For several years now I have taught fly casting and Spey casting schools in USA and Canada and demonstrated fly casting at the Fly Fishing Retailers Show for Thomas & Thomas. Fly tying demonstrations take me all around the UK and some of my salmon flies have become very successful. I invented Ally's Shrimp around 1980 and it was voted "Salmon Fly of the Millennium" in UK and it has received many plaudits elsewhere. In addition to being a regular contributor to Europe's top fly fishing magazine "Fly Fishing and Fly Tying", I contribute to a number of others including "Trout and Salmon", "Atlantic Salmon Journal", "Trofeo Pesca", "Fish and Fly", "The Field" and "The Scottish Field".

My web sites include www.letsflyfish.com and www.flyfish-scotland.com and I wrote and illustrated www.anglingintayside.co.uk to promote fishing in this part of Scotland.

When I started fly tying money and materials were scarce commodities and many sources were tapped for the latter including old hats, sewing boxes, knitting bags and any reasonably sized bird that passed within range of my gun and if I couldn't shoot them, road kills were a second best. When I look at my store of stuff now I wonder how I ever got there, then I remember how kind my father and his acquaintances were, encouraging, teasing and always there to help with sound answers to every fishing question that a child had. Kids today still need that kind of help and now it's our turn to provide it.

Fly tying, like fishing itself is a large and diverse community. Personally I have never indulged in "feather art" but if tiers enjoy it, there is a place for it and mighty skilful it is too. But what is a "Classic Fly", is it a design statement, a fly that has caught thousands of fish, a fly that has been around a long time, the evolution of a new style of fly tying or is it something beautiful that anyone can make and call a classic? I don't really care too much about the answer, I just find it amusing and satisfying that just as it's hard to determine what is a classic, it's difficult to determine what is not a classic. For instance, in my opinion, if someone tied black collie dog hair on a hook with nothing else and it caught thousands of fish, it would be a classic!

The flies in my showcase are fishing flies, designed to get wet. Unfortunately, they are destined to remain in a fly box for most of the time because fully dressed flies with built wings, mixed wings and containing rare and unusual materials have been surpassed by simplified dressings. In the future some of todays new patterns may be recognised as "Classics". Even so, it would be sad if these wonderful old flies were lost and forgotten by future tiers but I doubt if that will happen. In the long run these old dressings will probably catch more fly tiers than fish and what a challenge some of them are!

Thanks,

Ally Gowans