Walter & Group...
I'm certain that I'll never be as accomplished a trout fisherman as Bob Tabbert.
Bob re-kindled my interest in the history and lore of fly fishing by sending me this book which I've just finished reading:
SKUES on TROUT, Edited by Paul Schullery, Introductions & back matter copyright 2008 by Paul Schullary, Stackpole Books, ISBN 13:978-0-8117-0358-1.
This book contains selections from the writings of George Edward Mackensie Skues (1858-1949).
Skues is considered the father of nymph fishing and wrote extensively on the virtues of this way of trout fishing.
George Philip Rigney Pulman is given credit as the author who first wrote about dry fly fishing for trout and grayling in his "Vade Mecum of Fly Fishing for Trout" in 1841.
Two decades or so later, Frederick Maurice Halford embraced this dry fly method in his writings and fishing to the exclusion of all else. He held to it as one would to a religion and championed the method to the extreme that he and his disciples looked down upon wet fly fishers as something a bit below sub human entities. Halford even proposed that non dry fly purists be barred from the English caulk streams ! *
As you carefully read Skues, you will see the early beginnings of a sort of "counter revolution" against Halford and his purist "extremists". You will see the birth of looking at aqatic subimago forms in a naturalist .... almost scientific manner as well as his experiments later refined by Snell (Snell's window)** attempting to figure out what a trout might see of the fly. He studies the trout with the objective of how and why they do what they do.
Having read this, you will know the meaning of these fly fishing terms, taken from this literature of the 1800's. (I remember a few of them from my years fishing trout with my grandfather in the 30's.)
First try and see if you can define any of them before you read . Once you read SKUES ON TROUT you will know the meaning of all but one :-
"Ex Mortua Manu"
"KICK"
"Sedge"
"Grannom"
"Smutting"
"Curse"
"Brace"
"Red tag"
"Alder" (Not the tree)
"Piscivorous trout"
"Iron-blue"
"Little Chap"
"Coch-y-bondhu"
"Whipping the gut"
"Celluloid varnish"
* TROUT , Vol. I & II, by Ernest Schwiebert, ISBN: 0-525-24269-4 (Set), PP. 107-141.
** PRESENTATION, Gary Borger, 1995, ISBN 0-96283-92-5-6, pp. 29-33
Gordy