The Ultimate Fly Box: Over 50 Years of BC's Best Flies

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review and an instructor
of Liturgy, Anglican Studies Program, Regent College, Vancouver.

Comprehensive books about fishing flies for a particular geographic area
are a boon to the average flyfisher. One well-known volume for the West
Coast is Flies of the Northwest (1998). Now The Ultimate Fly Box has
arrived, and it is the best regional book of flies yet published.

Material on more than 150 flies, which was first published in BC
Outdoors over its 60 years, has been gathered into a compact book. For
each fly the recipe (i.e., the hook style and size, and the materials
for each section of the fly) is provided along with clear step-by-step
instructions on how to tie the fly, and a colour photograph of the
completed fly. For each category of flies, and for many individual
flies, there are instructions on how to fish the fly. There is a chapter
on each of the four main types of flies—nymphs, emergers, dry flies,
and salmonids (usually referred to as streamers and bucktails)—a
chapter on knots, and an index of all flies in the book.

This may be a B.C. book, but it will be useful in every part of the
country and even further afield. All the flies could be used anywhere
that fishers cast a fly for trout, char, salmon, and panfish. In fact,
many have a history of use elsewhere before becoming part of the B.C.
fly-fishing scene. Others have been created to meet specific West Coast
conditions. For example, the Squamish Poacher was designed for
winter-run steelhead on the Squamish River; it could be used for Great
Lakes steelhead and possibly Gaspé salmon. Or, the Lady McConnell, a
chironomid pattern for B.C. lake rainbow trout, could catch an Ontario
brook trout. The guidebook will help in tying the flies; it’s up to
the angler to test them on lakes and streams.