damselfly fishing methods/ patterns

Bob Weinberger wrote:

Reminds me of an old Ed Zern story:
After seeing a huge Brown take butterfly that had been hovering above the
stream, he was determined to devise a way to get it on a dry. The take had
been midstream on a creek that was just large enough for the holding spot to
be out of reach for dapping. He tied up what he felt was a reasonable
butterfly imitation. and then stood on one bank while a friend stood
oppposite him on the other. He cast the fly over to his friend who also tied
on to the fly. They then proceeded to "dance" the fly, that was suspended
between them, over the hold of the huge Brown. IIRC the punchline was that
it would have been just as successful if he had trolled the fly behind a 5th
Ave. bus. The visualization of the circus that would have occured if the
fish had taken brought me a grin.

IIRC, there's a variation of that one in Traver's writing as well.
Supposedly two of his buddies figured that was the secret to fishing a
particular body of water (a tree-lined beaver pond, I believe).

In Traver's story, when they got a fish on, one would reel while the
other fed slack line until the fish was landed and the lines untied.
(They had tied one line to the other, IIRC.)


Chuck Vance