Clyde Style: Webster and Reid - Upright winged Wets
After resisting a video on Clyde style flies for a while I decided to give it a go. The main reason for resistance is that I have no practical experience with these flies. I am not Scottish and I have not fished the Clyde so I have only dabbled with them on my local waters in NY.
Another reason is the angling literature on these flies is not plentiful and we don’t see angling books from Scotland until the 1800s and clearly fly fishing was going on there long before. The writers are Stoddart and Younger (Tweed anglers) Stewart (Borderlands) and finally David Webster for the Clyde whose book is from 1885. Webster was a professional angler on the Clyde who needed to catch fish to make a living. He fished a loop rod and a cast of many flies (8 or 9 common). Upstream casting and frequent casts with short drifts. His book, flies and ideas inspired Skues to work on refining the upstream wet fly approach on the chalk streams of the south.
Fast forward to Reid’s book in 1971 and we have a resemblance in the flies of course but also some change. No mention of Webster in Reid’s book.
What to make of all this? Was Webster’s style his own and what Clyde flies looked like then? Did they evolve and refine to become the look we see in Reid’s book?
I don’t know. But this video is of two versions of Clyde upwing wets as written in two books separated by almost 90 years.
Enjoy!
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Comments
Clyde style flies
I live in the village of Crawford on the upper Clyde. I have tied and fished Clyde style flies for 50 odd years what I know as Clyde style is tied with a rolled wing upright, I have only once seen websters style of split wing fly being fished on a Clyde tributary about 1985. Both styles have been about on Clyde and Upper Tweed since the early nineteenth century and possibly earlier. The split wing style is never used today and the rolled wing style is going the same way, very few wet fly fishers left I fish wet fly a lot I use a cast of five flies upstream or up and across depending on the wind they still catch a lot of trout. There is good information on both styles in E M Todd’s book wet fly fishing