It was 50 years ago this year that David Footer designed his signature pattern for fly fishing, using two hooks, gold tinsel, peacock and guinea hen feathers, red and blue bucktail and yellow hackle. The story goes that, after having a friend tie the fly for him, Footer took it north to Quebec’s Broadback River area, where he caught a massive trout weighing more than six pounds.

Today, the predominantly red and yellow Footer Special is still considered an effective and popular fly among sport fly fishermen. Its basic components — thread, tinsel and feathers — are sold at outdoor stores like L.L. Bean and Cabela’s, and the fly itself can be ordered from sport catalogs and bought at sporting stores throughout the Northeast. In Maine, the Kittery Trading Post, Rangeley Region Sport Shop, Maine Guide Fly Shop in Greenville, L.L. Bean and others carry the finished fly.

On Sept. 21, nationally renowned fly tier Don Bastian will teach the Footer Special at a fly tying workshop at the L.L. Bean Flagship Store in Freeport.

“It’s a fairly popular pattern,” said Bastian, who lives in Cogan Station, Penn., but travels around the country doing seminars for sport fishermen. “I wasn’t aware of (the Footer Special) until the late ’90s,” he said. “When I first saw it, with the combination of the yellow and the red, I thought ‘That’s a really pretty fly. I want to tie those.’”

But to understand the full story behind the Footer Special, one must delve into the life of its creator, a Lewiston farm boy who devoted his life to art and taxidermy, and who, through his passions, has become famous for both.

Preserving the beauty of nature

Footer was born in Lewiston and spent his youth living in the family homestead on Pond Road. His parents were both from Lewiston. His father grew cucumbers for the Oxford Pickle Company in Mechanic Falls, according to his daughter, Julie Footer, who now handles most of David’s affairs.

He “grew up outside,” says Julie, either working on the farm or recreating in the area, hunting, fishing and trapping as his father taught him. “He read Jack London and stories about frontiersmen.”

He and his brothers “would try to get all of their cucumbers picked early so they could go take a swim in” No Name Pond, which abutted their father’s farm, she says.

In a recent interview, Footer, 81, and still very active with both his art and taxidermy, acknowledged, “The outdoors was a very important part of my life.”

Particularly the beauty of nature. “If you really look at wildlife, you see a lot of art,” he said.

“He was just a little boy when he started doing art,” says Julie. At the age of 12 he presented his mother with a picture he had painted. It was a nature scene, and he had marked it with his personalized “fly and trout signature,” a version of his signature that includes a trout jumping after a fly.

Even earlier, around the age of 10, Julie says, he caught a brook trout and “decided, because of the fish’s colors, that he wanted to catch them, draw them and mount them,” inspired in part by the mounted fish he saw in neighbors’ homes.

His attraction to the images of nature, coupled with a need to find a trade, led him first to taxidermy. At 15, he took a correspondence course and earned his Maine taxidermy license. It would become his major means of support, though as he got older his ever-evolving artistic abilities would not only influence and enhance his taxidermy, but would result in his production of volumes of traditional art — paintings, carvings and drawings.

As a young man, “he supported himself in many ways,” says Julie. “He tended for his father as a stone mason, he worked as a soda jerk and in the movie theater in Lewiston.” And while he would continue to work many jobs in order to pursue his outdoor and artistic passions, in the 1950s “his taxidermy work began to take off,” says Julie.

In 1951 he married Pauline Olivier of Lewiston. “I married my high school sweetheart,” said Footer. “You can’t do much better than that.” The couple had seven children and were married for nearly 60 years, until 2010, when Pauline passed away.

After his children were born, Footer continued to fly fish and recreate in the outdoors. He taught his children the art of fly fishing at young ages, says Julie. He and his friends came to know the territory of the Rangeley Lakes Region well, according to his daughter, “scoping out the fishing in different brooks and streams.”

His memory, and his knowledge of local fishing, was stellar. “He would constantly tell us the secret to catching the trout in this or that pond, or say where the fishing was best on a certain river,” says Julie.

Developing the Footer Special

In 1962, at the age of 31, Footer conceived of the fly that would become his namesake. After reading an article in True Magazine about large fishing lures, he was determined to create his own and take it north, to Quebec. There, the trout were purported to be mammoth, as they had once been in the Rangeley Lakes Region he frequently fished.

“I had had very good success with the combination of yellow, red and blue . . . of the Governor Barrows fly,” Footer recalled, and he decided to use a similar color pattern for his fly. The fly was meant to resemble “an injured minnow, floating on the water upside down,” he said. The dark color on the bottom of the fly was intended to mimic the back of a floating baitfish, luring in larger target fish looking for an easy meal.

Not being a fly tier himself, Footer sketched the design he had envisioned and wrote out the intended colorings. He gave the notes to his friend and neighbor, Charles Mann, and after receiving the finished fly from Mann, Footer took it north to the area of the Broadback River in Quebec, to try his luck.

“It was my first trip to the Canadian wilderness,” he said. “It was about my second cast when I landed the fish. I had cast out and seen a trout, but he didn’t take it. When I cast again, he bit.” The trout was 23 inches long and 14 inches in girth. It weighed more than 6 pounds. (In other words, it was a whopper.)

