Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”
by Rusty Dunn
Eleven months of planning have led to this moment. You’ve driven over a thousand miles and arrived in mid-July at a cold clear Montana river. The tent is pitched, the campsite set up, and it’s now time to go fishing. The weather is perfect … warm, cloudy, and little wind. As you step into the river, you notice pale yellow mayflies about size #16-#18 on the wing. You see several porpoising rise forms in and downstream of a riffle. You hit the jackpot on day one! With great excitement, you reach confidently for your Pale Morning Dun fly box. You are thinking, “This is what I live for” as you prepare to cast. Your dream-come-true situation, however, is about to turn decidedly nightmarish.
Working upstream, you cast to rising trout for over two hours using every PMD pattern in the box. You vary fly size, profile, color, and presentation, but receive nothing but indifference and refusals in return. You are now frustrated, impatient, and out of ideas. Before walking away disheartened, you remember something an angler once advised: “When all else fails, try a big Royal Wulff“. You dig around the vest, find a #12 Royal Wulff, and make a cast. Bang! A trout explodes on your fly.
What’s the lesson here? The realities of trout selectivity can baffle even experts. The Royal Wulff is an attractor dry fly, but it is so frightfully conspicuous and so freakishly unlike any stream insects that it seemingly should scare fish away. Yet, the fly has proved itself effective for over 90 years. Any time, any place, any conditions, it can take trout that seem uncatchable. Some things in fly fishing simply defy explanation. Theodore Gordon perhaps said it best. “There is no use talking about it – trout do not see things just as we do.” Preston Jennings, an acknowledged mid-century expert on fly tying and insect imitation, refused to include the Royal Wulff in his influential A Book of Trout Flies (1935), because he could not understand what trout perceive it to be or why fish love it so. Jennings described the Royal Wulff as “one of the unreasonable things about trout fishing“. Trout, it appears, pay little attention to human perception or logic.
Lee Wulff designed Wulff-style dry flies in the winter of 1929-30 to fish New York’s Ausable River. Wulff was dissatisfied with the prevailing Catskill-style dry flies, which were delicate, slim-bodied, and sparsely hackled. Such flies floated poorly on the Ausable’s swift waters. Wulff struggled to keep them afloat, and he resolved to develop a buggier high-floating dry fly that would imitate the Ausable’s prolific hatches of gray drakes. He also wanted a fly that would catch a trout’s attention if for no other reason than its formidable size. Wulff hackled his fly extra heavily and used stiff bucktail hairs for the tail and wing. The resulting Gray Wulff was the founding member of his namesake series of Wulff dry flies. All are durable, float like a cork, and are highly visible to both trout and angler. Wulff flies became very popular nationwide, due in part to national publicity by Wulff’s good friend Dan Bailey, owner of an influential fly shop in Livingston, MT. The most popular of the Wulff series was the Royal Wulff, which was – and still is – fished throughout the West.
The Royal Wulff also enjoyed a second, seemingly independent, origin in New York. Reuben Cross, a founding father of the Catskill fly-tying tradition, tied a fly in 1930 that is essentially identical to the Royal Wulff. Cross tied the fly for one of his customers, Mr. L.C. Quackenbush, who requested a fly similar to the Fanwing Royal Coachman but tied with hair wings to be more durable. Cross’s design was popular throughout the Catskills as the ‘Quack Coachman’. Were Wulff’s Royal Wulff and Cross’s Quack Coachman truly of independent origin? They arose almost simultaneously about 200 miles apart in upstate New York, but neither designer mentions having received inspiration from the other. ‘Tis a royal coincidence! The name ‘Quack Coachman’ eventually faded from use, thus leaving ‘Royal Wulff’ as the accepted name today.
You would be wise to carry a few Royal Wulffs in various sizes for times when trout are inactive or defy logic. Royal Wulffs probably will not eliminate all of your onstream frustrations, but they have an uncanny ability to provoke trout to action.
