The Fly Connection No. 1
Welcome to the first edition of The Fly Connection. An independent zine for the fly fishing community.
Welcome to the Fly Connection
The Fly Connection was just an idea once. The idea of doing something with fly fishing that would make real and positive change. A belief that every day on the water is a privilege, and that if we are going to enjoy that privilege then our fundamental principle ought to be that we leave the river each day in a better state than we find it. That we should give more than we take.
Why ‘The Fly Connection’? The reason is simple enough. A feeling that fly fishing is, above all, about connections. In some ways, it is a thing entirely made up of a simple series of connections. The connection of hand to rod, of reel to line, of leader to fly. And - if you are lucky - of fly to fish, and fish to hand. Or - if you are the rest of us - of fly to branch, bush, bramble and bank.
It is the hunt for that connection, our addiction, which takes us - day after day, year after year – back to the water for the gift of a fish. But fly fishing is about more than the connections we make to fish. It connects us to the earth around us. To a world of water, land and sky. It connects us to ourselves. To our pasts, presents and futures. And it connects us to each other. To our friends, old and new. This is why we fish. These are our fly connections.
In this zine we have gathered together contributions from our community. And we are sure that you will see that, although some of them are more closely intertwined than others, they all speak to our fundamental connectedness. They are all expressions of the same ability to notice and reflect, the same care and artistry, that makes for good anglers. And speak of the routes that we have followed towards connectiveness. What is emerging is a community of talented people. Passionate anglers. Committed fly fishing enthousiasts. People we hope and feel see the world in something of the same way as we do. People who feel the connection. People who believe that our shared passion should be a force for good.
This is, and will remain, an independent, not-for-profit publication, united by a single principle – that we should speak to and for the richness of a global community of anglers who believe there is more to fly fishing than catching fish, and more to our passion than an industry. If we combine our talents, and make connections to others who share the same dream, then perhaps we can make a real and positive change to our rivers and the world. We hope you will want to be a part of it. And that you enjoy the zine.
Editorial (Editor - Jack Hogan)
When you do connect.
You spend so much time barely seeing them through the water, hunting carefully for them. When you do connect, you have the chance of a magical moment - to have this flash of life in your hands. And then to release that little jewel back to the river.
I always suspect we'll meet again when the trout is a little bigger and much wiser. At it's heart, if we're being honest, the history of our passion is a centuries long litany of those connections, that elusive moment of interspecies contact, the hundreds of stolen moments made out of a strange blend of beauty and violence.
Jack Hogan
Release Nothing.
Trash Anglers is our first initiative, and if you haven’t come across it yet (and that’s pretty likely, to be honest!) then we hope you’ll love the idea as much as we do. To put it simply, Trash Anglers go out and collect all manner of rubbish in and around our waterways, and then log their trash catch return on our platform.
Trash Anglers are on the front line in the fight against pollution in our rivers and oceans.
But Trash Anglers is more than that - it is an initiative that encourages anglers to keep on being good citizens and custodians of their water, and gives them a way to contribute to scientific research that helps make a real change at the same time. But perhaps the best way to explain what Trash Anglers is, is to ask why we founded it.
So, why did we found Trash Anglers?
The answer is simple, really. We, and most anglers we know, collect trash on every fishing trip. We don’t do it because we are told to, or for any reward. We do it instinctively, because we know trash does not belong in our waterways. Nobody thanks us – besides which, we don’t do it for the praise – but because we want to leave the river each day better than we find it. But I don’t think many of us realise just now powerful an action collecting that trash can be.
It seemed to us at The Fly Connection that there was something wrong with this picture. I mean, we all talk about our time on the water, sharing stories of fish caught or lost. Treasure the ecology of the places were visit. Post pictures of the beautiful rivers and close friends we share our adventures with, of our trophies catches and the things we value most. But how many of us share pictures of the uglier side of our time on the water? Of pollution incidents, fish kills and sewage leaks. We can all see with our own eyes how the detritus of modern life often chokes our waterways like the fat in our processed foods destroys our arteries. But unlike the fast food we put into our mouths, the sources of the trash in our waterways are not always easy to identify – and we need to know the sources of the problem if we are to tackle it.
