ED HERBST REVIEWS MAURO RASPINI’S NEW BOOK ‘CDC EVOLUTION’ and describes and illustrates a range of useful CDC tools made with the express purpose of getting the most out of these marvellous feathers.

Click in images to enlarge

In 1984 I ordered a copy of French Fishing Flies by Jean Paul Pequenot, a slim, 125-page English translation of a book that had been published in France in the mid-seventies. Line drawings showed what the flies looked like and I was particularly interested in the Cul de canard (CDC) patterns to which magical properties were attributed.

http://www.flyfishing-and-flytying.co.uk/reviews/view/french_fishing_flies/

I managed to acquire some dyed CDC feathers but, in retrospect, I realise that they were of very poor quality and I doubted that they would float a dry fly for very long on the less than limpid currents of the mountain streams near Cape Town.

And so it proved. While having a midday sandwich on the Holsloot I attached to my tippet the simple palmer pattern I had tied and cast it into some slack water close to where I was sitting. I wanted to see how it would float before trying it in the riffles and runs. It descended with absolute softness making the normally gentle presentation of big hackle Variants like the RAB look absolutely leaden.

http://www.trouthaven.co.za/trout_fishing/

It sat in the quiet water some metres from the main current tongue and it seemed to shiver every now and again as its soft, diaphanous tendrils were activated by the slightest breeze.

I was startled by the sudden splash as the fly disappeared in an area where I did not think there would be fish. I dropped the sandwich picked up the rod and quickly released a 10” trout. Using my shirt I dried the fly with some difficulty and, assuming I had caught the village idiot, cast the fly into the slack water again before resuming my lunch. Once again my gustatory reverie was interrupted as another trout took the fly but this time it was too sodden to fish with and I reluctantly consigned CDC feathers to the been-there, done-that, didn’t-work recesses of my mind.

The consequence of those poor-quality CDC feathers was that I lost out on two decades of what could have been very enjoyable and productive fishing and a lot of pleasurable fly tying.

All that changed when Edoardo Ferrero spent a few weeks in South Africa a decade ago. He was very involved with the Italian national team both as competitor and on the administrative side when it participated in the annual FIPS-Mouche world fly fishing championship.

He introduced us to the Arpo, a simple three-minute to tie CDC caddis imitation and he showed us how to dry it with tissue paper.

The Arpo dry fly. Photo per Agostino Roncallo

http://www.pipam.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=865&Itemid=92

At about the same time, Leon Links’ book, Tying Flies with CDC – The Fisherman’s Miracle Feather was published and good quality feathers became readily available.

http://globalflyfisher.com/reviews/books/tying-flies-with-cdc---the-fishermans-miracle-feather

And when the South African national youth team competed in the FIPS-Mouche world youth championship event in Italy in 2011 the organisers, for the first time in the history of this competition, put in a dry fly only day. Recalls team manager, MC Coetzer: “The section they chose on the Tevere River was referred to locally as “The University” because of the highly educated fish. The South African youth team quickly realised that traditional dry fly patterns did not present softly enough so they used #20 CDC dries and emergers and they excelled, being beaten in this section of the competition only by the host team to whom this water was familiar.”  CDC flies, unlike conventionally hackled dries, compress when cast and, when the energy of the cast dissipates, they pop open like little parachutes.

The greatest revelation for me, however, was when I came across Agostino Roncallo’s Mirage, a CDC version of Harry Darbee’s One Feather Dun

http://annalsofflyfishing.proboards.com/thread/171

http://www.tomsutcliffe.co.za/fly-fishing/fly-tying/item/215-the-mirage-mayfly-imitation.html

It was described, in Italian, in Roncallo’s sumptuous book, Magie (Tricks) in CDC which was published by the Italian magazine, Flyline.

http://www.flylinemagazine.com/en/fly-fishing/books/a/10-magie-sin-cdc.html?flypage=flypage.tpl&category_id=2

The Mirage, to which I added a CDC parachute, solved what had been an enduring and often frustrating puzzle on the streams near Cape Town.

On the Holsloot you can almost set your watch by the only significant mayfly “hatch” that we have. At about ten in the morning a previously lifeless stream suddenly boils with rising fish. It is, however, not a hatch in the conventional sense because many if not most local mayflies hatch on humid nights and do so by crawling onto rocks before emerging.

