In his book, “Practical Fishing Knots,” Lefty Kreh – America’s High Priest of fly fishing – writes, “An unwarranted mystique shrouds the simplicity of building tapered fly-fishing leaders.”

Lefty’s probably right. Far be it for any of us less-honed fly fishers to question the Master. A down-to-earth guy, this is Lefty’s way of saying that newcomers should not be intimidated by it all.

Fly fishing ain’t rocket science, you know.

And yet so much of the fly fishing sport is enshrined in mystiques, from waders and rod styles to fishing vests, the best sunglasses and brands of dry fly flotant. Old timers, who have been casting artificials long before it became a outdoor vogue, scoff with contempt at the fancy gadgets and high-priced duds that have become the hallmark of fly angling.

Frankly, I love it all, the whole gamut. The endless gadgets, the new duds, the catalogs, the newcomers’ cultist awe of the Lefty Krehs, the old-time fly fisherman’s’ stubborn allegiance to simplicity, the fashionable lady fishers in form-fitting waders, and the novices struggling with their timing. Most of all, I remain hooked on the rhythm and mystery of it, especially the utter unpredictability of trout. It is this mystery, this total uncertainty about why exactly a trout strikes a particular surface fly that so intrigues me.

For me, the attempt to seduce a brook trout to engorge itself on a concoction of feathers and thread fashioned by my own hand brings to mind an adage that “the more you learn, the less you know.”

Despite more than 40 years of chasing trout with artificials and reading the vast experiences of others more skilled at it than I, there is still not an artificial fly among my countless collection that is ever tied on my tippet with unshakable confidence. Sometimes they all work; and sometimes none of them work.

So I have begun to look beyond fly angling orthodoxy, which teaches that matching the hatch (the right fly) and proper presentation (smooth, ethereal delivery of the fly upon the water) is the thing. If you have matched the hatch, and made a good cast, and still the trout ignores your offerings, is there something else?

Oh yes. Try tippet trickery.

A tippet, for the uninitiated, is that critical two-foot piece of monofilament at the end of a fly fishing leader that attaches to the fly. Fishing in the West two years ago over a creek holding butterball cutthroat trout that were piled up like cordwood, I tried in vain for an hour to seduce one of those stream-sipping beauties with an array of flies and sizes.

As a last desperate resort, I replaced a 4-pound tippet with a 1-pound tippet. Presto! The fish took.

In a similar experience on a pond in Wyoming, a 1-pound tippet finally did the trick with big, stubborn rainbows that were surface feeding. The Catch 22 was that, though I could coax a strike with the delicate tippet, the fish once hooked could not be turned without breaking off the tippet..

In early June of this year while fishing a Maine trout pond with my two sons, trout were feeding on the surface at midday despite a bright sun and a flat calm. Yet, nary a feeding trout would hit our mixed bag of offerings. “Let’s test my tippet theory,” I suggested. “I’ll put on a 1-pound tippet and select a fly – any fly – at random from the fly box.”

“OK, Dad, show us your stuff,” one of my boys said, humoring me.

With my skeptical fishing companions watching from their canoe, I made a short cast with a freshly installed 7.5X, 1-pound tippet. Attached to the delicate tippet was a small, greenish Mayfly imitation randomly plucked from the old fly box.

Bang! A feisty 14-inch brookie, first cast.

So what made the difference, the tippet or a lucky pick from the fly box? My “educated” guess is that feeding trout are not as discriminating about their diet as fly fishing catalogs would have us believe. But they are fussy about the look of things. Not so much color and shape, but the overall picture. I suspect that these trout shy away no matter how well the artificial rides on the surface if they detect a curled tippet or a leader shadow near the fly. In the streams out West, where the average cutthroat has been caught and released at least seven times in a life span, the slightest drag ripple from a drifting surface fly will turn a trout away every time.

Of course, this is not news. Most fly fishermen learn sooner or later that improper leaders can spook a trout. My Angler Revelation is simply that for all these years, I’ve spent too much time fretting over fly selection, and not enough energy and effort on the leader, especially the last two feet.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].