Featherwing streamers - Scott Biron

These featherwing streamers or Rangeley style streamers from the early 1920's are a style of streamers that I've come to appreciate more and more as I have been reading about them. Carrie Stevens comes to mind when you think about streamers like the Gray Ghost. Read about the story of Carrie Stevens in Mike Valla's book The Founding flies. The need for different types of feathers to tie these streamers does mean some new investments.

Here's a nice video about Scott Biron, a fly tier that tries to pass on the tradition of tying featherwing streamers.

Winston Leetle Feller

The Winston Leetle Feller bamboo series started as a single special order by a customer named Peter Schwab in the early 1930's.  In Ernest Schwiebert's iconic book Trout, he tells about how the rod Winston built for Schwab was acclaimed and got into production.

The Leetle Fellers included six rods from 5.5 ft to 7.6ft in length weighing from 1 3/4 oz. to 3 1/8 oz. for either a DT 3 or DT 4 lines. They were one tip rods but a second tip could be ordered. 

Back then a 4, let alone 3 weight, were very uncommon line weights. Probably very few line manufacturers offered anything lighter than a 5 weight line as a 6 weight was considered the standard line weight for trout rods up to the late 1970s.

Due to the popularity Winston offered this series of rods until the early 1980's, probably making the Leetle Fellers the longest running rod series of any material. My understanding is the Leetle Fellers were removed from Winston's catalog in 1978 and called Light Trout until around 1982.

The description of the Leetle Feller series from the 1975's catalog:

"These beautiful and delicate creations of the rodbuilder's art are

becoming more popular with each passing year. We first built this

series of ultra light, bamboo fly rods for angling author Peter J. Schwab

in the early 1930's. Pete tagged them "leetle fellers", a term so descriptive,

we  have used it ever since.

Leetle Fellers are specialized tools for only the most skillful fly-fishermen.

They are designed to make short, accurate casts on small streams

where extreme delicacy is desired. With a #3 or #4 double tapered line

and long, fine leaders they will drop a tiny dry fly on smooth water, up

to 45 feet away, with a loving caress."

I've seen quite a few Leetle Fellers along the years and they all were typically sold with a full wells grip, a cork seat with an aluminum cap & ring. The winding check (or cap) on the grip seems to have had two variations, either an aluminum cap or a bakelite (smooth or with 'stairs') cap. Later on after moving from San Francisco to Twin Bridges, Montana looks like Winston built the Leetle Fellers with a cigar shape grip and a (rose wood?) wooden seat rather than the iconic full wells grip. Also the cap & ring were no longer made with nickel silver rather than with aluminum.

Shortly after Morgan acquired Winston in 1973, he also designed a fiberglass rod serie called the Stalkers that resembled the Leetle Feller's characteristics. Morgan wrote:

"... The Stalker Series of glass rods completes a longtime goal of ours, to provide

fishermen with a glass rod that has delicacy and lightness of our Leetle Fellers.

They have been designed to fish spring creeks where the utmost precision is

needed in presenting small flies on light leaders." 

Check out the Leetle Feller (that was misnamed by Winston!) I saw in the Winston museum. 

Here are some of the Leetle Fellers that are in various collections:

A letter from Peter Schwab published in Fly Fisherman magazine:

South Africa - how fly fishing has grown into an economy

It's amazing how a small country, not geographically but in number or people engaged in the sport is making head lines world wide. Besides authors like Tom Sutcliffe, Peter Brigg and more recently Gordon van de Spuy, South Africa also boast artists and internationally acclaimed fly fishing magazines like The Mission and The Complete Fly Fisherman.

This video from CNN features the possibilities for South Africa as a destination for the traveling fly fishermen.