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Dec 15, 2011 – Wilhelmina McFadden and 50% to the benefit of Alexander McFadden. Winfield P. Jones was appointed trustee of the trusts for Wilhelmina .
Wilhelmina McFadden a professional watercolor artist for over 19 years, and the Trout Unlimited Canada 2009 Artist of the Year, Wilhelmina was born in Toronto and currently resides in Creeks Town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Wilhelmina has exhibited her work in numerous shows in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Wilhelmina work is on display at the Waterloo River Museum and selected galleries in Cananda and U.S.A. Her watercolor was selected by hotel lobbies for the Grand Hyatt, Hillview,Colorado and is also regularly featured in the Salmon and Steelhead Journal and Fly Fusion magazine. Commissions include work for Selene Dumaine (Maine guide and writer for Fly Tyer magazine) and Watermaster Boats (Montana). Diane’s fly fishing fine art is appreciated in private collections throughout Canada, the United States and in Europe.
“My watercolors describe the essence of fly fishing as told by exotic paraphernalia, rusty pick up trucks, fishin’ dogs and snazzy tackle. The story is about optimism, bits of fur and feathers, solitude and companionship. Each day on the river is notable in the mist off the water or the misadventure of the moment. Consequently, I am inclined to depict the everyday aspect of our passion amid the complexity of the water, light and color. For it is this that fuels us in our inordinate conservation commitments and the nonstop chatter in the fly shop”.
Wilhelmina McFadden & Ragnar McFadden sat down with us and talk about fly fishing is an angling method in which an artificial “fly” is used to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. Casting a nearly weightless fly or “lure” requires casting techniques significantly different from other forms of casting. Fly fishermen use hand tied flies that resemble natural invertebrates or other food organisms, or “lures” to provoke the fish to strike.
Fly fishing can be done in fresh or salt water. North Americans usually distinguish freshwater fishing between cold-water species (trout, salmon, steelhead) and warm-water species, notably bass. In Britain, where natural water temperatures vary less, the distinction is between game fishing for trout or salmon and coarse fishing for other species. Techniques for fly fishing also differ with habitat (lakes and ponds, small streams, large rivers, bays and estuarys, and open ocean.)
In fly fishing, fish are caught by using Artificial flies that are cast with a fly rod and a fly line. The fly line (today, almost always coated with plastic) is heavy enough to send the fly to the target. The main difference between fly fishing and spin or bait fishing is that in fly fishing the weight of the line carries the hook through the air, whereas in spin and bait fishing the weight of the lure or sinker at the end of the monofilament or braided line gives casting distance. Artificial flies are of several types; some imitating an insect (either flying or swimming), others a bait fish or crustacean, others attractors are known to attract fish although they look like nothing in nature. Flies can be made either to float or sink, and range in size from a few millimeters to 30 cm long; most are between 1 and 5 cm.
Artificial flies are made by fastening hair, fur, feathers, or other materials, both natural and synthetic, onto a hook. The first flies were tied with natural materials, but synthetic materials are now popular and prevalent. Flies are tied in sizes, colors and patterns to match local terrestrial and aquatic insects, baitfish, or other prey attractive to the target fish species.
Fly fishing is most renowned as a method for catching trout, grayling and salmon, but it is also used for a wide variety of species including pike, bass, panfish, and carp, as well as marine species, such as redfish, snook, tarpon, bonefish and striped bass. Many fly anglers catch unintended species such as chub, bream and rudd while fishing for ‘main target’ species such as trout. A growing population of anglers attempt to catch as many different species as possible with the fly. With the advancement of technology and development of stronger rods and reels, larger predatory saltwater species such as wahoo, tuna, marlin and sharks have become target species on fly. Realistically any fish can be targeted and captured on fly as long as the main food source is effectively replicated by the fly itself and suitable gear is used.
