One of first flies my
dad wanted me to tie for him, was a wet fly pattern called the Muskrat's
Regret. I had all the materials from
when Dad bought the tying kit, and it was really simple - a Muskrat fur body
with brown hackle , tied palmer-style. That was it.
It was a popular pattern on
Wisconsin rivers like the Brule in those days.
A lot of the old-timers my dad had me tie flies for asked for it, so I
tied a lot of them.
I don't know where the pattern came from or why. It's one of those patterns that represented
almost anything in general and nothing in particular. About all you could say with certainty was
that it represented food, because the
trout sure liked to eat it.
In those days, in that part of the country, fly fishing
wasn't very sophisticated. The fly
fishers I knew didn't care about matching the hatch, or using flies that
imitated a particular food source. All
they cared about in the fly patterns they used, was whether they caught fish.
The technique to fish flies like this was just as
simple. The fly was cast upstream and
allowed to drift down and sink. If a
fish didn't pick up the fly on the drift, the line would be allowed belly out
and pull the fly back to the surface. Sometimes they'd lift the rod tip a bit
to speed the ascent. More often than
not, this was when a trout would strike.
This technique is similar to what's now called a Leisenring Lift. The Old-Timers called it fly fishing.
These kinds of flies and the techniques used to fish them aren't
so popular any more. It's not that
they're ineffective. It's more like
they've gone out of fashion. Just the
same, they still work as well as they used to.
You just have to try them.
I have the Muskrat's Regret for sale in my Etsy store. Click Here
