak Island that is all I use. Mostly looking for pan size Dolly Vardens, but Lots of Pink and Silver Salmon and a few Rainbows. Haven't fished in the lower 48 for nearly two decades.

The fact that fly fishermen require waters restricted to fly only fishing has always seemed very elitist to me!!

No trout down here, but I'd guess I might have caught a million river redbellies with a light fly rod over the years. Mostly by roll-casting crickets. Nevertheless I'd rather fish an ultralight spinner rig over a fly rod. Just depends upon whether they're biting naturals or beetle-spins at the river phase I'm fishing...Geo

Both are highly evolved tools used for food gathering...



I used to have some photography of a circa 1890s Thomas Bland 20-bore Hammergun in it's original case, posed with some old Grangers and some Hardy reels but...just can't find it.

You can add pipe-smoking to that.

And Islay whisky.

Then you might as well add lip and mouth cancer.

When I could still walk with out a stick, I dearly loved wading farm ponds with a flyrod and small popping bugs ( mostly yellow) or Shuman's crickets after Blue Gills and Shellcrackers or sometimes small bass. That is also fly fishing, but I submit it is not elitist. It is pretty hard to fly fish with a walking stick in one hand.
Mike

The connection may be that they're both beatifully made and beautiful to see in use. Both have a long and gloriful literature. The United States is the one country in the world where both are available to anyone who wants to learn their disciplines. They are passtimes that allow the participant to be a part of ancient traditions.

I have played a little bit with fly rods, but I prefer the feel of light extra fast action spinning gear. Pure preference, but bendy rods take away too much of the feel for me. I suppose that’s the point in exchange for the visual hunting of fish with fly gear, but I like the electric feel some game fish can push through a rod.

Can't catch (most) Appalachian brookies on conventional tackle.

Add a drilling and backpack fly/spin outfit for an all-in-one package...

Now, that is nice.

Wow Sam who did the case for ya?

It was a Pachmyer double case that I redesigned the interior and then had Marvin Huey redo the felt. Most everything you need in a 15 lb package.

Maybe the complexity vs. simplicity of them. Complex being the little things that are important to success. Simplicity, well one's a stick and a spool, the other a mostly simple mechanism.

Chicken wire fish traps, hoop nets, and quail traps are much more efficient ways to gather fish and game for food.

It's about having fun while doing so, and giving the fish and game a sporting chance. It's not about piling up big numbers.

Very, very nice Sam!

"You can't say enough about fishing. Though the sport of Kings, it's just what the deadbeat ordered." Tom McGuane

Gil

Actually, we don't require such waters to enjoy fly fishing to the fullest but typically other methods of fishing can kill and maim a lot more fish than fly fishing ever will.

Kill and maim. Please explain. Akin to Dave's statement, this one sounds elitist to me.

Do you mean killing fish without recovery, or do you include those who don't see the sense in catch and release, but for whom the catch becomes a meal? And what types of sport fishing maim moreso than fly fishing? And how?

My thoughts are likely kind of ugly. They are what they are.

Give a couple of muskrat hides and a big boar coon hnde for my first fly rod in the 60's. Rotted cat tippet with a straight leader.

Was in the Northern Tier of Pa. and Southern Tier of NY growing up. Although the growing up part could be debatable.

If you didn't shoot an Ithaca 37 or a Rem 870 back then you were considered some type of communist. But for league shooting at the clubs very few shot a SxS, or hunting. If they did you felt sorry for them because you knew they weren't going to hit anything. And seldom did.

Watched my youngest son shoot a 49 for high gun at the Owl league at Ithaca Gun Club ~15 years ago with a B. Rizzini. He won several shoots in Mn and Wi. and his name is engraved on plaques on the walls of quite a few clubs.

My FIL who has since passed away and I watched him shoot a 50x50 in a blizzard at Ithaca gun club. They gave him a 49 but he was still high gun. Had our pick and could have signed him up for Sayre which is actually in Athens Pa. but signed him up for Waverly NY. Just wanted to get him on the roster back then, many options although the Owl league has long since gone down the toilet drain.