Frontispiece from The Art of Angling by Richard Brookes, 1790
Many credit the first recorded use of an artificial fly to the Roman Claudius Aelianus near the end of the 2nd century. He described the practice of Macedonian anglers on the Astraeus River:
…they have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman’s craft. . . . They fasten red wool. . . round a hook, and fit on to the wool two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattles, and which in color are like wax. Their rod is six feet long, and their line is the same length. Then they throw their snare, and the fish, attracted and maddened by the color, comes straight at it, thinking from the pretty sight to gain a dainty mouthful; when, however, it opens its jaws, it is caught by the hook, and enjoys a bitter repast, a captive.
In his book Fishing from the Earliest Times, however, William Radcliff (1921) gave the credit to Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis), born some two hundred years before Aelianus, who wrote:
…Who has not seen the scarus rise, decoyed and killed by fraudful flies…
The last word, somewhat indistinct in the original, is either “mosco” (moss) or “musca” (fly) but catching fish with fraudulent moss seems unlikely.
Other than a few fragmented references little was written on fly fishing until The Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle was published (1496) within The Boke of Saint Albans attributed to Dame Juliana Berners. The book contains, along with instructions on rod, line and hook making, dressings for different flies to use at different times of the year. The earliest English poetical treatise on Angling by John Dennys, said to have been a fishing companion of Shakespeare, was published in 1613, The Secrets of Angling, of which 6 verses were quoted in the better known book Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler (1653), of which the latter two chapters were actually written by his friend Charles Cotton, and described the fishing in the Derbyshire Wye.
British fly-fishing continued to develop in the 19th Century, with the emergence of fly fishing clubs, along with the appearance of several books on the subject of fly tying and fly fishing techniques. In southern England, dry-fly fishing acquired an elitist reputation as the only acceptable method of fishing the slower, clearer rivers of the south such as the River Test and the other chalk streams concentrated in Hampshire, Surrey, Dorset and Berkshire (see Southern England Chalk Formation for the geological specifics). The weeds found in these rivers tend to grow very close to the surface, and it was felt necessary to develop new techniques that would keep the fly and the line on the surface of the stream. These became the foundation of all later dry-fly developments. However, there was nothing to prevent the successful employment of wet flies on these chalk streams, as George Edward MacKenzie Skues proved with his nymph and wet fly techniques. To the horror of dry-fly purists, Skues later wrote two books, Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, and The Way of a Trout with a Fly, which greatly influenced the development of wet fly fishing. In northern England and Scotland, many anglers also favored wet-fly fishing, where the technique was more popular and widely practiced than in southern England. One of Scotland’s leading proponents of the wet fly in the early-to-mid 19th century was W.C. Stewart, who published “The Practical Angler” in 1857.
In Scandinavia and the United States, attitudes toward methods of fly fishing were not nearly as rigidly defined, and both dry- and wet-fly fishing were soon adapted to the conditions of those countries.
Tenkara is the only fly-fishing method in Japan that is defined by using a fly and casting technique where the line is what is actually being cast. Tenkara originated in the mountains of Japan as a way for professional fishermen and inn-keepers to harvest the local fish, Ayu, trout, char for selling and providing a meal to their guests. Primarily a small-stream fishing method that was preferred for being highly efficient, where the long rod allowed the fisherman to place the fly where the fish would be.
Another style of fishing in Japan is Ayu fishing. As written by historian Andrew Herd, in the book “The Fly”, “Fly fishing became popular with Japanese peasants from the twelfth century onward…fishing was promoted to a pastime worthy of Bushi (warriors), as part of an official policy to train the Bushi’s mind during peacetime.” This refers primarily to Ayu fishing, which commonly uses a fly as lure, uses longer rods, but there is no casting technique required, it’s more similar to dapping. Ayu was practiced in the lowlands (foothills), where the Bushi resided, tenkara practiced in the mountains. Fishing flies are thought to have first originated in Japan for Ayu fishing over 430 years ago. These flies were made with needles that were bent into shape and used as fishing hooks, then dressed as a fly. The rods along with fishing flies, are considered to be a traditional local craft of the Kaga region.