Inspired by the work of conservationists and scientists, Trash Anglers was created as a way of turning the thing anglers do all the time when they are on the water – collecting and disposing of trash – into a source of meaningful data on the origins of problems in our waters. And as a way of celebrating and encouraging the love and care we all have for them. If you care about conservation and sustainability, or even just hate the sight of plastic waste and garbage in rivers, why not join us? Just access our super quick and easy form to record some basic data, and turn your selfless actions into real data that will help conservationists, restorationists and scientists to understand the problems our rivers face. This is how change starts.
There's magic in the water.
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Herman Melville
At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.
Herman Melville
Photos: Steve Seinberg
Identifly
Amie Battams
Trout fishing in America
APRIL IS A MAGNET
I met Trout Fishing in America three days before the first real smell of spring. He was leaning against a poplar, translating the persistent verse of a stream in western New York.
“I carry what I’m given,” he wrote in a small notebook with the image of a leaping trout on the cover. “If I could be the sky birds would fly in my belly.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” I offered.
“Spring’s magnet has already pulled them into the glen,” he pointed with his pencil. The eraser worn to its tin buckle. Four blackbirds croak and caw in naked branches overhead.
The stream-poem is in love with its stanzas of iambs and trochees.
No man steps into the same poem twice.
LETTER TO AN EX-WIFE FROM TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
March 25, 2023
Hello –
Yesterday I bought a rug that doesn’t go with anything in the house and washed a gas station hotdog down with a PBR and washed the PBR down with another PBR.
You weren’t there to order me an IPA and I thought “I can now die happy.”
I taught you to fly fish but the vintage craft cocktail affair had died.
There’s a dad joke about things drying up in there somewhere.
Anyhow, keep the net.
Keep Fish Wet
T
THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN
To find one’s self in the South is to find a reason to theorize that the rest of the country is of little use during spring break and the Mason-Dixon line is pushing north like stripers and tarpon. Soon we’ll be in negotiations with Canada for who gets to host MTV’s Beach House Season XVI and flats skiffs will be on hoists in every driveway.
Trout Fishing in America is already stocking up on access points on dairy farms. “You watch,” he said. “They’ll rise to dries right here where Bessie’s chewing her cud.”
It’s exciting to think of all the structure that could hold fish.
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA MAKES THE FILM TOUR
Trout Fishing in America donated all his tweed and traded two rods for a DSLR and a roof rack tent. He spent an entire season sipping bourbon with a brookie, two bonefish, a fat carp, and a surly Giant Trevally on an island off the underrated coast of Delaware while documenting his navel and tying flies from the lint that gathered there.
The island might’ve been a houseboat.
The houseboat might’ve been a slowly leaking raft between Cuba and the Catskills.
“Would you eat this??” he looked over his cheaters and held up the fuzz-dressed amalgamation.
Everyone said, sure, they were drunk enough.
The brookie swiped it from his hand in 4K fish porn slow-mo.
Then the GT hammered the brookie, flipping the table. Shelled peanuts everywhere.
Everybody clapped.
Trout Fishing in America drained his glass and vowed to strip-set everything.
“That shit works,” he slurred with flammable breath, “I’ve seen it on Insta.”
CATFISH BY THE MILLIONS
I fell asleep in my car near midnight in a staging area for construction materials — iron beams, pipes, and concrete barriers sorted on concrete aprons in two rows — down a side street in Cape Girardeau, over three sets of railroad tracks and a hard right. The Mississippi lurked at the bottom of a tree-covered embankment.
The moon was full and I backed into a space between neatly hulked stacks of black and moonlight.
I dreamt about thousand-yard barges in formation trying to make their way upriver but being held fast by a fleet of catfish with their deadly pectoral spikes, leg-trap jaws, and ungrippable bodies.
Catfish-millions by land, sea, and air tug-of-warring with the thousand-yard barges.
Many vessels sank, anchored by the mud of half a continent.
Many catfish died, filling the Gulf with the bellies of the valiant.
