PUBLISHED REFERENCES TO T C IVENS

Below are some references to T C Ivens collected from  a number of published sources:

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The New Encyclopaedia of Fly Fishing

By Conrad Voss Bark, Robert Hale, London (1999)

 

Ivens, T C No one had more influence on the development of reservoir fishing than T C Ivens with the publication in 1952 of his Stillwater Fly-Fishing which went through at least four editions and was reprinted several times.

      Ivens and his friends fished the Midlands reservoirs and developed new simplified types of fly and new techniques of fishing them. He divided fly patterns into two categories: attractors and deceivers. The attractors were lure-type flies, like the Alexandra and his Jersey Herds; the deceivers were nymph or larva-type patterns, not tied to imitate any one creature, but to suggest a number.  One of the most important of the latter, which has retained, and even increased its popularity, is the Black & Peacock Spider.

      Ivens was one of the first reservoir fishers to emphasize the importance of long casting, which he demonstrated in a series of photographs. His deceiver flies, which he preferred to fish wherever possible, were fished very slowly, so that their shape and movement coincided with those of a trout’s usual food. The attractors were generally used in heavy water or when trout were sticklebacking, and were fished fast. Though there were exceptions, as there always are, in general he regarded dry fly fishing as a waste of time. His aim was to put reservoir fishing on as scientific and simple a basis as possible, and his book and his whole philosophy had an instant appeal to large numbers of men who were being attracted to reservoir fishing for the first time since WWII, as well as those who had previously been fishing traditional wet flies without knowing quite why.

Reproduced by kind permission of Adam Fox-Edwards

 

Reservoir Trout Flies

By Adrian V W Freer, Crowood Press (2010)

 

TOM IVENS

 

In 1952, Tom Ivens (a nymph fisherman by disposition) introduced the Jersey Herd, one of the first out-and-out flasher lures to gain wide popularity, and thankfully we have a record of why and how it was created in his classic work Stillwater Fly-Fishing where he gives an absorbing account of a fly being created to deal with a specific fishing situation.

      At the time he attempted to produce a really large, heavy fly which was weighty enough to stay submerged whilst being stripped back quickly in very windy conditions where ‘normal’ sized flies were far too light and simply skated across the surface. Subsequently, other anglers began to develop similar flashy attractor patterns and ‘lure fishing’ as we understand it today came into being.

Reproduced by kind permission of Crowood Press