Copyright 2022, Rusty Dunn
Royal Wulff
Lee Wulff tied his Royal Wulffs with a single, upright, undivided wing, but an upright and divided pair of wings are today’s standard.
| Hook: |
Dry fly, #8 – #18 |
| Thread: |
Black, 6/0 or 8/0 |
| Wings: |
White bucktail in Wulff’s original; calf tail or synthetics are more common today |
| Tail: |
Brown bucktail |
| Body: |
Red silk floss between two segments of peacock herl |
| Hackle: |
Dark brown rooster, hackled heavily |
Royal Wulff
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Last Updated: December 7, 2022 by Drew Kasel
by Rusty Dunn
Eleven months of planning have led to this moment. You’ve driven over a thousand miles and arrived in mid-July at a cold clear Montana river. The tent is pitched, the campsite set up, and it’s now time to go fishing. The weather is perfect … warm, cloudy, and little wind. As you step into the river, you notice pale yellow mayflies about size #16-#18 on the wing. You see several porpoising rise forms in and downstream of a riffle. You hit the jackpot on day one! With great excitement, you reach confidently for your Pale Morning Dun fly box. You are thinking, “This is what I live for” as you prepare to cast. Your dream-come-true situation, however, is about to turn decidedly nightmarish.
Working upstream, you cast to rising trout for over two hours using every PMD pattern in the box. You vary fly size, profile, color, and presentation, but receive nothing but indifference and refusals in return. You are now frustrated, impatient, and out of ideas. Before walking away disheartened, you remember something an angler once advised: “When all else fails, try a big Royal Wulff“. You dig around the vest, find a #12 Royal Wulff, and make a cast. Bang! A trout explodes on your fly.
What’s the lesson here? The realities of trout selectivity can baffle even experts. The Royal Wulff is an attractor dry fly, but it is so frightfully conspicuous and so freakishly unlike any stream insects that it seemingly should scare fish away. Yet, the fly has proved itself effective for over 90 years. Any time, any place, any conditions, it can take trout that seem uncatchable. Some things in fly fishing simply defy explanation. Theodore Gordon perhaps said it best. “There is no use talking about it – trout do not see things just as we do.” Preston Jennings, an acknowledged mid-century expert on fly tying and insect imitation, refused to include the Royal Wulff in his influential A Book of Trout Flies (1935), because he could not understand what trout perceive it to be or why fish love it so. Jennings described the Royal Wulff as “one of the unreasonable things about trout fishing“. Trout, it appears, pay little attention to human perception or logic.
Lee Wulff designed Wulff-style dry flies in the winter of 1929-30 to fish New York’s Ausable River. Wulff was dissatisfied with the prevailing Catskill-style dry flies, which were delicate, slim-bodied, and sparsely hackled. Such flies floated poorly on the Ausable’s swift waters. Wulff struggled to keep them afloat, and he resolved to develop a buggier high-floating dry fly that would imitate the Ausable’s prolific hatches of gray drakes. He also wanted a fly that would catch a trout’s attention if for no other reason than its formidable size. Wulff hackled his fly extra heavily and used stiff bucktail hairs for the tail and wing. The resulting Gray Wulff was the founding member of his namesake series of Wulff dry flies. All are durable, float like a cork, and are highly visible to both trout and angler. Wulff flies became very popular nationwide, due in part to national publicity by Wulff’s good friend Dan Bailey, owner of an influential fly shop in Livingston, MT. The most popular of the Wulff series was the Royal Wulff, which was – and still is – fished throughout the West.
The Royal Wulff also enjoyed a second, seemingly independent, origin in New York. Reuben Cross, a founding father of the Catskill fly-tying tradition, tied a fly in 1930 that is essentially identical to the Royal Wulff. Cross tied the fly for one of his customers, Mr. L.C. Quackenbush, who requested a fly similar to the Fanwing Royal Coachman but tied with hair wings to be more durable. Cross’s design was popular throughout the Catskills as the ‘Quack Coachman’. Were Wulff’s Royal Wulff and Cross’s Quack Coachman truly of independent origin? They arose almost simultaneously about 200 miles apart in upstate New York, but neither designer mentions having received inspiration from the other. ‘Tis a royal coincidence! The name ‘Quack Coachman’ eventually faded from use, thus leaving ‘Royal Wulff’ as the accepted name today.
You would be wise to carry a few Royal Wulffs in various sizes for times when trout are inactive or defy logic. Royal Wulffs probably will not eliminate all of your onstream frustrations, but they have an uncanny ability to provoke trout to action.
Copyright 2022, Rusty Dunn
Royal Wulff
Lee Wulff tied his Royal Wulffs with a single, upright, undivided wing, but an upright and divided pair of wings are today’s standard.
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