Friend from Alaska and I were excited when we pulled into England before Desert Shield\Storm. The birthplace of Fly Fishing. We took our rods with us on deployment. And despite paying "per rod" was worth it.

A year later held him in my arms as he was dying. He could not talk, but his eyes.. Never will forget that as long as I live. Lungs may not allow you to talk but the eyes can scream at you. Honestly messed me up at the time but things worked up in the end.

Except for him. For a minute and a half I was paralyzed and that is an eternality in real world chit. It worked out in the end. But only by the Grace of God.

Haven't fly fished much since. Just can't bring myself to do it like I used to.

Yeah many of the city folks are waders only and did I mention City folks? But can roll cast or strip a line without waders if you are on the prowl for a fair lady. Without the city boy waders. And fishing slot limit trout from 12-14".







Honestly I have a hard time fly fishing now. Would rather and do spend more time with the dogs getting ready for hunting birds.

I only use SxS guns for birds but that did not occur until I reached my 60's. There are a lot of factors involved in the maturation process.

In the mid 80's came around a bend on the Schrader and was pulling trout out with each cast. A kid ran up to me that was dunking worms in the pool upstream and asked me if I could teach him how do that. I said sure as long as he joined the Navy. He did. When I brought him home after enlisting at MEPS his father was sitting in full dress uniform on the porch. He ran over and opened the door and asked his son if he as a squid. His son said yes sir I am and proud of it.

After his son went in the house he looked me in the eye and said you SOB they nailed an anchor on the door of my office today. He was the CO of the Williamsport Army Reserve Center and a graduate of West Point.

No right or wrong IMO. It is what is IMO. Which is what you paid for it. Make the best of it and what works for you. Life is too short to be a City Boy, then again I have zero tolerance for them. Do what works for you. I have a couple of ugly sticks in the garage along with more than dozen fly rods. I do what ever it takes to catch fish. Or kill birds. Pointy dogs get the hell out of the way we are going in for the kill.

Second that on Islay, especially Lagavulin.

I grew up in a two room house with no running water, well my mom said we had running water but it was me running out to the pump to bring a bucket in. We did have shotguns, long bows, flyrods and fine brandy(learned to like Islay later). I had a real special kind of dad and while we didn't have a lot of money he made sure we spent two weeks every year fishing northern WI and would pull us out of school in the fall for a week of bow hunting and it wasn't just when we got older the whole family went babies included.

Now a short 3wt travel rod resides on the MC, and there is an 8wt for bass bugs, 9wt for northern and musky streamers and 5wt for trout and panfish. Most of my fishing now is C&R except for large northerns for the table and I shoot carp with a bow for the smoker. I do use casting and spinning rods also, I do own one pump shotgun but it is for coyotes

One of my favorite pictures of dad.

Every single person I've ever asked while chatting it up riverside with a fly rod in their hand usually grab only the fly rod now or at least the fly rod first. Those who have the patience and wherewithal tend to enjoy the beauty and skill of fly fishing. Those who don't, don't.

That is a great post, oskar. Seriously.

Your Dad knew how to wear a fedora.

I don't fish....don't hunt much more. But the stories and the prose on this line, some of it in staccato simple declarative sentence fashion, is striking, empathetic, poignant....almost Hemingway-ish. You guys can flat tell a story and write! And what's not said is as evocative as what is. It is Americana. (I remember Stanton's description of a lonely mallard looking for a mate and the swoosh of the wings). It all reminds you of Anglo-Saxon/Scottish back-country poetry.

While she doesn't shoot, she loves to fish with her old dad. Daughter with the Brook Trout Tattoo. Gil

A good friend and I were planning a two week trip to Alaska last week of June and first week of July for salmon and trout fishing. We spent a few months prior tying flies for the trip and just before we were to depart he said he'd be bringing a couple of spinning rods as backups. I told him he would never become proficient at flyfishing if he continued to fall back on spinning gear. He finally relented to my insistence and left his spinning gear home.

He is a very proficient flyfisher today.

