THE DRY FLY: PROGRESS SINCE HALFORD. By Conrad Voss Bark.

1996 1st edition. 8vo (160 x 240mm). Ppviii,114 + 2pp ads. Colour plates of flies, b/w photographs and illustrations, bibliography. Brown cloth, spine titled in gilt.

An in-depth look at the history and design of the dry fly. "The dry fly has long presented a design challenge to the angler. In the early 1900s, the best fishing minds, most prominently Halford, applied themselves to creating perfect replicas of the natural insect which would sit high on the water surface. Then came Colonel Harding and his watertank. This lead to the theory that trout do not see flies as we do: therefore dry flies should be tied to create the right impression, as seen from a trout's underwater perspective... Men like Halford, Harding, Skues, Lunn, Marinaro, Wulff - and more recently Goddard, Clarke, Patterson and Jorgensen - these men and many others have introduced significant changes to the way we tie flies and to our understanding of how trout perceive them... In this book Conrad Voss Bark reveals the turbulent development of the dry fly throughout the twentieth century. In his usual lively and incisive style, he brings an important aspect of angling history to life." Chapters include: The Looking Glass World; Ghost wings; The Impressionists - Adams, Bi-Visible, Blue-Winged Olive, Caenis, Cul de Canard, Daddy Longlegs, Funneldun, Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear, Greenwell, Humpy, Iron Blue, Lane's emerger, Leckford Olive Dun, Lunn's Particular, The Big Mayfly, Microflies, Midges, Olive Quill, parachute flies, Peacock, Pheasant Tail, Poult Bloa, Red Quill, Sedge and Caddis flies, Sparkel Dun, Sparkle Spinner, Super Grizzly Emerger, Terry's Terror, Threlfall, upside-down flies, Wylye Terror; Six of the best. An Appendix, Successful Itchen Flies, lists about six-dozen flies compared in a practical test, "Roy Darlington carried out an analysis of the successful flies for the 1994 season at the Abbots Barton fishery of the Itchen. The Adams comes first, followed by the Greenwell and Slue's Little Red Sedge." The number of trout caught with each pattern during the experiment is given, along with the percentage of the total catch this represents.