Reversed Parachutes.. Biography

Photo by Claudio D'Angelo

I was born two hundred yards from the River Bush in Northern Ireland and grew up by a small stream which I fished just about every day in the season from when I was five years old and old enough to tie a string and a worm to the end of a hazel stick.

The trout would be rising all over the stream in the evenings totally ignoring my crude efforts to tempt them and I would often return fishless from an excellent hatch of fly. Discussing this with my friend Thomas who was all of twelve years old, he recommended I should fly fish for these half pound monsters - not with real flies because they would disintegrate on the hook, but with imitations of the flies I saw by the water, built from feathers and silk, cast on a bamboo rod with a silk line. This was demonstrated and was great sport indeed; goodbye bait fishing, forever. Thank you Thomas for your education on how to fish fly.

I managed to find silk and feathers; I had a stock of bantams I had been breeding as pets and for eggs for the family. Now some five years old the boss rooster had fine hackle, as had all his offspring. The local doctor who was three miles up the road bred exotic pheasants and peacocks and there were hares, snipe, starlings and pheasants locally. I was in the right place to get materials.

I learned to shoot straight and to tie flies.

My first imitations were black gnats as they seemed to be everywhere and the fish liked them. I managed to find hooks small enough and the finest nylon at the time and fashioned imitations of the flies I caught from the surface, they worked, when effectively presented - no splash landing, no drag, good float, all the stuff.

Sometimes it was impossible to fish dry due to high water levels. This was also the time, in daylight anyway, when the bigger fish came out of their hidey holes to feed on the feast washed out from the rocks and in from the fields. Then we would fish wet flies, sizes 12 down to 16 from flashy Butchers to subdued Greenwell’s, until the levels dropped to normal again and I would get back to my spiders and dry flies before the next band of Atlantic rain arrived a few days later, forcing a return to the downstream rod.

This is a fertile lowland stream with her headwaters among thousands of acres of farmland and bog. The mixture of waters was such that the farmland brought nutrients in wet weather, while the bog land stored water which it released over a longer term, thus ensuring good supply. She is full of shrimp, caddis, midges, smut stoneflies and olives and many a minnow, stickleback and eel is there too, sharing their world with the trout. Stream levels varied - from knee deep, with some deeper pools which would come up to your waist most of the time, to a torrent which had risen three extra feet. At the opposite extreme, on the odd occasion when there was no rain for two or three weeks, the water ran slowly with quiet pools between the riffles. In these conditions, it is easy to watch trout.

I learned to tie flies to mimic the scruffy state of messed up flies on my local river and enjoy testing new designs.

Many years later, my designs have been published by the Fly Dressers Guild, Trout and Salmon magazine, The Grayling Society, Trout Fisherman magazine, Fish and Fly magazine in the US, Total Flyfisher(UK) and in conjunction with Mick Hall, in Australia's Freshwater Fishing magazine, thanks, Mick.

My reversed parachute emerger is featured in Schollmeyer and Leeson's Tying Emergers and many of my designs are in Rick Takahashi's Modern Midges due out September 2009.
My story of putting back the rocks in the wee river was published by Yale Anglers' Journal; I am honoured.

I have demonstrated my work at British Fly Fair International, Spring Fly Fair UK, Flugfiskemassen in Sweden, Loughs Agency in Ireland, Clearwater Junction in Roscoe US, CLA Game Fair UK, Umbria Fly Fishing Festival in Italy, Uppsala in Sweden, Sportfiskemassen in Sweden and at the UK's North East Fly Fair.
I have a frame of flies at the Flyfishers' Club in London, which I consider a great privilege; besides having dressed the commemorative flies for the 200th anniversary of the death of Lord Horatio Nelson for the Salmon and Trout Association, on behalf of the restoration of London's river Wandle.
I am also a member of the Nymph-Head fly tying pro team, helping to design effective deep nymph patterns.
I am proud to be an honorary member of Durham Flyfishers in the UK.

I can be contacted via E-mail at: reversedparachutes@yahoo.co.uk

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