In Conversation with Robert L Smith: Soft Hackle Wet Flies & Horse Hair Fly Lines

Full story here: https://fishingdiscoveries.com/horse-hair-fly-line-rob-smith/ Rob shares some of his insights that came from an old chest of fly tying and fly fishing materials that belonged to four generations of the Pilkington Family from Preston, England. If you'll forgive the pun, he also talks about the "hair-raising" experience of fishing with 150-year old horse hair casting lines and tippets - with the original wet flies dressed directly to those tippets. Surprisingly, in Yorkshire, horse hair casting lines for wet fly fishing were still in regular use even as recently as the 1960s. This material has surprisingly ideal properties for creating very effective fly lines that can be cast and then also held off the water. It is a "technology" that is found in many different fly fishing traditions around the world, from Bosnia to Italy and even Japan. I hope you enjoy our quarantine chat about the wonderful Pilkington collection - and look forward to future content when we delve inside the chest itself to look at the silks, flies and droppers in person. Paul Gaskell Fishing Discoveries.

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