The title of this piece is the title of chapter 5 in "Halcyon Days" by Bryn Hammond (Rugged Mountain Press, 1992). The book is both thought provoking (chapters on Catch and Release, and Competition and Competitiveness) and interesting reading (separate chapters on Exact Imitation, and Impressionism In Artificial Flies). I would like to share some of what Mr. Hammond has to say about the evolution of salmon flies.

I intend to quote Hammond liberally. My paraphrasing wouldn't add (more likely detract) and, as you will see if you read the book, I am following Hammond's lead. It is not my intention to parrot the entire chapter, but rather to pique your interest and give you some food for thought that I hadn't tasted either until I read this book.

The question is inevitable. A trout fisher looks at a salmon fly and asks "what does that imitate?". Hammond replies:

"Up to the 1960s nothing was known beyond the most general surmise as to where Atlantic and Pacific salmon went when they took to their respective oceans, or what they ate during their high seas sojourn. For this reason there was no basic imitative concept or intention in the creation and development of salmon flies."

Then, referring to the early 1960's, he says:

"The Danes took themselves off to friendly (to them) waters in Davis Strait which separates Greenland and Baffinland in the Canadian Arctic. There, by means of practical investigation, spurred on by the compelling commercial need to catch fish, they found the true and centralised home and feeding grounds of salmon in the sea. It was in those cold, bleak, fogbound waters that the salmon fed mightily on krill, a euphausid shrimp, found there in prodigious, near sold shoals.

He continues:

"As it happened, the knowledge gained did not lead to any particularly deadly new salmon fly that copied the krill."

Hammond refers often to Arthur Ransome's book "Mainly About Fishing" and quotes him:

"'There came a day,' wrote Ransome, 'memorable for me, when, sitting in my room in London, I saw, projected on the wall, greatly enlarged pictures of living organisms which it may seem that the salmon, acting as Natural Selector, refecting some of our flies and accepting others, has, all unknown to himself, been inducing our fly dressers, all unknown to themselves, more and more accurately to portray.'

"The first thing Ransome noticed in the photographs was that if (and this was soon afterwards proved to be correct) the salmon and sea trout do indeed feed on these planktonic creatures, the salmon has been right (as Natural Selector) in teaching us to avoid opacity in our artificial flies. The creatures of the plankton were essentially transparent. He also saw that most members of the plankton possessed long, flexible antennae and that the planktonic squid had long, straight beaks, both looking much like the terminal nylon monofilament of a fly fisherman's leader. But what startled Ransome most of all was that the translucent creatures of the plankton bore a touch of scarlet and a touch of pale green, the green no doubt from the phytoplankton on which they grazed."

And continuing after some comments from Skues:

"Ransome was transformed by what seemed to him something" of a revelation. The coloured photographs of the soup-thick animal plankton gave a new meaning to the salmon's long-known liking for some particular ingredients in the making of salmon flies. He began to see them in evolutionary terms through recorded angling literature:

"Those speckled feathers of the mallard to take the most obvious example, those features that were used in the seventeenth century by Cromwell's trooper, in the eighteenth by the North Country poacher, in the nineteenth by the Liverpool banker and by the Tweedside shoemaker, need no further justification than Mr. David's charming portrait of the little squid clutching a camel's hair paintbrush with tentacles that, spreading from the centre like the fibres of a wound hackle, are speckled, or look speckled, in just such a way. I should like to fish with just such a fly dressed with two or three turns of mallard, in fact a modified edition of a Derwent Whirlie. Another of Mr. David's pictures showed a brace of shrimp-like crustaceans not in the drab livery of the ordinary seashore shrimp but flaming scarlet, perfectly explaining why the salmon should welcome ordinary shrimps and prawns that have been boiled scarlet and bottled and sold to fishermen over the counter of a tackle-shop. Those two little shrimps, blazing on my wall, made Dr. Pryce Tannatt's well known William Rufus' (that has scared many fishermen but caught many salmon) seem the production of a realist. Touches of fluorescent material seem justified by the many luminous creatures of the ocean though probably we could easily use too much of it. We do not need our flies probing for fish with bulls-eye lanterns.'

"In Arthur Ransomes'view there is a simple explanation why in so many flies we have come (taught by the salmon and sea trout) to use the sharply barred feathers of the teal. That barring on the teal's hackles most vividly suggests the segmented carapaces of shrimps and related species. The zoologist's photographs reminded him of an experience when fishing a sandy Hebridean estuary for sea trout and found a Teal and Green (although known only as a lake fly) much the best pattern. While wading ashore through the shallows he observed what he described as 'countless little Teal and Greens, tiny crustaceans, whose segmented bodies looked exactly like the teal feathers with which I had winged those flies. So many of the plankton's inhabitants have segmented bodies that it is not surprising that (if he feeds on little shrimps) the salmon has been training us to use those feathers.'"

