Frederic M. Halford

Frederic Michael Halford
Frederic M. Halford-Detached Badger tying flies[1]
Frederic M. Halford-Detached Badger tying flies[1]
BornFrederic Maurice Hyam
(1844-04-13)13 April 1844
Birmingham, England
Died5 March 1914(1914-03-05) (aged 69)
P&O liner Morea at sea on the River Thames
Pen nameDetached Badger
OccupationBusinessman, angler, author
NationalityBritish
EducationUniversity College School
Notable worksFloating Flies and How to Dress Them, 1886
RelativesSamuel Hyam (1813–1891) (father), Phoebe Levy (mother)

Frederic Maurice Halford (13 April 1844 – 5 March 1914), pseudonym Detached Badger,[2] was a wealthy and influential British angler and fly fishing author. Halford is most noted for his development and promotion of the dry fly technique on English chalk streams. He is generally accepted as "The Father of Modern Dry Fly Fishing".[3] John Waller Hills, A History of Fly Fishing for Trout (1921) called Halford "The Historian of the Dry Fly".[4]

In Royal Coachman – The Lore and Legends of Fly Fishing (1999), Paul Schullery describes Halford:

...highly formalized code of how a dry fly should be fished, a code further developed and popularized later in the nineteenth century by one of fly-fishing's most eminent authors, Frederic Halford, whose first book, Floating Flies and How to Dress Them, was published in 1886 and took the upper-crust world of British fly-fishing by storm.

— Paul Schullery, Royal Coachman, 1999[5]
  1. ^ Mosely, Martin E. (1921). The Dry-Fly Fisherman's Entomology-Being a Supplement to Frederic M. Halford's: The Dry Man's Handbook (PDF). London: George Routledge and Sons Limited. pp. frontispiece.
  2. ^ Hayter, Tony (2002). F.M. Halford and the Dry-Fly Revolution. London: Rober Hale. p. 98. ISBN 0-7090-6773-9.
  3. ^ Schullery, Paul, ed. (2007). "Introduction". Halford and the Dry Fly. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books. pp. ix–xv. ISBN 978-0-8117-0272-0.
  4. ^ Hills, John Waller (1921). A History of Fly Fishing For Trout. London: Phillp Allan & Co. p. 129.
  5. ^ Schullery, Paul (1999). Royal Coachman-The Lore and Legends of Fly-Fishing. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 99. ISBN 0-684-84246-7.