Tag: Silver tinsel.

Tail: A topping and tippet in strands.

Body: First half, light yellow seals fur sub; Sekony half, black floss.

Ribs: Oval silver tinsel over the light yellow dubbing; flat silver tinsel and twist over black floss.

Hackle: A yellow hackle over the light yellow dubbing; a black spey cock hackle over the black floss.

(more…)

This is my spey interpretation of the Green highlander salmon fly!

(more…)

Some Black king flies are tied for the real fish, not for frame. One variation is tied on the tube.

(more…)

Another and the last salmon  fly from R. Bowlker book “The Art of Angling”, published in 1746.

(more…)

 

In 1746, Richard Bowlker published The Art of Angling, in which he listed two salmon flies by name, the King’s Fisher or Peacock Fly and the Dragon Fly. Simple in construction and somber in color, both flies probably evolved from trout pattterns.

Bob Veverka

(more…)

 

Fly patterns that really get my juices flowing are Spey flies and derivatives of the Spey flies and Dee flies. Long flowing hackles. Simple elegance, if you will. They’re just beautiful, beautiful flies. And a gentleman by the name of Syd Glasso several decades ago brought them to steelhead fishing in America.

Dec Hogan

(more…)

The Heron

The heron stands in water where the swamp
Has deepened to the blackness of a pool,
Or balances with one leg on a hump
Or marsh grass heaped above a muskrat hole.

He walks the shallow with an antic grace.
The great feet break the ridges of the sand,
The long eye notes the minnow’s hiding place.
His beak is quicker than a human hand.

He jerks a frog across his bony lip,
Then points his heavy bill above the wood.
The wide wings flap but once to lift him up.
A single ripple starts from where he stood.

Theodore Roethke, from the Collected

Poems of Theodore Roethke (Faber, 1985)

(more…)

The King Spey flies were first described in  A. E. Knox’s  book “Autumn on the Spey”, published in 1872. Later these flies were improved, but remained essentially unchanged.

(more…)

There’s Mister Shanks too, upon the banks too,

Och that’s the fellow that can throw a loine,

A clever boy too, he can tie a floy too,

For art and practice he does both comboine.

A. E. Knox, “Autumns on the Spey”, 1872