After noting his surprise that Ransome's thoughts made such little impact on the angling scene, Hammond states:

"Yet Ransome's view of natural selection at work in the evolution of salmon flies was nothing less than visionary and far ahead of its time. Something that puzzled him was why the use of some of the most exotic and unlikely features and materials in flies and fly-tying should have continued so long. A case in point was that of Golden Pheasant toppings. If a form of natural selection was at work - and he had no doubt it was - and, if the usefulness of the traditional and almost obligatory Golden Pheasant toppings was nothing but frippery, then their use should have died out. His view, However, was characterized by some splendid imagery:

'But what, you may ask, explains the usefulness of Golden Pheasant toppings, those fine gold fibres, naturally curved, that are taken from the crest of that exotic bird? Is it fantastic to imagine that they may in our flies have the importance of the colours that appear in the skin of a soap-bubble, but for which the bubble itself wold be invisible? Millions of the creatures of the plankton are indeed transparent, not to be seen unless somehow delicately caged in colour. May not those toppings, so frail, so sensitive, serve, as it were, to frame emptiness and, like the faint evanescent colours of the soap film, to outline the shape of nothingness and so make the invisible visible?"'

I have quoted but a small portion of this chapter, concentrating on the parts most relevant to salmon fly dressing. There is one quote pertaining to trout flies, however, that I include for those tiers wishing to justify faithful adherence to pattern. Quoting Dr. J. C. Mottram (who's "Fly Fishing, Some New Arts and Mysteries", 1915, is uncannily insightful):

"It is remarkable how flies gain a high reputation, are used by a great number of fishermen, then gradually lose favour and, finally, are seldom found in the angler's fly-box. I think the explanation lies in the fact that professional fly-tiers gradually and unconsciously alter the character of the fly until it comes to differ widely from the original and is of no particular interest to the trout. Take the case of Wickham's Fancy: forty years ago it was a general favourite; it was dressed on an 0 or 1 hook, the setae were short and of red hackle, the body of flat gold tinsel and a sparse short body hackle of dark red cock, the wings were small, single, not double, of light starling and projected forward, the head hackle was a few turns of medium red cock. The tinsel body gave a semblance of transparency; the fly was a splendid floater and therefore very good in the evening and in bright sunlight during the day; under some conditions of lighting it was an excellent imitation of the olive dun.

The shop-tied fly is now entirely different: it is on much too big a hook, the body hackle is thick and conceals the tinsel, the wings are large and clumsy, and it is much too heavily hackled at the head; no trout could possibly mistake it for an olive dun, nor any other fly commonly on the water - thus comes about its present-day bad reputation."

As long as I'm quoting folks instead of writing my own material let me share these thoughts on color from "A Man May Fish" by T. C. Kingsmill Moore (Colin Smythe Limited, 1991 edition). Commenting on why some colors not found in natural trout foods are so effective Moore says:

"A possible explanation is that the infrared rays invisible to our eyes may have a visible colour to trout. This was suggested to me when I was trying to discover the best material for a black body. I tied bodies of black quill, black wool, black seal's fur, black silk, black cotton, and black ostrich herl. The silk and the ostrich herl, especially the latter, were out on their own when it came to catching fish. Now black is black because it absorbs all colours and reflects none. I could not account for the varying success of different black materials till it occurred to me that not all blacks absorb infra-red rays. Some reflect it, at least partially. Manufacturers of black cloth for use in the tropics are careful to use a black dye which reflects as much infra-red as possible, for this makes the cloth cooler to wear. I retied all my bodies on plain hooks, and got a scientific friend to photograph them on plates sensitive to infra-red rays and by a light rich in infrared. Only the black silk and the ostrich herl came out as true black, the others being various shades of grey."

Moore doesn't say if the ostrich is dyed or natural black. Because the other materials he tested appear to be dyed I make the assumption the ostrich was also. Later in that same chapter there is this:

"Finally there appear to be mystery materials as well as mystery colours. Hare's ear, blue jay, and black ostrich herl seem to have queer attraction for fish. The old Irish fly tiers always used black short ostrich to butt the tail and again at the head. It has been suggested that this was to hide untidy work, but if you unpick an old fly you will see that this is not so. As far back as the Book of St. Alban's this material is recommended, and despite its fragility and other disadvantages it is still largely used. I believe it has some virtue of its own - perhaps its absorption of infrared.

Hare's ear fur is used with success to imitate bodies with no apparent resemblance to it in colour, and jay feathers, whether you use the blue for hackles or the cinnamon and black for wings, seem more effective in attracting fish than similar feathers from other birds."

I think we would agree he could well have included peacock herl in that list.

Yes, materials went onto salmon flies for a variety of reason: beauty, availability, tradition. Those materials the fish preferred stayed on the flies.