Choroterpes nigrescens. Photo Tom Sutcliffe

What is causing the frenetic trout behaviour is gravid Choroterpes nigrescens mayflies which dip down onto the water and then fly against the current to separate the eggs from their abdomens. I have had trout become so focused on these bobbing and dipping aerial targets that they have almost bumped into my legs. While a #16-18 black parachute is the conventional response, I found the parachute Mirage to be far more successful.

It was after reading Magie in CDC that I coined the phrase “Origami flies” because the number of ways in which Roncallo bends, folds, furls and twists a CDC feather seems infinite.

Regrettably Flyline never published an English version of Roncallo’s book but their latest book, CDC Evolution, in some measure compensates for that.

While Links’ book focused on the history of CDC flies and featured the work of leading tyers, Raspini concentrates on step by step photographic sequences of how to tie 49 patterns from mayfly and caddis nymphs, through emergers to adults and several terrestrial patterns.

http://www.partridge-of-redditch.co.uk/pages/mauro-raspini/26/

http://www.flytyingboutique.com/product.cfm?product=1084#.UccHhL4aKpo

It is a typical Flyline book in that it is printed on heavy, glossy paper and the colour reproduction is outstanding.

Raspini briefly re-traces the historic evolution of CDC fly tying and says the pivotal moment came in the early 80s when Marjan Fratnic of Slovenia sent examples of his F Fly to leading fly fishing writers. It consisted only of two CDC feathers tied in at the eye of the hook and sloping backwards. There was no body. Its outstanding success led to articles in the German magazine, Fliegenfischer, and a new fly fishing and tying era was born.   

There can be few trout fishing situations for which CDC Evolution does not provide a CDC pattern as an answer but in some respects it is disappointing.

We are told that Hanna Williams was responsible for translating Raspini’s Italian text but the result, while understandable, clearly indicates that she is not familiar with the terms used by fly fishers and tyer’s in English-speaking countries.

Instead of patterns, this book refers to “models”, instead of a split-thread dubbing loop we read of an “eyelet”, a feather quill is called a “calamus”   and instead of an insect’s shuck we read of its “exuvia” - to cite a few examples.

The book would have been improved if a chapter could have been devoted to contemporary fly tying tools developed specifically for CDC – Marc Petitjean’s extensive range, the feather folder from RG France and others by Marryat and Vosseler.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rb3-hR8PpQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu930ivb_sI

http://www.flyfisher.ro/en/vosseler-xpert-fly-tying-tool-clip-how-to-use-it/

http://www.vosseler.com/index.php?id=clip-bindetool&L=1

The Marryat CDC feather tool

The RG France CDC feather folder.

Cape Town landing net maker, Deon Stamer, can beautifully replicate this tool in wood. Contact him on 083 3091220/ This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Deon Stamer’s version of the RG France tool – the feather is placed into the slit in the foam which doubles it. It can then be grasped by a clamp and, once the quill has been removed, the CDC fibres can be inserted into a dubbing loop.                                    

Many of the tying sequences refer to existing and in many respects traditional flies which have been modified to incorporate CDC – and I would have liked to see these patterns attributed to their originators – but others are innovative: the Transition Dun uses CDC oiler puffs to replicate the embryonic wings of a mayfly which has only partly emerged from its nymphal shuck and the Long-Ext Body shows how one can use a needle to tie an extended body mayfly imitation using a single CDC feather.

Almost 30 years have elapsed since Jean Paul Pequenot’s French Fishing Flies first alerted English-speaking fly fishers to the existence and the potential of the soft, downy feathers surrounding the preen gland of waterfowl, feathers that are the antithesis of the stiff, shiny feathers that companies like Metz and Whiting have spent just as many years developing.

http://www.gateshead.co.za/gallery/up-the-bokspruit-on-horseback

But, on tiny “crystal staircase” streams like the upper Bokspruit at Gateshead near Rhodes, South African  CDC flies like Tom Sutcliffe’s Single Feather Midge and Darryl Lampert’s Hi-Vis Midge and those illustrated in CDC Evolution have unquestionably proved their superiority.

http://www.tomsutcliffe.co.za/fly-fishing/fly-tying/item/209-tying-the-cdc-midge.html

http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/hivis/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVQmHNjqeAA

Mauro Raspini and Flyline are to be congratulated on this, the latest addition to the CDC lexicon – and I was delighted to see that the Arpo and its derivatives feature prominently.

All these books as well as the Marc Petitjean and Marryat CDC tools are available from Craig Thom at Stream-X/Netbooks in Cape Town

http://www.streamxflyfishing.co.za/index.htm