Deconstructing Gary

Bob Wyatt scrutinises the late Gary LaFontaine's theories on fly design, and one of nature's paradoxes in particular.

Gary LaFontaine was a man on a mission.

His lifelong quest was to find a better way. Not world peace or a cure for male pattern baldness, or anything earth-shaking like that. LaFontaine's mission was to catch more and bigger trout. He was the modern American Skues, with the same tireless enthusiasm and love of his subject - the way of a trout with a fly. He was also a scientist, with a degree in Behavioural Psychology, who did his thesis on trout. How he got that one past his supervisors is unexplained, but let's face it, his school was the University of Montana, on the banks of the Clarke's Fork. Anyway, LaFontaine's great strength as an angling writer was his deeply held respect for the scientific method. We've had lots of amateur scientists in the angling world, but he stands out for his rigorous dependency on observation and verifiable findings.

LaFontaine died recently, after a long struggle with Lou Gehrig's disease, and fly-fishing lost one of its liveliest minds and personalities. We've had what might be called a decent interval, so maybe we can now apply some scrutiny to his theories on fly design. As a scientist, I'm sure Gary would approve. Mind you, that doesnÕt go for everyone. Gary has a faithful following, and like that of many well-loved figures sometimes this faith approaches something like fundamentalism - in this case LaFontainism. Now, this isn't really a cult or anything, yet, but sometimes his adherents get pretty riled if you so much as show the slightest doubt regarding some of his theories. In fact, for some, it goes beyond theory and takes on the aspect of gospel.

Okay, for starters, I'm not about to do some kind of posthumous hatchet job on Gary LaFontaine. For what it's worth, I'm a believer. I've got the T-shirt. But look, he walked in the water - not on it. From what I understand of him, he would be the last guy to want his ideas regarded as some kind of holy writ. Anyway, there are a couple of lacunae in his theories that still need to be fully explained, or, not to put too fine a point on it, proven.

After thousands of hours on and in the water, LaFontaine developed what he called his Theory of Attraction. It was neatly summed up for me recently by Jay McGann, who has studied Gary's writings intensely. To wit: LaFontaine believed that trout separated prey items from the rest of the flotsam in the drift by identifying certain triggering characteristics. Selectivity came into play when only one characteristic came into play, and became more pronounced when the trout required a secondary characteristic. Imitations simulate and sometimes exaggerate the key triggering characteristic of specific prey items. Attractor patterns exaggerate one or more triggering characteristics to the maximum, and can include unnatural elements and angler induced presentational tricks such as movement. LaFontaine realised that his patterns would only produce slightly better results than older existing patterns (the Caddis Emerger being the exception). But, all of this only mattered if the fly was presented properly and the approach did not alarm the fish. Presentation was more important than pattern.

LaFontaine's big book was Caddisflies, a comprehensive entomology of the important caddisfly (sedge) species of North America, with emergence tables and distribution charts, which filled a major hole in anglers'understanding of trout stream life. For the wealth of useful information alone, Caddisflies is worth its weight in Gold-ribbed Hare's Ears, but there was much more to it. It also laid out the premise and conceptual framework for Gary's Theory of Attraction and the idea of Ôtriggers' for a trout's feeding response. He based the design of his world famous Sparkle Caddis Pupa on the idea that the air or gas trapped inside the exoskeleton, or cuticle, of the emerging pupa was a significant trigger. His tying technique for imitating the effect of light on the expanded pupal cuticle became one of the best known of the late 20th Century.

The fly was so successful that it has become a standard pattern in fly shops all over western U.S.A. and Canada, and wherever caddis are a food item for trout. There is no doubting its effectiveness; this fly catches trout. Anglers depend on it for those times when the trout are feeding selectively on the pupating caddis, particularly when they are focusing their attention of the bright, air-filled cuticle. Anglers wrote of trout so selective that they ignored everything but the bubble bearing caddis, and especially the Sparkle Caddis Pupa they had on their leaders. The killer pattern was proof of concept, in spades.

There is some doubt that the "sparkle bubble effect' really exists, and it has been observed only by anglers and LaFontaine himself. This doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that more research is needed. Read Bob's article in full in the July issue of Fly Fishing & Fly Tying magazine.