SONGS from the SIRENSSTEELHEAD FLIES & THEIR SEDUCTIVE POWERS

photos, flies & text by Jeff Bright

A Northern Hilton in shrimpand orange prepares to takeflight from the tier’s vice.

Steelhead and salmon flies, those fanciful

creations in shocking colors, whether piled willy-nilly in shop bins,

arranged neatly in a Wheatley box, posed perfectly on a catalog page,

or wet and pinned in the hinge of a great fish’s jaw, never fail to catch

my eye. It’s as if they possess an

inert but dangerous po-

tential, a sort of coiled-

up voodoo. Tease them

with a wisp of air or tongue of

river current and they spring to life. The good ones have an attitude,

a jaunty stance. When you open your fly box in the morning, they

whisper convincingly, “Pick me, I’m the one.” Knotted on your tippet,

they swim like mermaids — beautiful, seductive, creatures of the

imagination, each one a song from the sirens.

This Skeena steelhead couldn’t resist a Shanghai Lady.

BLACK CAT

NEW SONGS TO SINGIf your writing or photography makes its way into amagazine or book, sooner or later you’ll be asked toprovide a short bio. My wife, generously lending herwriting talents, helped with mine. In it she declared thatI “came to Northern California pursuing musical aspi-rations, but fell deeply in love with the land. The riverssang a melody truer than any I had heard and the fishwere more seductive than any lyric.” That sums it uppretty well. But let me give it to you another way.

For 15 years I wrote and played music. Fromsouthwest Ohio, in 1988 I traveled to the west coastand landed in San Francisco. I wrote hundreds ofsongs and sang them in front of hundreds of people.As far as I know none of them died from the exposure.Maybe I should’ve stuck with it, I don’t know. But Ididn’t. (I said hundreds of people, not thousands.) In-stead, I picked a different path through that yellowwood when a friend took me to a small coastal streamon a bright January day in 1994. He stuck a castingrod in my hand, I caught a large, wild steelhead andimmediately the course of my life veered in a new di-rection. I was bitten by the steelhead bug, and thestinger went in deep. Very deep.

A couple of years and many fish later, I set asideconventional tackle and committed to fly fishing forsteelhead — and instantly went from catching a lot tonone. It was a strain on the ego, but thankfully I had

A pack of Northern Hiltons poised for action on a Skeena tributary.

A Highland Blackbird and a Blue Peacock Spey await their turns on a British Columbia river.

books to keep me company and offer encouragement.Among those books was Flies for Steelhead by Dick Stew-

art and Farrow Allen. Published in 1992, at the time it was acompendium of flies in current use, including a mix of patternswith historical significance and those new on the scene. Beforenodding off to sleep at night I would pore over the photographs,recipes and descriptions for hours, transfixed by the eleganthairwings and speys, in particular the traditionally inspired, sleekties of John Shewey and Bob Veverka and the spare, uniquely

crafted summer flies of Harry Lemire.It was surely a case of flies

catching the fisherman.I began buying all

manner of materials andtying all manner of ill con-ceived, overdressed mon-

strosities. Getting my fliesto look like those in Stewart

and Allen’s book was harder than Iimagined.

But with time and perseverance, I found I could comeclose, and close enough to occasionally entice a reckless steel-head. I developed a better sense for proportion and an under-standing of fly design, which, as most steelhead fly-tying anglerscome to realize, is almost always more important than precisepattern.

I also discovered I could seldom tie faithful to a recipe. Ihad to do it differently. I had to somehow make the fly my own

Shanghai Lady and Cascade Jack worked their magic on two Dean River steelhead.

ROYAL PURPLE

A Shadow Hilton relaxes after the catch in California’s Trinity River — and a Hardy JLH Ultralight will need to be rinsed of sand.

if I were to actually take it to the river, tie it on and fish it.The ideas I used in tying the fly might be borrowed, but theend result had to be an expression of my own personalitybefore I could let a steelhead see it. I understand this couldbe judged as short sighted self-absorption, or even a kindof snobbery, but really it has more to do with why I choseto fly fish in the first place.

Fly fishing for steelheadand salmon may not re-quire a creative streak,but it certainly providesthe opportunity to exer-cise what creativity andpenchant for individualexpression one might have— especially if you possess anoveractive imagination and a knack for mak-ing things with your hands. For those who want it to be so,fly fishing is art, design and craft all wrapped in one neatpackage. And perhaps no element in fly fishing representsthis notion more than the fly.

I think it was here, in this realization, that I discovereda creative satisfaction in developing, tying and fishing steel-head flies similar to that which I found in writing and per-forming songs. Steelhead fly fishing could provide aplatform for meaningful engagement with the world aroundme. It could fuel my observations, curiosity and questions.And in the process, it could sustain my soul.

GOLDEN ORANGE SPEY

A Thornhill Rose on the Kitsumkalum River.

ANOTHER REVOLUTIONOf course, it began some time before — and a recently re-leased DVD documents the origins — but for me the worldof steelhead flies changed radically in winter 2002 whenFish & Fly magazine sent out its Volume 3, Number 2. Inthat issue appeared a long and involved recipe for a new-to-the-public fly called the Intruder, a creation credited toWashington-based guide Ed Ward.

Ed and his cohort of savvy steelheaders developed astyle of fly — again, not so much a pattern as a style —that utilized “in-the-round” tying and careful selection andplacement of materials to produce a large profile fly, with-out excessive bulk, that could be cast reasonable distancesand sink at a reasonable rate.

Hey, it made perfect sense to me. Big, wild steelheadand salmon are serious predators. They don’t get big with-out a mean streak. From a very young age they have to be-come adept at tracking and ambushing other swimmingcreatures, some of which are not much smaller than them-selves. Especially in northern rivers, where aquatic insectsare scarce, survivors can’t be choosy — see big swimmingprotein, eat big swimming protein!

Translating this to ocean life is an easy step, as well.We don’t know a lot about the marine habits of steelheadand salmon, but it seems likely colorful swimming critterslike prawns and squid would be features of their diets.

So, in the Intruder, at last, was something like a silverbullet for winter steelheading. Finally we had something to

Still life with Moonray.

Three thieves on the Bulkley River, all steelhead-approved: Blue Creeper (aka Lil’ Elvis), Diablo Verde, Kingfisher Deluxe.

tie on our leaders that might begin to rivalthe effectiveness of a wobbling, polishedblade of metal. We had an offering that“moved” in a seductive, lifelike manner andthat we might, if we stretched the meaning,still call a fly.

For me this was exciting. It opened thedoor to a new world of possibilities andnew ways to express myself. When Ed lethis secret out of the box, I was inspired, aswere many anglers and tiers throughoutthe Pacific Northwest. We had a new wayto conceptualize the steelhead fly.

Today, the revolution continues withinfluence from Scandinavia in the stacked-wing Nordic tube flies created by giftedtiers such as Michael Frodin. To my eye,the siren songs have become even more al-luring. I’m excited to see where we will gofrom here, and see who will be more se-duced — the fish or the fisher. I think Iknow the answer.

Up close and personal with a shrimp and orangeNordic Marabou, scheduled for field testingAugust 2010.