Beale Street echoed with Blues and whiskey and women wailed neon tears the levee could not hold.
I woke, passed Trout Fishing in America snoring in his roof rack tent with a bumper sticker that said “Trout bums have long leaders,” and went to find coffee.
Matt Smythe
Mike Sudal’s fishing journals
Here is a peek into one of Mike Sudal’s fishing journals. Mike is an illustrator/artist based in New York City. His fishing journals detail his experiences on the water, including illustrated tactics on how he caught (or lost) a fish, pages celebrating a new species caught, and stories about fun time on the water with friends. This particular spread details some of his favorite catches, ranging from a 100-pound alligator gar to a two-pound bonefish. You can see more work on his website mikesudal.com or his Instagram mike_sudal.
Mike Sudal
The Streams I Call Home
I have been lucky enough to fish such iconic rivers as the Madison, Green, Colorado and Skeena. All of them are stunning rivers, offer endless fly-fishing opportunities, and memorable catches. But let me be clear - I am luckier to have grown up in Ticino (Switzerland) than to have had the opportunity to get to fish any of those places.
Ticino is likely to be an unknown place to you unless you’re Swiss or German, and certainly isn’t likely to appear on your fly-fishing destination list. It makes sense. Why should you look at this place when nearby there are prime locations like Northern Italy or Slovenia? In the end, Ticino is just another place on the (high)way to your next Marble trout.
But Ticino is so much more than that. It is a gem, a tiny shining gem. Rich in its cultural heritage, fine Italian-influenced food and warm, open people. Away from the main urban areas, it is wild and rough. Terrific valley landscapes left behind by glaciers, and canyons carved over time by the force of water, grain by grain.
The streams are crystal-clear (at least most of them). You can choose: high-gradient bedrock streams with deep holes and white water, or countless gentle slope streams meandering through grassland. The latter are by far my favorite, especially when they flow at high altitude, up above the tree line. Fairytale streams surrounded by majestic peaks. Hundreds of kilometers of public streams that one would need an entire life to explore.
Brown trout dominate Ticino’s streams, especially at low altitudes. Brook trout thrive at high altitudes, and one meets the occasional rainbow trout. Grayling and very few marble trout are also found, particularly in the main stem of the lower Ticino River. This is what Ticino’s streams have to offer to the avid fly fisher.
This is not a land of giants: trophy size trout are not on the regular menu. Only with perseverance you could expect to catch one of those large specimens, especially in the lower Ticino River where giant migratory brown trout run for spawning from July onwards. But…who cares? Fish are mostly wild or have grown up from fingerlings. Luckily for us, our management does not stock poor-quality adult fish.
Dry flies, nymphs or streamers: you name it. Endless fishing situations, you just need to be creative and adaptable. When summer hits at high altitudes prepare large foamy flies: eager trout are ready to take your hopper. That is what brings me back season after season to those remote streams.
Ticino has a lot to offer. Ticino is not just another place on the (high)way to your next Marble trout.
Matteo Roncoroni
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
Well your Toyota Tacoma looks shiny and costly.
How much did you pay for your bad new skiff?
And how much did you spend on your camo Simms jacket?
Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?
Now licenses to fish and drinking at pubs
Sometimes for IPAs that you haven't even heard of.
And how much did you pay for your clever meme stickers
That proves you were there
That you heard of them first?
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
Ah, tell me.
How much did you pay for that piece of shit rod,
The one they ruthlessly imported over from China?
And how much will he pay for a brand new rod vault ,
One which they'll ruthlessly ship across the Atlantic?
And how long will the influncers keep selling him on new ones?
As long as their bikinis are red, white, and blue ones.
And how long will guides keep pimping him on new ones?
As long as their beer cans are red, white, and blue ones.
Aging gore-tex and days with no grabs,
Barbed hook removal of rusty flexo crabs.
Your future pays dearly now for youthful fishing moments,
But camp on eternally with no hope of retirements.
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
How do you afford your fly-fishing lifestyle?
Fishing redds' ain't angling.
You're buying what they're selling.
Your self-importance doesn't trend them.
Your trust fund won't impress them.
You're so happy to repost it.
