‘Mac’ Francis’s talk on fly-fishing stirs the hearts and souls of anglers

SALISBURY — Austin “Mac” Francis warned the audience at the Scoville Memorial Library that they were heading into dangerous waters.“Fly-fishing is a dangerous sport,” he said sternly. “You should be aware that you may become ... addicted.”Francis, author of “Catskill Rivers” and “Land of Little Rivers,” covered theory, practice and history during his 45-minute talk Saturday, April 30. He explained the difference between fly-casting and other angling methods. Unlike a spinning rod, where the weight of the lure carries it to the desired location, fly-casting relies on the weight of the line to deliver the almost weightless fly. “Try throwing a feather,” he said cryptically.“There’s a power stroke to the front and the rear” in fly-casting, he explained. “In golf, tennis and baseball, the power stroke only goes forward.He described learning to cast as “a combination of initiation fee and dues.”Even a cursory look at fly-fishermen in the Housatonic River will show the layman the hold that casting has on anglers — some of whom go on to participate in distance casting competitions with equipment that really isn’t designed for, well, fishing.“Some people spend so much time casting they forget to fish.” This gentle rebuke was delivered with a smile.Francis demonstrated with a gizmo designed for practicing indoors — about three feet of an old rod with a long piece of thick yarn attached. (It was apparent to the anglers in the audience what he was doing, but to the uninitiated it must have looked a little odd.)Francis traced the development of fly fishing from England to the U.S. The English chalk streams, relatively young rivers at 40 to 160 million years old, meander slowly over a layer of chalk formed from eons of prehistoric critters.The chalk “acts as a giant sponge” and ensures constant flows and temperatures — about 50 degrees F — that are ideal for bugs and the trout that feed on them.An angler on these streams must do a lot of creeping, but the trout “are almost lazy” because of the abundance of insect life.Frederick Halford developed dry fly-fishing on the chalk streams in the late 19th century. A dry fly floats on the surface and, as Francis noted, is popular with fishermen because it’s the most exciting way to catch a fish.Paraphrasing an American fishing writer, John McDonald, Francis said the allure of the dry fly is due to the fact that “all the moves in the game are visible” — the cast, the float, the anticipation and the strike. (Or the refusal.)Alas, trout take about 80 percent of their meals below the surface. Of the dry fly enthusiast, Francis said, “Sometimes the angler becomes kind of an idealist. You should try not to be so seduced by the dry fly.”American Theodore Gordon read Halford’s work and the two corresponded — most notably in the famous Halford Letter of 1890, in which Halford enclosed 50 flies for Gordon’s benefit. (The letter, with the flies, is owned by the Angler’s Club of New York City.)“British insects differ from American insects,” Francis said. “It’s the difference between chalk streams and freestone.”Gordon redesigned Halford’s patterns to imitate American bugs and “to float on our turbulent streams.”Citing McDonald again, Francis said with the arrival of the Halford Letter “the dry fly winged its way to the New World.”Gordon experimented with his flies in the Neversink, Beaverkill and Willowemoc rivers, and thus the Catskills are considered the birthplace of American fly-fishing, Francis said.His slide show included spectacular photographs from New Zealand of impossibly fat rainbow and brown trout — and a grouchy Maori who gave Francis’ group (who had arrived by helicopter) a hard time until he was satisfied with their bona fides on the tribal land. (He subsequently became a good friend.)And then there was Bob Jacklin’s 10-pound brown trout, caught on an inchworm imitation on the Madison River in Montana. In the photo, Jacklin, a boss fisherman who runs a tackle shop in West Yellowstone, is communing with a gigantic brown trout. Francis said a television crew had been filming Jacklin all day, with middling results. They were just packing it in when Jacklin chucked the inchworm fly — about an inch and a half of lime-green material on a size 14 hook — into the seam between slow and fast-moving water.Francis said it took Jacklin 45 minutes to land the fish. “He couldn’t horse it because he was using very fine tackle.“Bob Jacklin probably never kept a fish in his life before this one. It’s on his wall now.”