Bookshelf: Fly Fishing Evolution by George Daniel

Warning: Before you even begin reading this book, have a highlighter with the cap off and in the ready position. My new copy is already marked up like a college textbook with techniques I want to try, leaders I want to fool with, and flies I want to tie. (I know I am dating myself by mentioning physical textbooks.)

George Daniel was a competition angler who learned much from that world, but years ago he moved on, partly because he was dissatisfied with restrictions that international competitions place on anglers. He’s now a writer and guide, and teaches the Joe Humphreys Program at Penn State. He’s also one of the nicest people in the fly-fishing world and has more integrity in his little finger than most of us have in our entire bodies. He’s also a friend and I am an enthusiastic admirer of his teaching abilities.

George was originally known as “The Euro Nymphing Guy,” but as his latest book Fly Fishing Evolution attests, he’s much more than that. Half of the book is devoted to nymphing techniques, because he believes it is often the most effective technique for catching trout. The other half of the book covers dry-fly fishing and streamer fishing, which he is equally adept at. The one aspect of this book that may give some anglers heartburn is that for most of his nymph and streamer fishing he prefers long, soft-tip 3-weight and 4-weight rods and some modification of a tightline system where the fly line is not used—instead a long leader is propelled using the weight of the fly or flies with a quick flip of the wrist. Not that most of his techniques couldn’t be used with a standard 905, but George likes to carry only one rod with him so that he can switch between tightline nymphing, dry flies, and streamers simply by switching his leader.

Although he does discuss using a monofilament rig for dry-fly fishing, thankfully most of the dry-fly techniques he recommends use a standard floating line. He does prefer double-taper lines for their ability to mend better in the air on longer casts. I have also been using double-taper lines recently and forgot how nice they are for dry-fly fishing. Forty years ago I used them exclusively, but I got sucked into the weight-forward philosophy. Like George, I feel that these lines should be rediscovered, especially for dry-fly fishing.

I’ve long believed that the leader is the most important component of a fly-fishing system, and Daniel goes into great detail on different leader systems for nymph fishing, dry-fly fishing, and streamer fishing. In the old days of fly-fishing books, you rarely heard a word about leaders, while entire books were written about selecting flies. Thanks to people like George Daniel, I think that we have evolved into a more encompassing (and just as creative) approach, with more emphasis placed on leaders and tactics than on fly patterns.

And speaking of fly patterns, as a fly tier I love his simple approach to flies. He recommends nymphs that are even simpler than standard Euro flies. For example, his Quill Perdigon is just a tail, a quill body, and a bead. And his Pheasant Tail is a CDL tail, a pheasant tail body, wire rib, and a bead. No legs, no wingcase, no extra step to tie in a thorax. His jig-type streamers are mostly a tail, body, and a bead.

There will be fly tiers who reject this approach because it is quick and not that artistic. But as much as I take delight in tying complicated patterns that look cool in my fly box, there are times when I want to crank out a bunch of bugs the night before a trip. And I still take pleasure in them because I made them myself. I just don’t get emotionally involved when I lose them on the bottom.

I’ve been fly fishing for over half a century. One of the pleasures of fly fishing is the delight in learning something new. I learn something from almost every fly fisher I meet, but when I dig into a book like this and learn a host of new ideas it’s like a mound of presents under the Christmas tree.

Some of these ideas I already knew about, but I was happy to see someone else reinforcing my perceptions. And other ideas were brand new to me. They may not all be new, but every reader will finish this book with a whole new game plan for the upcoming season.

Things I learned that I had already accepted but need wider communication in the fly-fishing world:

• A downstream drag-and-drop approach makes it easier to present dry flies to trout lying in a narrow weed channel. This needs to be done well upstream of the fish so it is not disturbed by the movement.
• Smaller streamers are just as effective as large, articulated flies.
• We don’t always need to fish nymphs close to the bottom.
• Look outward, not downward when casting a Euro rig.
• Use a bright fly line and watch the fly or indicator while being cognizant of drag using your peripheral vision (I do this but never recognized how I perceived drag when I was not watching the line.)

Things I learned that I did not know about but plan to try:

• Increasing the grain weight of a sinking line does not make it sink faster in a current (not sure about this one but he says it is related to the fact that a higher grain weight line presents more resistance to sinking and thus negates its extra mass).
• A hard stop and start of the retrieve with an articulated streamer makes it jackknife in the water, which stimulates strikes.
• By placing a small split-shot on the leader and then covering it with tungsten putty, you can easily modify the weight yet the putty won’t slide up or down the leader.
• Watching the angle of a wool strike indicator can tell you the position of a nymph in relation to the indicator. This is a good example of why Daniel is such a good teacher—he notices little details.
• Bigger nymphs often work better than midge nymphs during the winter.
• A single nymph is just as effective as two nymphs. I feel insecure with a single nymph in my rig but perhaps I need to get over this, and suffer fewer tangles.
• To get better mends, Daniel lifts the rod tip to get a small belly, then rolls his wrist toward the indicator to get a more subtle mend.

Fly fishing is a visual sport, and if books are to compete with YouTube they need to be visually helpful and compelling. This book is packed with helpful visuals, both photographs and diagrams. I am sure Daniel put as much effort into these as he did the text. I love that he is not dogmatic, and says right in the beginning of the book that there are no rules, just lessons to learn.

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