You never really caught it.
Yeah, redd raping ain't angling.
You're wearing what they're selling.
Excess ain't rebellion.
You're drinking,
You're drinking,
You're drinking what they're selling
Colby D Crossland
Pentagram Pizza
River Elegy
I didn’t want to write an elegy during a year when so many elegies are being written. Yet here in October, my home river has nearly stopped its flowing.
In June, water seeped at a speed familiar to September after the dry of August. All summer, the drought kept rain clouds on the other side of the Allegheny Front with its thin arms. The sinewy hands of arid air strong like the final tendons of a winterkilled fox still taunt after snowmelt.
In the evenings, my father reports the cubic feet per second in a near whisper. Our voices low as if a family member in the next room is wasting away from a knotted growth in their gut. The eddies waning like a sunken face.
I pray for the river the same way I pray for anyone in my community bound here by the current’s course.
All the water in the valley collects in the river. What we drink, what the tomatoes in our gardens drink, what our cows, chickens, and goats drink. With every meal we eat, the water seeps through our teeth and rests on our tongues. Leaving us with the flavor of our home.
Year after year, topsoil from tilled fields is swept downriver after rain. The metals left by coal companies flows away. The fish we gut-hook and toss back for some other, hungrier mouth to eat, is carried from us. But home is what remains. Everything finds its way to the river.
Some things settle. Tires, volleyballs, car-struck deer, the skulls of herons people shot fearing the fish would be slaughtered with nowhere to swim. Now that the river stones lie drying in the sun like the pits of peaches, this caught refuse hangs its smell in the catalpa branches. All the sins high water hides.
Fish congregate where springs pump cool water through the thin skin of the riverbed. Laying their bellies on the gravel the same way dogs press their stomachs on a cold garage floor. Twenty, fifty, a hundred trout in a single lie. The only movement I can trace is their shifting for a nymph unlucky enough to float into the pod of starving bellies.
The river sets records daily. Records that stretch over a hundred years, which the river knows is a blink in its thousands of eyes looking up for rain.
But still, this an instant that begs noticing. Each fish suffocating in shallow water demands recognition. Each duck flying over to find a safer place to land deserves note. I beg this is an isolated season, not a prophesy.
We as a human community are in a year of new records. In America, a drought of care and compassion is evident as we struggle with the pandemic and increased political division. The distance prescribed and necessary for our safety because of the virus makes us starved for the physical touch we desire.
No one walks the river now. A few bored teenagers harass the trout and suckers. Snag them on their sides with hooks large enough to bury beneath scales. Grip them so hard they squeeze the air through the fishes’ throats. But most anglers are waiting for whatever late fall rain might deepen the flow enough that the current won’t completely freeze.
This isn’t a true elegy because I believe the river will return. The mountains are full of water here, and some storm will break the wall of the ridges and dump itself onto our valley. There might be good water next year. The year before last there was too much rain to fish. The trout barely saw an angler’s shadow.
I feel a sadness deep in my chest when I think of all the people who fish and those anglers who will not see the river next year. That this was the last river they’d ever see. Their dying brought on by a virus, or cancer, or simply old age. To live your final year with too little water to fish. There are only so many summers.
I pray that I’ll die after a year of good water.
Noah Davis
- Written in lockdown
Thalweg
I am relatively new to fly fishing though, truth be told, I suspect I have been seeking it out of the corner of my eye my whole life. But it really began for me in 2020, a year which disrupted the space, time and possibility in our lives. Afforded space, time and possibility, I found a recreation that carries me to the river..
I ended up living in London without much direction. It has come to me over the years I’ve lived and settled here, but no element has been as formative for me as the River Wandle.
I first heard about it while casting and learning into the winds of the winter, not knowing then what fly fishing would come to mean to me. At that time we lived in the bizarre situation of not being able to travel freely. But when the time came, I took my fly rod - or rather, it took me - somewhere unlike anywhere I had experienced in the city before. I didn’t understand then how significant the Wandle is but, blessed beginners luck and a rise gave me one of her trout, and it changed everything. I had found what I was looking for in the river.
