More than eighty years ago there was a problem which confronted fishermen--the problem of tying a mixed wing on a salmon fly. It was quite possible to tie a mixed wing, but the result would not lie properly in the water so that each individual colour would show up and blend with the rest. To the man who could perform this miracle would go the gratitude of every Waltonite.

In Ballyshannon, that little town in Donegal through which flows a majestic fishing river, the Erne, there lived a man, Michael Rogan by name, a fly-tier and rod builder by trade.

Michael was known to every fisherman who cast a line across the River Erne, Lough Melvin, or the Bundrowes, and to many who fished even in England. And to Michael the problem of the mixed wing was a constant worry. It baffled him, although he knew there must be a solution somewhere. For years he worked on it and never found it, but his enthusiasm never failed, even when he grew very old.

At last he was triumphant, the secret was discovered. Jealously he guarded it. Only to very trusted customers would he give a fly that carried the secret of the mixed wing. Even from his own family he preserved it, so that when he lay on his death-bed not a single person in the house, with the exception of himself, could tie a fixed wing.

He was lying ill in a little room above his workshop. The doctor had said there was no occasion to worry. His family accepted that and left him in peace. But Michael had a premonition that he would not live to see the daybreak.

Over and over in his mind he pondered the question of the mixed wing, and suddenly he realised that if he were taken from the world before dawn the secret would be lost, possibly for generations.

He had a son, but the son was out with a fishing party. There was silence downstairs, no one was there. In the whole house there was no one to whom he could tell the secret of the wing. There was no one who could listen to the weak syllables that would fall from his fevered lips. But he knew he would have to leave them the secret.

Quietly and painfully he arose from the bed and staggered across the room. A greatcoat lay across a chair and this he threw over his shoulders, and with candlestick held in trembling fingers he stole out on to the landing and down the stairs.

In the little workshop by the flickering light of the candle he feverishly sought out the boxes of feathers, the hooks, the silk threads and the wax-end. With fingers whose trembling he fought to control he sorted out the feathers of the golden pheasant, two brilliantly hued specimens from a bird of the jungle, a sliver from a peacock feather to form the body of the fly, and a spool of golden tinsel.

With the sweat of exhaustion standing on his brow, he worked steadily until one fly was fully tied. Then he started on a second. In all he left five specimens.

The last had just the body finished; the next one had one layer of wing feather tied on; the third had another layer on top of the first, and so on.

On the bench he left a diagrammatic sample of how the mixed wing should be tied. It was his final lesson to his son who was to take up duty after him.

The candle was almost flickering out. He started the tortuous ascent of the stairs. He was tired, very tired, and the staircase was so long. Only a few more steps, and then he could sleep.

The sun through the curtains in the early morning shone across the pillow and softened the rugged features of his face into a contented smile. At the window a multi-coloured moth played in the sunlight.

The End

Note: The story of Michael Rogan's discovery of the secret of the mixed wing was at one time known to everyone in the Ballyshannon. Michael's son, James, became in turn the old man from whom I, as a young boy, bought hand-tied flies. See The Tale of the Orange Body in "The Hawk of the Erne".
John Ward