In the West, fly-fishing rods were primarily made of wood, which is heavy, so having long rods to reach spots where fish may be was tricky. Anglers started devising running line systems, where they could use shorter rods and longer lines. Eventually this led to the development of reels and the widespread use of shorter rods and reels. In Japan, bamboo, a very light material, was readily available, so anglers could make very long rods without much concern for weight. Fly-fishing remained more pure, as it was in its origins, anglers in Japan could continue using the long rods and did not feel the need to invent running line systems and reels.
In the United States, fly anglers are thought to be the first anglers to have used artificial lures for bass fishing. After pressing into service the fly patterns and tackle designed for trout and salmon to catch largemouth and smallmouth bass, they began to adapt these patterns into specific bass flies. Fly anglers seeking bass developed the spinner/fly lure and bass popper fly, which are still used today.
In the late 19th century, American anglers, such as Theodore Gordon, in the Catskill Mountains of New York began using fly tackle to fish the region’s many brook trout-rich streams such as the Beaverkill and Willowemoc Creek. Many of these early American fly anglers also developed new fly patterns and wrote extensively about their sport, increasing the popularity of fly fishing in the region and in the United States as a whole. One such man was Charles F. Orvis, who through his actions helped to popularize fly fishing by designing and distributing novel reel and fly designs. His 1874 fly reel was described by reel historian Jim Brown as the “benchmark of American reel design,” the first fully modern fly reel. The founding of The Orvis Company helped institutionalize fly fishing within America and supplied angling equipment and accessories to the homes of millions of Americans.[citation needed] His tackle catalogs, distributed to a small but devoted customer list in the late 1800s, are now highly collectible as early forerunners of today’s enormous direct-mail outdoor products industry. The Junction Pool in Roscoe, where the Willowemoc flows into the Beaver Kill, is the center of an almost ritual pilgrimage every April 1, when the season begins. Albert Bigelow Paine, a New England author, wrote about fly fishing in The Tent Dwellers, a book about a three week trip he and a friend took to central Nova Scotia in 1908.
Participation in fly fishing peaked in the early 1920s in the eastern states of Maine and Vermont and in the Midwest in the spring creeks of Wisconsin. Along with deep sea fishing, Ernest Hemingway did much to popularize fly fishing through his works of fiction, including The Sun Also Rises. It was the development of inexpensive fiberglass rods, synthetic fly lines, and monofilament leaders, however, in the early 1950s, that revived the popularity of fly fishing, especially in the United States.
In recent years, interest in fly fishing has surged as baby boomers have discovered the sport. Movies such as Robert Redford’s film A River Runs Through It, starring Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt, cable fishing shows, and the emergence of a competitive fly casting circuit have also added to the sport’s visibility.
Australia
Brown trout were first introduced to Australia by the efforts of Edward Wilson’s Acclimatisation Society of Victoria with the aim to “provide for manly sport which will lead Australian youth to seek recreation on the river’s bank and mountainside rather than in the Cafe and Casino.The first successful transfer of Brown Trout ova (from the Itchen and Wye) was aboard the Norfolk in 1864. Rainbow Trout were not introduced until 1894.
Lines made of silk replaced those of horse hair and were heavy enough to be cast in the modern style. George Cotton and his predecessors fished their flies with long rods, and light lines allowing the wind to do most of the work of getting the fly to the fish. The introduction of new woods to the manufacture of fly rods, first greenheart and then bamboo, made it possible to cast flies into the wind on silk lines. These early fly lines proved troublesome as they had to be coated with various dressings to make them float and needed to be taken off the reel and dried every four hours or so to prevent them from becoming waterlogged.
American rod builders such as Hiram Leonard developed superior techniques for making bamboo rods: thin strips were cut from the cane, milled into shape, and then glued together to form light, strong, hexagonal rods with a solid core that were superior to anything that preceded them.