As my competence and confidence grows, so too does the circle of great friends who I can now share the adventure with. A key junction in this journey was discovering The Fly Connection. I was on a train to Herefordshire when I came across it, and my wife will tell you how excited I was to discover a friendly and knowledgeable forum of people around the world pursuing that same recreation.
On opening day this year, Jack and I met on the Wandle - a plan put on the backburner last season. It was a day spent wandering the length of a chalkstream, hearing more of her history, and meeting other fishers along the way. One of those was a young lad named Arthur; who said little but exuded an indefatigable, youthful passion for drifting a line through the water. He made a serious impression on me - of course we were excited for the new season, knowing what was possible in the months ahead. Arthur had no idea, but his eyes and ears were open.
It was seeing, in Arthur, my own experience only a couple of years past, of learning to cast, discovering the difference in the flies, and beginning to read the flow of the river. Knowing the joy, challenge and solace he faced ahead, I was excited for Arthur’s as much as my own future seasons.
In my fly fishing I have tried to develop delicately with time, with eyes and ears open. I was meant to come across The Fly Connection. No matter what we do in life we need people to share it with, whether they are seasoned and knowledgeable, or fresh and eager like Arthur. I know that TFC will take me to places and towards other people that I might not have found on my own.
Al Simmons
My Fishing Journey
It all started in 2015. I was four years old when I found an old Ladybird Book of Coarse Fishing while in a charity shop. Every night I would look at the pictures of people fishing, tackle and bait in the book and was fascinated by all the different species of fish.
And then one day I was walking with my dad along the river Wandle, when I chanced upon a long stick with a bit of line and an old rusty hook tied on the end - someone’s homemade pole just lying by path. I instantly grabbed the ‘rod’ and started to search for bait. Hanging over the river was a cherry bush full with perfectly ripe cherries. I pulled one from the bush and said to my dad “how about using this cherry as bait?”. “Arthur”, he replied “when you get older you’ll realise you can’t catch a fish with a cherry!” I hooked the cherry anyway, dropped the line to the bottom of the river and left it. Then, as we were walking back home I spotted a pile of bread someone had left on the banks for the ducks. We both agreed that we might as well take a bit of some unlucky duck’s dinner and go back to the ‘rod’ to try our luck.
As we reapproached the spot I could already tell there was more tension in the line than when I’d left it. As I lifted up the rod - to my total surprise - a good size 3lb chub was hanging on the line! “There’s a fish, a fish!” my heart beating fast as I shouted to my dad. He glanced over the bank thinking I was joking and, although truly shocked, we nearly landed the fish. The chub fell off, back into the river, and swam off. The fish got away, but I was hooked!
My first real rod was from a car boot sale for £5, a 2 piece float rod. Without hesitation I headed down excitedly to the Wandle, with a fresh pot of worms and started to fish, quickly realising how hard fishing really was. After many sessions it paid off, and I began catching roach, chub and of course gudgeon. Me and my dad started to fish our local pond, and I caught my first Rudd there.
After a few years of float fishing in ponds and rivers I started to feeder fish, and in late 2022 I caught my new ‘PB’ carp of 20lbs. I decided to take a break from feeder fishing on ponds and headed back to the Wandle. After catching countless chub, early this year I began targeting Barbel. Sadly after 4 sessions still no Barbel, but to this day I am still waiting impatiently for the season to reopen so that I can catch that dream fish.
Another car boot, another rod. This time a fly rod and reel for £10 after much haggling. So far I’ve only had two fly fishing sessions, today was my second session at Hackbridge and I blanked, but I did have a few bites and I saw many trout rising. It was reassuring to meet friendly and helpful fishers like Jack and Al along the river, who help you out with advice, and also give you starter flies. Now I can’t wait to catch my first trout on the fly this year.
Art Chandler
The Squirmy Adams, one of the most beloved classic dry fly of all times.
The Adams Squirmy is one of the most iconic and widely used dry flies in the world. It was invented in 1918 by a New England fly tyer and angler, and it has been a staple of our fly boxes ever since. Its success can be attributed to its design, which imitates a combination of a mayfly and a worm, making it versatile and effective in all fishing scenarios.
