Viking Lars | Saturday, 11 December 2021
I sometimes find it hard to find an aspect of fly fishing that I don’t enjoy (there is one that springs to mind, but that’ll be for a future FP). And speaking of future Fps, I’ve strayed from the Stillwater-series, which I apologise for, and I’ll finish it. I just need to look back and see how far I got. There’s at least one fly type I haven’t covered. I stray again. The fishing, the casting, the fy tying, I took photography with into the hobby - and there’s hardly a category I haven’t dived deep into - and it’s impossible to exhaust any of them. The last 10 years or so, the history of fly fishing has been a big off-spring of the hobby, It always has been, but I’ve been researching it more seriously the last 10 years.
And that of course leads all sorts of weird ways. I’ve recently been reading about Ernest Crossfield and finally gotten around to reading what (very) little A. E. Wood wrote about his fishing (others have written more, thankfully) and it’s fascinating to learn how innovative they both were and just how far they both seemed to stray from the norms of their contemporaries.
I’ve written about my fascination of the North Country wet flies before. I love everything about them! Especially the fact that they are made of what materials were readily available a the time of their creation. Some materials still are, others are only available as vintage skins as they are now preserved species. This is not to say that materials weren’t selected with great care and for specific reasons - I have no doubt that they were. The flies were also imitations, and if you read the classics, you’ll see that most of them come with recommendations on which part of the season to fish them.
Another type of flies that are also a product of their close environments are the Scottish Spey- and Dee-style flies. I especially like tying (and fishing) the Spey flies. Mostly because most of them feature wings of brown mallard flank feathers. I simply adore the look of mallard wings, well married together, roofed perfectly over the fly and the subtle brown/black barring.
I was tying a handful of Carrons a while back to use a summer flies. They don’t come much simpler. A flat and an oval rib, a red body, black heron palmer hackle and a mallard wing. But they also don’t come much prettier.
I could (and do) tie a modern version on tubes with a hair wing and a little flash. Equally simple and almost as beautiful. The mallard wings don’t look out of the water as do they going in, but that doesn’t change how the fly fishes. And speaking of that - it’s important to take care that palmer hackles and any front hackles don’t become too heavy. Even on a large single hook that can turn the fly upside-down. And for summer fishing, where I prefer to use them, sparse is good anyway.
I’ll try and get a small selection ready for July and August next year. Carrons are done, Grey Herons are next, Lady Caroline is also on the list and I’ll probably find one or two more.
Today’s PoD is a Carron - if nothing else the name itself seems to command respect and I know for certain that the fly is just as effective as it was more than a century ago - on the Spey and certainly all other rivers as well.
Have a great weekend!
Lars