Parkers and Jim Paynes. Leonards and L.C. Smiths- Grangers and Greeners- the list is endless- but as the Gene Hill once said: "It's all about doing it right".. Without catch and release, the fly fishing sport of today would have died out, even on private waters like the Harriman Railroad Ranch in Idaho, the Gunnison in Colorado, etc. would not be what they are yet today. There is some inherent "snob appeal" I suppose is using these marque name on rods , reels, double guns- but- on those days when the trout aren't rising, or the grouse are spooky and fly way out of fair gun range, there is some pleasure is holding and admiring a fine rod and reel, or a side-by-side, thinking of the craftsmen that made those items, wondering what in inside of the H.L.Leonard or Ithaca factories were like in 1926--and if you like a pipe or a wee dram of Highland happiness, so be it- none of us will live forever. RWTF

If you appreciate wry, dry humor and a sense of irony, this is your guy. I suspect that John owns a doublegun or two (from past stories he's written) but his focus is clearly on fishing. His affinity for bamboo rods and his articles on the subject (& one whole book, "Fishing Bamboo") got me started down that road long ago now. He's cost me alot of money and time over the years (all well-spent IMHO)



His latest and arguably, his best so-far. His list of books is quite long, so... read at your own risk.

GLS, if my toddler daughter wants a brook trout tattoo when she reaches a suitable age, I may offer to pay for it and get a matching one!

Easy to appreciate the cover art of Bob White with Gierach himself as subject. A fine artist and, from all I read, and equally fine gentleman. And an exemplar of the doublegun/long rod fraternity.

This quote from Louis Cahill confirms Gierach’s place in the fraternity as well.

“A hundred bamboo fly rods, most of them old, are stacked on every flat surface and leaning against every wall. The room smells of oil cloth and leather. Beautiful old side-by-side shotguns guard every corner; the ones in racks on the wall next to oil paintings by Bob White. Rows of classic trout reels and larger Spey reels and in the far back corner of the room an old wooden office chair and, I trust, a desk hidden under that mound of hard bound books. This, I assume, is where the magic happens.”

You must be a blast at parties.

Francis, the Harriman Ranch Section of the Henry's Fork has been public water for over a half century. The Railroad Ranch is now under the stewardship of the State of Idaho and is now a state park. I was able to fish it in the golden years before the fishing declined due to extreme water fluctuations from Island Park Reservoir releases in the winter to ensure water downstream for the potato farmers. John Gierach in his View From Rat Lake wrote that in the Bureau of Standards, a photo of it would be titled: "trout stream." Gil

Dan, after a trip Julia wrote this poem:

I cast and drop the line
In fast black flow,
the brook and rainbow yield to sun
and show,
My father gives the sign

And draws the slender curve
to land his fly
where a gold lip of water pools nearby,
and tugs the river’s wild nerve.

Gil

Thanks- I've fished in Yellowstone Park (Fire Hole) and other MT. waters (Big Horn, etc.) but never the Railroad Ranch. The late Ernest Hemingway fished Silver Creek in ID in the late 1930's- as guest of Averill Harriman at Sun Valley, but never read if he fished the Railroad Ranch sector of the Henry's Fork. Hemingway appreciated good fishing tackle, as he did his good quality firearms- Hardy Brothers seemed to have been his preferred rods, both for fly fishing, and also on his fishing boat, the Pilar. He used Hardy Perfect fly reels, and mainly Vom Hofe Salt Water reels on the Pilar. RWTF

Beautifully written - you are lucky to have a daughter that has such an obvious affinity for the outdoors and incidental pursuits! I hope I am as fortunate. - Dan

Just WOW !

Indeed he does own a doublegun.

In one of his books, and I don’t remember which one, he wrote of pulling his old pickup truck up against the curb in one of those old Colorado towns slowly being converted to yuppiedom. As he stepped onto the sidewalk he was scolded by a ‘not from around here’ young woman about that “awful shotgun in his back window.”

His quick reply was “That’s no ‘shotgun’ lady, that’s a Parker!”

DAM16SXS: I vaguely remember that story too, but it's been so-long since I read it I can't remember where (Sex, Death & Flyfishing?). Suffice it to say that amongst other things, he's likely a practitioner of the fine art of shotgunning as well.

Based on Cahill’s visit to his study/gun room/man cave I’d say there’s no doubt.