The fly was invented by John “Squirmy” Adams, an avid angler and fly-tyer who used to spend hours sat over his vice. In fact, to this day we don’t know whether the name of his fly comes from the way it moves below the surface, or from his famous inability to sit still during those long, arse ache-inspiring sessions. He had been experimenting for years, mastering different patterns, trying to create the perfect fly that would fool even the most suspicious fish.
One day, while fishing on the Farmington river in New England, he noticed that the fish were feeding on a mayfly hatch while chomping on worms at the same time. He realised that what he needed was a new fly, one that would imitate these two trout favourites at the same time.
‘If you can’t catch a fish on a Squirmy Adams you should seriously consider quitting fly fishing all together’ - Tom Rosenbauer
The Adams fly quickly gained popularity among anglers, and it became one of the most widely used dry flies in New England. Its effectiveness in imitating a variety of trout snacks made it a go-to fly for trout fishermen, and by 1922 it was being used in rivers and streams all over the world.
Today, the Squirmy Adams dry fly remains one of the most popular and effective dry flies in the world of fly fishing. It is used by anglers of all levels, from beginners to seasoned veterans, and it has become a classic in the sport of fly fishing.
Peter Perch
The Lasting Influence of Fishing With A Fly
Fly fishing goes beyond casting a fly to fish. It is not just a hobby, it is an enriching experience that can help people connect with nature, unwind from stress, and build relationships with others who share their passion.
One way that fly fishing can impact everyday life is through its ability to promote mental wellness.
Spending time on the water can be a meditative experience, as anglers focus their attention on the rhythm of casting, the flow of the river, and the pursuit of fish. This can help reduce stress, improve concentration, and promote a sense of calm and well-being.
Patience is an essential skill in fly fishing, as anglers often spend hours waiting for a fish to rise or show itself. This can be a frustrating experience for some, but it can also be an opportunity to slow down and appreciate the pace of nature. By learning to be patient and to accept the rhythms of the natural world, anglers can develop a deeper connection with their surroundings and with themselves. This, in turn, can affect the way that a person lives their life away from the water. A deep connection with nature can help spark activism about the climate crisis, or drive people to help in their community.
Fly fishing can teach people to connect body and mind. In order to effectively cast a fly rod, anglers must be aware of their body movements and how they affect the trajectory of the line. This requires a level of mindfulness and focus that can help people develop a greater awareness of their physical capabilities and limitations.
The life skills that casting a fly teaches you can be very important, such as perseverance, and problem-solving.
Anglers must be persistent in their pursuit of the perfect cast. They must also be able to adapt to changing conditions and adjust their tactics accordingly, which requires a certain level of creativity and resourcefulness.
All of these skills and benefits translate well beyond the water and can help people lead more fulfilling and balanced lives. By learning to connect their body with their mind, and by being observant and analytical of nature, people can develop a greater sense of self-awareness and mindfulness, which can help them navigate life's challenges with greater ease and grace.
Kevin LaCroix
Old gear
Looking to buy old gear and you are not sure what to buy? Join us on discord and become part of a larger community of fly fishing enthusiasts. And it’s not just gear - there is always someone to ask anything Fly Fishing related.
Tide waits for no one
I wake up 2 hours before sunrise.
Get in the car, pick up my friend.
Perfectly on time, tide waits for no one.
Headlamp battery check, sip of cold coffee.
Get out of the car, smell the salt in the air.
Cigarette for breakfast, tide waits for no one.
Hear fish smashing bait in the dark and…
Slip on seaweed, cut my hand on an oyster.
Glue the cut with super glue, tide waits for no one.
1000 casts and get ready for a 1000 more.
My mind drifts and I zone out, casting for hours.
Where did those fish go? tide waits for no one.
Tide is running out, could be any minute now.
I am so close, can feel it, where is that fucking bite.
Starting to loose hope, tide waits for no one.
Sun’s up, wind dropped, tide is almost slack
We give up and drive home, loud music to stay awake.
Can’t wait to go again, tide waits for no one.
Peter Perch