Fly reels were soon improved, as well. At first they were rather mechanically simple; more or less a storage place for the fly line and backing. In order to tire the fish, anglers simply applied hand pressure to the rim of the revolving spool, known as ‘palming’ the rim. (See Fishing reel). In fact, many superb modern reels still use this simple design, often with a “click-check” mechanism which makes both an audible noise and provides light spool braking to prevent overruns.
Fly casting, Maramec Spring Branch, Missouri, fly fishing can be thought of as a method of casting line rather than lure. Non-flyfishing methods rely on a lure’s weight to pull line from the reel during the forward motion of a cast. By design, a fly is too light to be cast, and thus simply follows the unfurling of a properly cast fly line, which is heavier and tapered and therefore more castable than lines used in other types of fishing.
The physics of flycasting can be described by the transfer of impulse, the product of mass and speed through the rod from base to top and from the transfer of impulse through the fly line all the way to the tip of the leader. Because both the rod and the fly line are tapered the smaller amount of mass will reach high speeds as the waves in rod and line unfurl. The waves that travel through the fly line are called loops. Determining factors in reaching the highest speeds are the basal frequency of a rod and the transfer of the speed from the tip of the rod to the fly line. At the moment the rod tip reaches its highest velocity the direction of the cast is determined.
The type of cast used when fishing varies according to the conditions. The most common cast is the forward cast, where the angler whisks the fly into the air, back over the shoulder until the line is nearly straight, then forward, using primarily the forearm. The objective of this motion is to “load” (bend) the rod tip with stored energy, then transmit that energy to the line, resulting in the fly line (and the attached fly) being cast for an appreciable distance. However, just bending the rod and releasing it to jerk the fly line forward (like a bowstring or a catapult) will not propel the fly line and fly very far. More important is the movement of the rod through an arc acting as a lever, magnifying the hand movement of the caster (of about a foot) to an arc at the rod tip of several feet. Here the rod acts as a lever. In fact, one of the Class 3 types of lever, where the The force is applied between the fulcrum and the load (like tweezers). The fulcrum in the fly cast is below the caster’s hand gripping the rod; the load is at the rod tip; between the hand exerts the force. The caster’s “stroke” backwards and forwards, for the backcast and the forward cast, operates the rod as a (slightly flexible) lever. Casting without landing the fly on the water is known as ‘false casting’, and may be used to pay out line, to dry a soaked fly, or to reposition a cast. Other casts are the roll cast, the single- or double-haul, the tuck cast, and the side- or curve-cast.
Dropping the fly onto the water and its subsequent movement on or beneath the surface is one of fly fishing’s most difficult aspects; the angler is attempting to cast in such a way that the line lands smoothly on the water and the fly appears as natural as possible. At a certain point, if a fish does not strike, depending upon the action of the fly in the wind or current, the angler picks up the line to make another presentation. On the other hand, if a fish strikes, the angler pulls in line while raising the rod tip. This “sets” the hook in the fish’s mouth. The fish is played either by hand, where the angler continues to hold the fly line in one hand to control the tension applied to the fish, or by reeling up any slack in the line and then using the hand to act as a drag on the reel. Most modern fly reels have an adjustable, mechanical drag system to control line tension during a fish’s run.
Beginners tend to point with the rod to where they want to throw, but the movement of the hand has to be a controlled speed-up and then come to an abrupt stop. The rod will then start to unfurl and the tip of the rod will reach a high speed in the required direction. The high speed of the rod tip toward the target gives the impulse to make the cast, the abrupt stop and retreat of the rod tip is essential for the formation of a loop. Experienced fishermen also improve the speed of the line leaving the rod tip by a technique called hauling, applying a quick fast pull with the hand holding the line. At the end of the cast when the line is stretched the line as a whole will still have speed and the fisherman can let some extra line through their fingers making a false throw, either forward or backward or to finish the cast and start fishing.
There are a great number of special casts meant to evade problems like trees behind the angler (roll cast), the pulling of the line on the fly by the action of the stream, or to make the fly land more softly.
Hollywood Today 2013 