Angler and fishing guide Bryan Kelly began fly fishing at age nine, taught by his brother. They fished in small streams around their Pittsburgh-area home, but not in the city’s famed three rivers. When Bryan was a child, he noted with a grimace, the rivers “glowed orange” with the runoff of iron ore from the steel mills.
Many people think of fishing as tossing a hook baited with a worm into the water, then dozing off. Kelly explained the difference between worm and fly fishermen. “A fly fisherman will go to any length to catch a fish on a fly.”
The “flies” imitate creatures that fish eat. They resemble aquatic insects like mayflies and caddisflies, and they are used at the time the insects appear in nature. Mass emergences of aquatic insects are called hatches. The angler maneuvers the fly on the line to mimic the insect’s movement.
Most flies are made of chicken and pheasant feathers, deer, elk, and even yak hair, but synthetic materials are getting more popular. They are tied together with thread to form the fly. “All flies are made by hand,” said Kelly. “They can’t be machine made.”
Kelly explained that all flies do not resemble insects. He produced a tiny muskrat made of deer belly. “Any handmade lure put on a fly rod is called a fly,” he said. “They can be fish, mammals and even birds. Once I saw a fish try to take a blackbird that was landing on a rock. You can catch a muskie on a muskrat fly.”
Some anglers buy flies, but many tie their own. Most fly-tiers follow patterns, using tried and true designs. Popular flies have fanciful names like Humpy Royal, Chip’s Peeper Frog, and Royal Coachman. Fly fishing is a very old sport, and Kelly noted that the first documented patterns date back to the year 900 in Rome. Notes Kelly, early fishermen made a hook by bending a needle into an angle, hence the term “angler.”
Some anglers prefer to create their own flies. Kelly started tying flies soon after he learned to fish. He learned by observation, trial, and error. “You look at the pattern and the insects around you, and modify the pattern,” he said. “When you go fishing with your own fly, it’s a big kick when a fish takes it. I created the illusion, presented the illusion, and the fish bought into it!”
Kelly had no formal training in entomology. “If a fish is eating a bug, I may not know the scientific name of the bug, but I can mimic it.”
He describes fly fishing as a challenge and a quest. “You’re sitting down and tying flies in winter in preparation for the spring day when the first hatch comes out.”
Kelly discovered the Eastern Panhandle in 1984 when he graduated from college and a friend took him on a canoe trip down the Potomac River. “That’s when my dream was born,” he recalled. “I said, ‘I’ve gotta be here for the rest of my life.’”
Twelve years later, he was back. He and his wife Debbi took early retirement from the commercial printing industry and purchased an old Victorian home in Harpers Ferry that they refurbished as a bed and breakfast, The Angler’s Inn. Debbi is also an angler and fly-tier, and their six-year-old son Zachary is following in their footsteps.
Fly fishing is the fastest-growing women’s outdoor sport, Kelly commented. He explained that it is a skill that women can master, regardless of their size or strength. “It’s not about power,” he said. “It’s more about rhythm and execution.”
Kelly spends a lot of time on the water, guiding anglers about 70 to 80 days a year. He says that the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers are No. 1 and No. 3 for surface fly fishing in the U.S., according to the summer 2006 issue of Fly Tier magazine.
The fish are caught and released. Kelly says that individual fish stay in certain areas, and the same fish can be caught more than once. He is certain of this because he recalls a one-eyed five-pound fish being caught twice in the same part of the river.
According to Kelly, trout are the easiest to catch, while bass are more difficult. “You have to understand the behavior pattern of bass,” he explained. “When you have a minnow on a hook, you won’t catch bass. With the proper fly, you can trigger the natural genetic behavior of the fish. It’s called a reaction strike.”
Kelly doesn’t get to fish when he is guiding. He fishes in January and February when he and Debbi go to Mexico to fish in the ocean for bonefish and tarpon. Ocean fishing is very different from fishing in rivers and streams, he says. “The ocean is not a friend of fly fishing,” he said. “You get a lot of wind over big open expanses.”
Kelly recently opened Kelley’s White Fly Shoppe in Shepherdstown, selling fishing products and teaching fly-tying. “Anyone can learn to tie a simple fly,” he maintains. “The Woolly Bugger (which resembles a caterpillar) is the first fly everyone learns.”
