Those on the FF&W E-List already got an excerpt from the upcoming Fishing the Film book, but I figured that the blog could use it’s own little snippet, as well. This is from a story about fishing damselflies in the film, and includes one of the drawings from the book.

…We had observed and photographed the adults lying on the surface, and we understood that the wings do not stick out to the sides like those of a mayfly spinner, but rather, are directed somewhat rearward in a delta fashion. To imitate this, I started tying all my damsels in a “half-parachute” hackling style (Jason refers to it as a “3/4 Parachute”). After the hackle is wound in the conventional parachute style, the fibers sticking forward are stroked out to the sides and the post pulled forward tightly along the top of the thorax and tied off at the head. The excess post is trimmed away. And while other patterns were using white hair or hackle to suggest the wings, we selected dark dun hackle to match only the veins in the wings, allowing the air space in between the hackle fibers to represent the transparent panes of the natural’s wings. Dubbed the “Braided Butt Damsel,” the pattern proved so effective that we haven’t changed it since. Okay, with that little aside of history tossed in, it’s back to the story…

I’d already tied a dozen flies for John [John Goddard], and he had them secured in his boxes. Quickly we knotted them on, and began to hit fish immediately. I didn’t have to tell John why I had used acrylic yarn for the post, rather than a strip of foam. John already understood the perils of the egg-laying damsel. One blast of wind, and they were on the water, where wave chop soon drowned many of them, submerging the insects just under the film.

Our first presentations were always with the fly sitting on top. Mostly we used the dead-simple Heave and Leave Tactic—cast several feet ahead of a rising fish and just let the fly sit. If a head didn’t poke out and eat the fly within a few seconds, then we’d wait longer. That’s why it’s called Heave and Leave.

But sometimes a “rising” fish wouldn’t take the fly dry. We’d then soak the fly for a few moments, and fish it just under the film, either letting it hang there or twitching it along very slowly with the Strip/Tease. The fish loved it.

In the end, I felt that it had been a spectacular day, but I knew that John specialized in damselfly fishing, and probably had experienced the same or better in waters in Europe. His chuckling all the afternoon should have been a clue, but in the fog of fishing, I had not paid much attention to his personal tics.

“This was the best day of stillwater dry fly fishing I have ever had,” John told us later. It was a compliment that none of us took lightly, but it was not an isolated event in our many years of fishing damsel adults. They are truly creatures of the film—over it, on it, in it, and under it. Don’t think that this experience is unique to damselflies, however. Any insect that gets in the film can eventually get under the film by riffle action in streams or wave action in lakes. So, be on the alert for sunken ants, beetles, hoppers, inchworms, mayfly spinners, stonefly adults, and so on. Watch the rise forms carefully to help detect fish feeding under the film—more to come on this in Chapter Four.