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Silk, Fur and Feather: The Trout-Fly Dresser's Year by VC (GEM Skues' pen name)

Reviewed by Terry Lawton

The subject of this review, Silk, Fur and Feather: The Trout-Fly Dresser's Year by VC (GEM Skues' pen name) published by The Flyfisher's Classic Library, presents an interesting conundrum: is one reviewing the book for its wonderful presentation or for its content? Many of the books in the publisher's catalogue are very rare and usually expensive to buy in their original editions. Although The Flyfisher's Classic Library's new editions can be expensive too, each purchaser is buying a superb example of the publisher/book binder's art. The books are collectors items themselves: quarter or fully bound in leather, with marbled or coloured endpapers, top edge of the pages gilded and silk marker ribbons. Although this is not a recent publication, copies are still available.

As the publishers say in the introduction to their catalogue, their "aim is to offer books that are not mere facsimiles but genuinely new editions, usually based on the original first edition but including any relevant additions in order to provide the most comprehensive text, together with the finest illustrations." The FFCL edition combines the text of the first edition, published by The Fishing Gazette in 1950, with new illustrations by Robin Armstrong. The original book was a reprint, in book form, of Skues' articles published in the Fishing Gazette.

The books starts with what the author describes as an incidental sport, the finding and collection of materials for fly dressing. Skues does actually have a use for that much-hated bird, the cormorant. He states that the bird has some flat feathers under the wing "in its armpit, as it were" which are a lovely dark, rusty dun and much prized for winging Iron Blue Duns. Perhaps we should learn to love the wretched bird!

My first reaction to the book was that Skues was a clever old so-and-so. If he hadn't been he would never have made the impact on fly fishing that he did. There is much advice in this book that is as sound today as the day it was first written. For example, the benefit of using a sharp knife or razor, rather than scissors when trimming the ends of tying silk as scissors are likely to cut the hackle that you have just secured whereas a knife pushed against the thread will cut it alone.

For today's fly tyer who wants to dress flies as Skues did, the extensive tying instructions make this a practical proposition, although, of course, some of the materials may no longer be available. The chapter on The Fly Dresser's Birds includes the bittern, barn owl, golden plover, corncrake and many other exotics that even when the book for was first published were protected species. It still makes interesting reading.

All books published by The Flyfisher's Classic Library are available only direct from the publisher. They can be ordered online at www.ffcl.com (The site is being redeveloped and you may find that you have to order by e-mail until online ordering is in place.) It is worth pointing out that the The Flyfisher's Classic Library is not a book club. You can buy one book or the whole catalogue. If you buy one book you do not have to buy another. Books to be published this summer and autumn can be ordered in advance, at a discounted price, and no payment is required until the books are ready for despatch.

I can recommend the publisher's catalogue itself as being of great interest with short reviews and selected illustrations from many of the books currently available. For book collectors in particular, there is much information about the various authors and books they and others have written. For a copy send an e-mail to sales@ffcl.com

I will be reviewing the Frank Sawyer Omnibus: Keeper of the Stream and Nymphs and the Trout, by Frank Sawyer in due course. It is published by The Flyfisher's Classic Library at £59 and runs to 496 pages.

Silk, Fur and Feather: The Trout-Fly Dresser's Year by VC.
With specially commissioned drawings by Robin Armstrong. Published by The Flyfisher's Classic Library at 35. Hardback with slipcase 116 pages.
Available from The Flyfisher's Classic Library