Yorkshire Trout Flies
Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 3:50 pm
Several months ago, I landed a sizeable 'fish' and have some questions about my 'catch'. In a lesser traveled, somewhat out-of-the-way corner of the Internet, I bought the following for about the price of a mainstream fly line:
It's a first edition copy of Yorkshire Trout Flies (1885) by Thomas Pritt. Two hundred such copies were printed, one of which sits before me.
A beautiful feature of the book is its fly plates. Each of the eleven plates bound into the book contains 4-6 flies, and each of the 62 flies total is painted by hand. The detail is remarkable, and the colors appear as bright as they probably were in 1885. For example, the Little Winter Brown:
Now the question...
Online images of the eleven fly plates in free, online, downloadable copies of Pritt's book are of rather poor quality (at least, the PDF copies I've seen). Only after owning the book and seeing the images closely, did I realize that many of the painted flies do not quite match the fly recipes printed in accompanying text. The differences always relate to whether the fly bodies are ribbed or not.
Pritt discusses ribbing of only 4 flies in the whole book. Nothing is written about ribbing for the remaining 58 flies. Yet, literally dozens of flies in the painted plates are clearly ribbed. I've scanned the fly plates at high resolution, and here are four examples with their accompanying recipes:
Brown Owl
Brown Watchet
Dotterel
Poult Bloa
I'm puzzled. Was Pritt simply negligent in transcribing the fly recipes? Was ribbing so commonplace or inconsequential that it was assumed to be optional and not included in recipes? Was Pritt or the fly painters taking artistic license with the patterns?
The paintings are quite deliberate in detailing fuzzy outlines of dubbed bodies (for example, the Little Winter Brown above). And, many fly patterns do NOT any ribbing at all. Thus, what appears to be ribbing looks to be intentional. Most or all of Pritt's recipes were lifted from earlier publications, such as fly lists by Pickard, Wells, and others. I've looked at printed recipes of the flies in question from the mid- to late-1800s, and they generally state nothing about ribbing. Pritt's flies that are also present in Brook and River Trouting (1916) are generally not ribbed there.
Pritt's book has always been one of my "go to" sources of North Country recipes. But now I'm puzzled. Is the printed text or the painted images to be believed?
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
PhilA
P.S. I'm not exactly a regular here, and I've posted this same inquiry to the Classic Fly Rod Forum, where some members have succumbed to the same wingless wet afflictions as me. Sorry for the duplicates, but I'm unsure if similarly afflicted souls visit both boards.
P.P.S. William, can I change my username here to "PhilA", so that it would be the same on both boards? Or, should I just start another account?
It's a first edition copy of Yorkshire Trout Flies (1885) by Thomas Pritt. Two hundred such copies were printed, one of which sits before me.
A beautiful feature of the book is its fly plates. Each of the eleven plates bound into the book contains 4-6 flies, and each of the 62 flies total is painted by hand. The detail is remarkable, and the colors appear as bright as they probably were in 1885. For example, the Little Winter Brown:
Now the question...
Online images of the eleven fly plates in free, online, downloadable copies of Pritt's book are of rather poor quality (at least, the PDF copies I've seen). Only after owning the book and seeing the images closely, did I realize that many of the painted flies do not quite match the fly recipes printed in accompanying text. The differences always relate to whether the fly bodies are ribbed or not.
Pritt discusses ribbing of only 4 flies in the whole book. Nothing is written about ribbing for the remaining 58 flies. Yet, literally dozens of flies in the painted plates are clearly ribbed. I've scanned the fly plates at high resolution, and here are four examples with their accompanying recipes:
Brown Owl
Brown Watchet
Dotterel
Poult Bloa
I'm puzzled. Was Pritt simply negligent in transcribing the fly recipes? Was ribbing so commonplace or inconsequential that it was assumed to be optional and not included in recipes? Was Pritt or the fly painters taking artistic license with the patterns?
The paintings are quite deliberate in detailing fuzzy outlines of dubbed bodies (for example, the Little Winter Brown above). And, many fly patterns do NOT any ribbing at all. Thus, what appears to be ribbing looks to be intentional. Most or all of Pritt's recipes were lifted from earlier publications, such as fly lists by Pickard, Wells, and others. I've looked at printed recipes of the flies in question from the mid- to late-1800s, and they generally state nothing about ribbing. Pritt's flies that are also present in Brook and River Trouting (1916) are generally not ribbed there.
Pritt's book has always been one of my "go to" sources of North Country recipes. But now I'm puzzled. Is the printed text or the painted images to be believed?
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
PhilA
P.S. I'm not exactly a regular here, and I've posted this same inquiry to the Classic Fly Rod Forum, where some members have succumbed to the same wingless wet afflictions as me. Sorry for the duplicates, but I'm unsure if similarly afflicted souls visit both boards.
P.P.S. William, can I change my username here to "PhilA", so that it would be the same on both boards? Or, should I just start another account?