The Nine-Three was born in May 1949, in the Belgrade Lakes region. “My brother Emile and Dr. Herbert Sanborn stayed up half the night designing the fly,” the late Maine outdoors writer (and longtime ...

He's also in demand on the fly-fishing lecture circuit around the world as both a master salmon fly tier and as an authority on the history of classic fly patterns.

Before I leave, I cajole him into showing me his fly boxes. There are none of the old classics here, but the simpler hair-wing salmon patterns and supercharged pike flies are no less beautifully tied.

The recent Irish Fly Fair in Galway saw the launch of the latest encyclopaedic work on classic salmon flies by Waterville angling historian, Martin Lanigan-O’Keeffe. The historian, whose ...