Mainers creating flies

[Sam]

One of Maine’s most famous fly dressers created a fly that closely resembled the smelt and earned her fame and admiration throughout New England and around the world. Carrie Stevens of Upper Dam in the Rangeley Region was a milliner, creating feathered hats that were all the rage in the 1920's. She was also the wife of noted fishing guide Wallace Stevens.

As the legend goes, Carrie was doing her housework on July 1, 1924 when she had an urge to take some of the feathers she used in making her hats and create a streamer fly with gray wings to imitate a smelt. Spending only a few minutes crafting her fly, she quickly rushed out on the dock by the flowing water of Upper Dam Pool. After a few casts, she hooked onto a spirited brook trout. After a long and laborious battle, she managed to net the fish and quickly took it to the closest resort to be weighed. Much to everyone’s surprise, Carrie’s fish weighed 6-pounds, 13-ounces and was 23 3/4-inches long and 15-inches around. At the urging of some friends, Carrie entered the fish in the 1924 Field and Stream Magazine Fishing Competition. She took second place for her trophy and when the publishers told readers that she had caught the leviathan on a fly that she had created, the mail poured into the tiny western Maine Post Office with orders for her fly. She was soon in the commercial fly-tying business, creating a pattern that was sold worldwide. Today, Carrie’s gray ghost is a popular casting fly, but it better known as a smelt-imitating trolling streamer.

Several other Maine anglers have created trolling streamer patterns that have become etched in angling’s annals and are still in use today. Dr. Hubert Sanborn of Waterville created a black and green streamer in 1936 with a unique method of mounting the wings. Instead of tying the saddle hackles along the edge of the hook, he tied the green saddles on flat on the top edge of the hook. The first time he trolled this fly while on Messalonskee Lake, he caught a nine-pound, three-ounce salmon, naming the fly the “nine-three.”




Sebago Lake, where the landlocked salmon was first classified, is also the home to a famous angler and a famous trolling fly. Legendary guide Art Libby of Standish had probably spent more hours than anyone fishing Sebago Lake. In 1972, he experimented with an odd looking fly that was tied as sparsely as it could and still be recognized as a piece of fishing equipment. Libby tied four layers of white, orange, red and black bucktail to a #4 hook that was wrapped with silver flat embossed tinsel. Under the tinsel was a connector of 50-pound monofilament with a #10 treble hook on the end. Libby specified that the fly be tied full in the early spring and then sparser as the water clears.


Several other patterns remain at the top of the trolling angler’s list and are dragged for countless miles through Maine’s coldwater lakes. The Umbagog smelt, named for the popular border lake captures the smelt’s purple breeding hue and accounts for many of my early season salmon, as does the flashy Joe’s smelt pattern. Likewise, many anglers use a variation of Carrie Steven’s ghost pattern with flies like the green ghost, black ghost or red ghost having staunch supporters for one reason or another.
Trolling flies for salmon and trout in Maine is a tradition-steeped, time-honored method of angling that is still popular today. While some fly-fishing purists believe that only casting constitutes fly-fishing, many of our sport’s forefathers would object. Trolling involves skill, requires the angler to be able to read the water and know where the fish are and also be as well versed on matching streamer patterns to food sources as the wet or dry fly angler must be. With pioneers like Carrie Stevens and Art Libby as trolling advocates, you’re in good company, fellow angler.



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