Saturday afternoon, in the room listening to my collection of Pretty Things albums. I guess that is a sure sign of my advancing years! Got through all the classics and ended up at Savage Eye. Loved every minute of it. Oh, and I was making salmon flies too.
I have plans to fish the river Moy this season so I need to update my fly box with some flies for that famous river. I am OK for small flies which will be needed in the summer when the grilse are running but I seem to be a bit short of patterns for the spring fishing. Here are a couple of flies which should produce the goods for me.
Gold Ally’s Shrimp
A fly for a bright day, this is a variation on of the normal Gold Ally.
Tail: long orange bucktail with a couple of strands of sunburst flash
Rib: Oval gold tinsel
Body: flat gold tinsel/mylar/lurex/whatever you’re having yourself
Under wing: tied below the hook, orange squirrel under natural grey squirrel tail
Over wing: tied on top of the hook and slightly longer that the under wing. Orange squirrel under Natural grey squirrel under GP body feather fibres dyed claret
Hackle; tied in front of the wings, long fibred Orange cock
Head: red varnish
I also tie a variant which has a split body, gold tinsel at the rear and Globrite no. 5 at the front.
The next fly is also a variant of a popular pattern, this time the Hairy Mary.
Tag: oval gold tinsel
Tail: a golden pheasant topping or a small bunch of yellow hair
Body: black floss
Rib: fine oval gold tinsel
Hackle: Blue cock or hen. you can wind the hackle on either before or after you tie in the wing. I like to double the hackle, it seems to lie better that way.
Wing: bucktail dyed red
Sizes for both of these patterns range from 6 down to 12, depending on conditions. I like them on either singles or doubles but there is no reason why you could not tie them on trebles. To me these are patterns I associate with the Moy but they would probably work elsewhere too. I may give them a swim on Carrowmore or Beltra this year.
Claretbumbler 