FLYMPH FORUM

These are the plates from the first edition;
http://www.archive.org/stream/practifly ... 3/mode/2up

Example plate;
http://www.archive.org/stream/practifly ... 2/mode/2up

I have enhanced them very considerably. They were not quite as well coloured as the plates from the fourth edition, although the colours were more accurate than the second and third editions, and the plates are of course older, and there are limits to the colour enhancements achievable. One can not reveal or enhance what is not there to start with. The vast majority of these plates now extant are badly faded, foxed, or otherwise damaged. I wanted some good plates for my copies of various books so I set about improving what I had or what I could find. These plates can be printed on any colour printer, but I would suggest good quality photo printing paper. Of course you can of course simply view them on your computer. Taken together with the text describing the materials used, you can dress accurate patterns. Feel free to copy them.

They are not in order because I used a bulk uploader, but the flies are numbered so that should not be a problem.

Sorry, one of the plates was not the final enhancement. Difficult to keep track of all this!

Here it is with flies 15...20



TL
MC

Not bad at all Mike. Will you include this plate also:




As Hank use to say - just askin'...

dd

Sorry, as I wrote, difficult to keep track!



TL
MC

Here are the originals from which I enhanced this set;











TL
MC

Very cool project... I'm curious about the fly proportions on these, though: even with a "quartering," foreshortened artist's perspective, the wings on some of these flies seem much longer than what the standard would be today. Was this a matter of artistic license or do the old flies really have that charateristic?

They really did look like that. However, you have to be careful, at the time much shorter hackle was used than is now customary, and the hooks were chosen using different criteria. The illustrations are however accurate in regard to proportions.

The paintings of the natural flies are obviously very accurate with regard to proportions, and this is also an indication that the artificials are also accurate.

TL
MC

Nowadays many people base fly "sizes" on the hook size. This is a fairly modern idea. At one time the insect size was paramount in determining the dressing. Some of these artificial flies look "odd" to many modern anglers, simply because they are used to seeing other "standards". Also, these are all wet flies. One side effect of using long hackle to float dry flies is that the hackle used on wet flies to represent legs also gradually became longer, although this is in fact contrary to common sense and good imitation.

Also, with spiders ( soft hackles) the hackle used represents the WINGS of a fly, not the legs as is commonly supposed. Hackle length on spiders is often about one and a half times the body length, which is the same proportion as many natural duns.

TL
MC

Very interesting...definitely disorienting if your sense of fly design has been defined by the Catskill dry. Thanks for elaborating.

Mike Connor wrote:Nowadays many people base fly "sizes" on the hook size. This is a fairly modern idea. At one time the insect size was paramount in determining the dressing. Some of these artificial flies look "odd" to many modern anglers, simply because they are used to seeing other "standards". Also, these are all wet flies. One side effect of using long hackle to float dry flies is that the hackle used on wet flies to represent legs also gradually became longer, although this is in fact contrary to common sense and good imitation.

Also, with spiders ( soft hackles) the hackle used represents the WINGS of a fly, not the legs as is commonly supposed. Hackle length on spiders is often about one and a half times the body length, which is the same proportion as many natural duns.

TL
MC

The value of these old writings is greatly enhanced by comments like this, aiding in putting things into perspective. Modern anglers tend to have dry flies as reference as to what constitutes a fly. I really appreciate history lessons like this...

dd