Trout Flies of the East (Reviewed)

Trout Flies of the East
Jim Schollmeyer & Ted Leeson
Frank Amato Publications, Inc., 1999, Soft bound, 127 pp.
ISBN 1-57188-196-4 (Available spiral bound).

This and the two companion pattern books by the same authors, Trout Flies of the West & Inshore Flies, represent an incredibly thoughtful and attractive idea. They contacted fly shops in each region and asked for local fly patterns. I do this every time I break new ground. Some of the flies that I find are strictly local. In this book Reid‘s Round Goby is a good example. The Goby is a Great Lake’s exotic introduction which, thank God, seems to like Zebra mussels. It might work somewhere else but its design is a strictly local fly. Others may have a general application.
Once the Adams was a local fly. So was the Humpy. They have, in the fullness of time, a broader application. They started as local responses to matching a hatch. Insect species adapt to each and every stream and changes occur along with the change in stream ecology. We are not talking about big meteor caused environmental shifts with the disappearance of species here, just one year the stream bottom turns brown and all the green insects get gobbled up. Those with a brownish cast survive and this in turn occasions a bit of a change in the dubbing mix necessary to take fish. Locals find this by trial and error (or success). Visitors find this in local fly shops.
While there are new flies in this book many are not new, just new variations on old ideas clearly identified as such. Try the West Branch Adams, The Coachman Betty or the Dark Humpy, all in this pattern book. For most of us who tie flies the neat thing is the chance to try someone else’s successful tie. Up until now the conundrum was to wait until you heard about it whether published in a magazine or by personal discovery in some shop.
The recipe for each fly is clearly written out. This is supplemented with one or two excellent color photographs. You do need to be a tier with some experience. If you falter I suggest that you consult the authors’ The Fly Tier’s Benchside Reference reviewed elsewhere in this issue. I looked only at the Eastern flies. I await the Western book. Now if someone would publish one with the guide’s secret flies. That will be the day. RWOL

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