Ó Ed Mitchell Fly Fishing in Salt Waters 2007
Saltwater fly–fishing is a wonderfully complex and varied sport with more than its share of thrills. In our country, its origins go back at least to 1850 and probably well beyond, although much of the sport’s early history is sketchy, with many names, dates and events hidden by the passage of time. Certainly the most documented portion of those first days comes to us from the warm waters of Florida where the accomplishments of anglers like A.W. Dimock, George LaBranche, and Joe Brooks are fairly well documented. Still one should not assume that Florida was the only place were saltwater fly-fishing got its start. For the novel excitement of casting a fly into the brine happened in many places along the Atlantic, even if these more northern pioneers are less well known.
“I believe your records show that this is the first rod you made for the taking of Striped Bass in salt water and it has had tremendous use. Our season starts the first of April and the last bass is taken along the last of October and I plan to fish morning and night whenever possible. I doubt if you realize what a “workout” these rods get every time we fish- continual casting for two or three hours at a time, and I average five nights a week and quite a lot of mornings.”
When Gibbs wrote that letter he was living in a house that bordered the Palmer River in Barrington, Rhode Island. Less than a mile away was another estuary, the Barrington River, and the two met at Tyler Point, a short distance south of his property, to form the Warren. These rivers were Gibbs’ home waters and his primary striped bass fishing grounds. The Palmer was literally in his backyard; so close in fact, Gibbs was able to walk across his property and fish wherever he felt like it. And as we learn from his letter to Orvis, he was fishing these waters constantly for seven months out of the year, and doing it mostly in low light.
The Palmer and Barrington Rivers, like small tidal estuaries throughout New England, are more often home to school-size striped bass than tackle busting monsters. Yet in that same 1946 letter to Orvis, we also discover that Gibbs was tangling with some bigger bass as well.
“Two nights ago, using my second Orvis rod, I landed a Striped Bass that weighted (the following morning) 15 pounds 2 ounces; 34 inches long 19 ½ girth. To my knowledge that is the best fish taken on a fly rod and streamer around here.”
Landing a fifteen-pound striper with a cane rod certainly required some angling skill, but that rod wasn’t the only piece of Gibbs’ equipment that would seem a handicap by today’s standards. Modern fly lines and monofilament leader material weren’t on the scene until sometime after WWII, so Gibbs may well have been using an oiled-dressed silk fly lines and a “catgut” leader. Silk fly lines were, obviously, not intended for saltwater. But regardless of where you used them, in fresh or salt, they had their problems. As the line worked over the tiptop during the cast, the finish quickly wore down and the lines would absorb water, no longer float, and become difficult to cast, especially since stripping baskets were not yet in use. And “catgut”, which was in reality made from silkworms, wasn’t exactly a bargain either.
In 1946, not only was saltwater fly gear scarcer than hen’s teeth, there weren’t any saltwater fly patterns for striped bass. But for a keen observer of the marine life such as Gibbs that was hardly an issue; he simply invented his own. Gibbs realized that the most prevalent bait in his home waters, and one of the stripers favorite foods, was the Atlantic silverside. So he designed a fly to imitate it. And that fly we know today as his famous Gibbs Striper Bucktail.
The silverside, as its name implies, has a mirror-like silver stripe on its flank. Today fly tiers are fortunate to have a wide range of synthetic flash materials with which to mimic that stripe, but reflective materials that would not tarnish in saltwater were not available in Gibbs’ time. Ever inventive, Gibbs must have realized that underwater that silversides’ stripe would be reflecting the surrounding underwater light- in short it would often be bluish in color. And so he tied in a strip of blue swan feather to imitate that both sides on the fly.
Gibbs revised this creation with help from his fishing buddy Al Brewster, a commercial fly tier. Although the name of the fly identifies bucktail as the principle ingredient, originally Gibbs constructed the wing out of white Capra (goat hair). But Capra was not a common material and the blue swan feather, as you can imagine, proved less than durable, so a more practical dressing was needed. The remedy was to remake both the wing and the blue stripe out of bucktail in the same white-blue-white color scheme. Later, in the 1960’s, a variation of the fly would be produced - likely at Brewster’s urging. The upper white wing was eliminated to producing a blue- over-white colored fly. This variation was meant to match juvenile menhaden and juvenile alewives, and that classic color combination is still popular with saltwater fly tiers today.
Gibbs liked his fly to ride a 1/0-3/0 hook, but as with the fly’s dressing, Gibbs’ choice of hook styles evolved too. There is reason to suspect that Gibbs initially built the fly on the strongest hook he had on hand - an up turned eye, black japanned Atlantic salmon hook. By the 1950’s he had gone to a “tinned” short-shank egg hook, which supplied the size and the strength Gibbs required and was non-corrosive was well. Much later still, he was able to convince Mustad to produce a hook with the specific characteristics he wanted for this fly; it was sold for a time as the Mustad 3908 ST Kendal round bend in size 2/0.
All told Harold Gibbs was an extremely gifted individual, a renaissance man in his own right. His early saltwater fly–fishing adventures encouraged other anglers to pick up the long rod. And in so doing Gibbs help popularized our sport. We owe him and others like him a debt of gratitude. For in blazing a trail, they helped make our sport possible.
The End