Today, the Footer Special is considered particularly popular at hooking larger game fish in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. “It’s tied in several designs” for catching different target fish, said Footer, and it has become “a very well-known fly in the Canadian wilderness.”

“I’ve taken many larger trout on that fly,” said Footer, some weighing “up to nine pounds.”

Some alterations have been made to the original design of the Footer Special. While Footer’s original fly was a tandem streamer, meaning it used two fish hooks on the single fly, those sorts of flies are now illegal to cast in many Maine waters. Most Footer Specials tied today are done so using only a single hook. “There are different rules for different waters,” cautioned Footer, and he advised anyone who’s about to go fishing to check the local guidelines with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Footer’s artwork today

Footer, who still lives in Lewiston, continues to produce and show artwork. “I’m not making as much as I used to,” he said, but “I’m still doing the same sort of stuff.” That’s chiefly paintings and sculptures of wildlife and nature scenes.

“He’s still constantly viewing art programs, looking at art,” and creating artistic pieces, says Julie. His work has been purchased by the Smithsonian. He and his artwork have been on the cover of many outdoor magazines. His art and taxidermy displays are considered collector’s items by outdoor enthusiasts. And, today, Footer’s pieces hang permanently in the Outdoor Sporting Heritage Museum in Oquossoc.

In addition, many of the taxidermy mounts on display at L.L. Bean were done by Footer. He also displays his work regularly in temporary exhibits. While he sells many pieces to benefit charitable organizations, he exhibits work in local businesses and institutions. Last year, he had a large showing in Cushing, organized by the Cushing Historical Society. “His work is being displayed 24-7,” says Julie.

“I always encourage anyone who’s interested in artwork to pursue it, though I tell them that you have to work twice as hard, because it’s so hard to make a living,” said Footer.

In a sense, Footer’s work will be on display long after his formal art pieces — and even his enormous taxidermy collection — are no longer available to the public. It will be out in the world as long as anglers are tying the red-and-yellow Footer Special, the fly dreamed up by David Footer the artist, utilized by David Footer the outdoorsman, and popularized by the myth of the man.

“There is a lot of interest and fascination with the lore and the timing of events and the personalities that surround” the flies, said Bastian. “It all just lends to the aura and the myth.” But, in the end, “the main thing is how well it works.”

“As streamer patterns go, it’s not the most minimal, but also not one of the most complex. It’s an extremely elegant fly.”

A non-tiers quick guide to fishing flies

The fly, also called the artificial fly or fly lure, is artificial prey used to lure target fish — primarily trout, salmon and bass — when angling. Angling is any fishing done using a hook, generally connected to line attached to a fishing rod. Fly tying is the method of constructing artificial flies, using fur, feathers, thread and various other materials.

“There are thousands of different types of flies,” according to national expert fly tier Don Bastian of Pennsylvania. Diverse flies have been created over the centuries to attract various types of target fish, and for use in different environments and with different methods of angling. Artificial flies are made to represent the prey of the target fish. Therefore, flies are made to resemble aquatic and terrestrial insects, crustaceans, worms, other fish, vegetation, small reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and even birds.

An early testament of fly fishing comes from the Roman Claudius Aelianus, who recorded Macedonians angling on the Astraeus River (the location of which is still debated among fly fishing historians) near the end of the second century. The Macedonians used red wool and rooster feathers to create their artificial flies.

The practice of fly fishing proliferated in Europe, where fishers developed myriad types of flies. Modern attestations of European fly-fishing can be found going as far back as the 1400s. European flies were introduced to America with the arrival of the first colonists. However, as American target fish were physically different and lived in different environments than European target fish, American fly fishermen made new and different flies to accommodate

Today, fly fishermen tweak contemporary patterns to develop original flies. “I have about 120 original patterns,” said Bastian. “It’s a hobby that allows you to express your originality.” While some ties are ubiquitous because of their renown efficacy — the Grey Ghost and the Black Ghost, for example — fishermen have created countless flies to meet specific needs.

There are dozens of categories of flies, some designated by the type of fish they are meant to catch, some designated by the way they behave in the water and some designated by the type of prey they are meant to imitate.

Dry flies, for example, sit on the surface of the water and are meant to resemble adult insects, while wet flies sink somewhat in the water and are designed to look like insect larva, nymphs or baitfish.

The Footer Special is classified as a streamer fly. Streamer flies are intended to mimic baitfish or other large aquatic prey, either in freshwater or saltwater. Because they are effective for almost any type of gamefish, this is a diverse category of flies.

Meet David Footer; tie the Footer Special

On Sept. 21, nationally renowned fly tier Don Bastian will teach the Footer Special at a fly tying workshop at the L.L. Bean Flagship Store in Freeport.

David Footer, the originator of the Footer Special, will be guest of honor, accompanied by his daughter Julie and wife, Annette.

The workshop is expected to be held on the mezzanine at L. L. Bean beginning at 7 p.m. While the class is free, space is limited so pre-registration is recommended. Registered tiers should plan to arrive 10 to 15 minutes early. Spectators are welcome.