“The gaudy brilliant fly patterns, often deadly with the bright fish not long away from the sea, tempt the old fish little and the smaller flies of neutral coloration, most like the insects of the stream, are those he will prefer.” - The Atlantic Salmon, Lee Wulff.
Everybody has one. As a matter of fact, I probably have at least a dozen or more rattling through my brain every time I sit down at my fly-tying bench. Be it dry, wet, nymph, streamer, salmon or salt, we all seem to gravitate to one or two patterns that stand out in our mind’s eye.
What is it about that certain fly that attracts you like no other?
It seems that every time you see it in a book, periodical or online, you stop as if drawn in by the essence of the thing. Often, it may be a fly that you saw years ago, or was given to you, or hooked you on the sport – whatever. Now it sticks in your mind and you find yourself frequently repeating that same formula in various ways, trying to perfect that intangible something which made it so appealing.
For me, that one pattern has evolved into many over the years as I delve deeper into the gradual madness that is fly tying. However, if I had to pick just one, there is a fly I would choose, or rather a family of flies unified by a common name, “Junglestone”.
These flies, defined by the pair(s) of wings of the Grey Jungle Fowl (Gallus Sonneratti) they sport on their backs, are unique, eye-catching versions of the Isoperla stoneflies. Whether it is the exuberance of a DeFeo dressing, the technical exactness executed by Jennings, the compact neatness and classic austerity of a Niemeyer tie, or the absolute mastery of material by Gajardoni, I love the Junglestones.
I find that I am continuously trying out variations on the same theme. Like Rain Man, I repeat them in fur, thread & feather, one after another, forever attempting to get it right. It started years ago, when browsing the musty-smelling aisles of the now defunct Owl Bookshop; I found a tattered volume of old classic salmon flies. Thumbing through the pages, I stopped at a color plate in a section entitled, “GRUBS – Wingless Patterns” – “The Jungle Hornet” by G. M. Kelson. Bang, Instant jungle attraction! But that initial attraction turned sour when I found out that even a c-grade neck would cost me more than I made on my paper route in a year!
That was 1964 and it would take almost ten years before I would again get the “jungle-itch”. But I was hooked, deep and those evil Fates who control the lives of men, had spun, measured & cut out a destiny for me that would leave me tying away at my vise, until all hours, and through a lifetime.
My discovery of the stonefly patterns of the prominent artist & Illustrator for Field and Stream Magazine, Charles DeFeo, provided me with a second epiphany. Seeing the exotic nail pairings of the Jungle Hornet now applied as wings to a real working fly showed me a way to move beyond my simple “Jungle Jassids” (I had by now collected several split-nailed neck bits from other tiers) and begin my own experimenting with patterns for the “family” stone.
It comes as no surprise to me to learn that DeFeo, who is recognized as the first to employ the nail feathers of the Jungle Fowl as wing cases and was perhaps the most prolific salmon tier of his age, had also been influenced by the “Apterous” caterpillar-like patterns of Kelson and contracted his own form of jungle fever. Volume1, Issue 3 (pg.114) of the Art of Angling Journal, shows a plate of three DeFeo-dressed salmon flies, one of which is a Jungle Hornet. Though he created many patterns and variations of the stonefly nymph, both for trout & salmon, it is the Jungle & Golden stoneflies that still hold my attention. In the works of Preston Jennings, a codifier of angling entomology, who developed the prismatic theory of trout vision and authored “A Book of Trout Flies”, I saw how DeFeo had influenced him as well.
The jungle-winged Yellow & Orange –Stone Creepers created by Jennings were direct descendants of the series of low-water stonefly nymphs developed by DeFeo for fishing the Miramichi and Cairns. It was also DeFeo who first introduced Jennings to his technique for inducing “lying-in” salmon to take a small nymph when presented with precision at eye-level. It was here that Preston learned how Charlie developed his family of salmon stonefly nymphs that were to prove so deadly.
Obviously those salmon had experienced a jungle fever all their own, remembering their time on the river as parr & smolt when they competed with native brookies for dislodged stoneflies and emerging mayfly nymphs. An old Italian saying goes something like, “La vita è breve, ma la memoria è lunga” (life is short, but memory is long). Though, the saying had more to do with vendetta than with life in a salmon river, still the sentiment applies.
As Stéphan Reebs, who wrote about the incredible memory of salmon, observed.“By far the best example of long-term memory is the homing behavior of salmon… When they are young, salmon learn the smell of the stream in which they live. Then they leave the stream to go live at sea. Several years later, they come back to their natal stream in order to spawn in it. These adult salmon find their natal stream by following their nose – the trail of the odor learned several years earlier but not forgotten. This seems to be a case of imprinting. In imprinting, the brain is hard-wired to learn something during a sensitive period early in life, and retain that information until death. (“Long-Term Memory in Fishes”, Stéphan G. Reebs Université de Moncton, Canada, 2008”).
It was this idea of imprinted early memory that DeFeo must have considered when he created his impressive series of salmon nymphs and developed fishing techniques to properly utilize them on otherwise uncooperative salmon. His ability to communicate both as friend and mentor to many anglers is all that has kept the fever alive. Sadly, Charlie never published, and so much of his work in this area has gone unrecorded. However, several insights into his theories remain. Joseph Bates, in his book “Salmon Flies and Fishing”, states; “No one except the salmon knows why salmon will take one fly pattern in preference to another… Charlie DeFeo, who knows as much as anybody is quoted as having remarked that the Rat flies (i.e. Rusty Rat) resemble the stonefly, an insect prevalent at times in the Restigouche area.”
Ted Niemeyer, an early master of realistic flies, as well as an accomplished salmon tier, whose low-water classics, the Junglestone & Peastone nymph are models of perfection, names Charlie as the person who became the greatest influence in his fly tying. In his interview with author Judith Dunham in her book “The Atlantic Salmon Fly”, Niemeyer talks about DeFeo’s theories on stonefly nymphs.“Charlie told me to go to an Atlantic salmon stream and turn over the rocks to see what was underneath…. The New Brunswick Rivers were full of stoneflies with yellow butts on their undersides. Why do you think, he asked me, that Atlantic salmon flies have yellow, green or orange tags? He felt that the tag imitated the yellow band at the end of the stoneflies found in so many Atlantic salmon streams. He was right”.
The Junglestone fever had also made its way abroad and returned in the form of a master fly tier from Italy by the name of Fabrizio Gajardoni, who I met at the Fly Fishing Show in Somerset, NJ in 2006. In addition to displaying a brilliant selection of classic and interpretive salmon flies, he was also extremely adept at tying beautiful nymphs and realistic beetles. At show’s end, he presented me with several mementos; among them was a small circular box. Inside, perched on a mound of streambed stones, was a Junglestone nymph unlike any I had seen, with a series of perfectly aligned nail pairs and an abdomen of raffia.
Fabrizio, I discovered was also a great admirer of DeFeo and had adapted Charlie’s design to fit a nymph pattern that he employed in Italian rivers. The uniqueness of Fabrizio’s design provided me with an inspiration which turned into another round of late evenings at the tying bench, and so on it goes.
Like a contagion of ideas, Junglestone fever spreads to all those who are affected by the exotic beauty of their design. Deceptively simple, they offer the fly tier a pattern where form & function interact with imagination.
Fly tying on the whole, is a strange hobby that can become a passion which may quickly turn to a fever when the tier comes under the spell of that one fly that lives forever in his memory, turning his nights into a jumble of Junglestones!
