Best Fly: Wooly Bugger Assignment

A trout fly can be a thing of beauty. Unlike a painting or a sculpture or most forms of art, however, we usually create trout flies to use precisely so that a trout can destroy them and sometimes so that we can eat and destroy the trout. Here above is an underutilized trout fly called a Red Wooly Bugger. Study it carefully (as you were earlier assigned to do before you tied a fly yourself). Pay attention to proportion. Notice, for instance, that the hackle on the fly descends in size from "large" to "small" from the eye of the hook to the tail of the fly. Notice that the tail of the fly is about equal to the length of the hook. Notice, too, that the tier factored in these details before she tied the fly. Compare this fly with the Wooly Bugger you tied and then tie another one and another one until you have created something Reverend Maclean would call "beautiful."

For a definition of "beauty" please read the following essay "Beautifying the World through Art" by Gary Witherspoon.

Using what you know about beauty and art, vote for the top four flies the students in our class tied for this ongoing assignment. Vote for your own fly, if you believe your fly is among the best. You get four votes.

You can safely bet that Witherspoon's essay along with fly tying and fly fishing and "A River Runs through It"will all figure into our final exam.

Here below are some questions for reflection and study:

1. What are the names of the flies Paul and Norman use in "A River Runs through It"?

• Who tied the flies Norman and Paul use?
• Who tied the flies the Rev Maclean uses?

2. How does the narrator in the story classify these flies?

3. What does the selection of their flies tell us about the characters of Norman and Paul?

4. What is the difference between a "dry fly" and a "wet fly"? Which kind of fly is the Wooly Bugger, a wet fly or a dry fly?

5. What kind of natural trout food might a Wooly Bugger look like to a trout, depending, of course, on the size and color of the fly and the particular stream and the size of the trout?

6. How might you "fish the fly" differently and tie the fly differently to imitate a particular food?

• How might changing the color of the fly change the trout's perception? Can trout even "see" color? Can all human beings?
• How might imparting movement to the fly while fishing it change the trout's perception of the fly as potential food?
• Does size really matter? Does color? Do materials?
• Why might a trout refuse to "take" a Wooly Bugger?
• Do trout feed generally or selectively?
• Do humans feed generally or selectively?
• What, specifically, do trout eat that other fish do not eat?
• Where in the stream would you first fish a Wooly Bugger and why?

7. What ethical questions does fly tying raise that are unique to fly fishing as opposed to mere "sport" fishing with, say, worms or salmon eggs?

8. How does subsistence fishing differ from fly fishing, if at all?

9. How does fly fishing differ from sport fishing with bait or metal, if at all?

10. How does "sport" fishing differ from commercial fishing, if at all?