Irish Fly Dressing
This article relates to wet flies used for Lough
fishing. Generally Irish dry flies would follow the standard
formulae used the world over as regards proportion. The same
cannot be said for Irish Lough flies.
What I hope to convey in this short article is a sense of
proportion and colour used by the Irish for this type of fishing,
which is almost unique. I write this as an angler coming from
England and now living in Ireland and also as a materials
wholesaler and fly manufacturer. Having not been introduced to
Irish flies until later in life and also handling the volume of
capes and flies that I do, perhaps I bring an almost unique
perspective to the discussion. The differences in the national
styles, is apparently not obvious. I have seen many articles
written and published in magazines by visiting English anglers
showing Irish flies, which were dressed by the visitor. In many
cases no self respecting Irishman would have tied the fly in the
style presented. Firstly it is worth considering what the
intention of the fly is and why Irish flies are different. The
Irish Loughs (as in the Midland Loughs and the Western Loughs) are
great expanses of water with a population of wild fish. Firstly
this means that the fish have all the instincts which have enabled
them to survive for thousands of years in these waters. It also
means that from the moment of birth, the were potential prey to
other creatures. Only those with appropriate reactions to a threat
survived to maturity. In other words they are wild and wary.
Secondly you cannot expect a fishing water that is replenished
largely by natural breeding to maintain the stocking density of an
artificially stocked small rainbow fishery. Frequently these small
fisheries have a stocking density well in excess of 100lb of fish
to the acre. This is certainly higher than you will find in a
naturally maintained fishery. What does this mean for the angler.
Well firstly you cannot expect, having missed a fish, for that
same fish to come to your fly a second time - it's long gone. OK
so you will get some repeat takes, but not to the same extent as
you would with Rainbow trout. Secondly as the fish are not exactly
shoulder to shoulder in the lough, you need to cover a lot of
water to cover a lot of fish. This means drifting. As an
Englishman reared in the Lake District and having subsequently
worked and fished in many parts of England, I can state without
fear of contradiction the Irish loughs are of a completely
different nature to English lakes and reservoirs. So leave your
drogue at home, you don't want it in Ireland. When you hear of a
nice ripple being a two foot wave, they mean it. I have never seen
waves on Windermere, for instance, even in a howling gale like the
rollers, that can cross lough Ennel, even in a modest wind. In
July of this year ('98) I went to Sheelin to meet someone before a
competition. You could see the waves breaking on the shore a mile
and a half away and throwing up great walls of surf, earlier in
the day there had been a six foot wave on, this is still
considered fishable. The drogue in such circumstances becomes
downright dangerous. When you start talking about lough Mask with
its jagged limestone slabs thrusting up at you as you fall into
the trough of big wave, the thought of the drogue suddenly
snagging at this instant is the stuff of nightmares. So we've
painted a picture of how we're to fish. We'll be drifting along at
a rate dictated by the wind. We'll be fishing in a good wave with
plenty of broken water in it, what sort of fly do we need. Well
you can forget going deep. The boat is moving along at a rate of
knots and there's no chance even with a fast sinking line of
getting down more than a few feet. The boat is rapidly moving
towards where your fly landed, so you've got to start stripping at
almost the moment it hit the water just to stay in contact with
your team. The water you're fishing may be up to fifteen feet deep
on the midland loughs, so we're looking for something that will
make the fish think it's worth moving that distance to devour the
morsel on offer. This is in my limited experience is less so of
the Western loughs where the part of the lough that is actually
fished tends to be shallower than this. What is the answer to our
prayers? Well fortunately there are several, the mainstay however
is the bushy bob fly (usually a bumble). How do you describe such
a fly?. Well to Americans with their precise nymph and dry fly
imitations on small hooks, I usually say "half a chicken on a
shark hook". This is of course a ridiculous exaggeration, but
conveys to the uninitiated perhaps some of the effect we're going
to try and achieve. Irish top dropper flies often seem to be
massive in appearance when compared to the insect life actually
flying around, then you hold them up to the light and it suddenly
becomes an ephemeral object surrounded by a halo of light. The
good examples of flies like the bumbles have well picked seal's
fur and contrasting hackles wound down the shank that gives a
mixture of light and dark on the fly. Commercial claret bumbles,
for instance, are all too often seen with only a single drab
claret hackle along their length with a tightly packed body of
wool or some other cheap body material. This is done, of course,
in the interests of costs. The public in UK/Ireland expects flies
at only a fraction of the price paid by Angler's in the USA,
Italy, Finland etc. OK you've got a fly in your hand called a
"Claret Bumble", but in no way does it compare in visual effect to
a properly dressed fly. If I were buying flies, I'd rather pay the
little extra it costs for a decent proven fly than a pale
imitation of it. One of the most common faults I see in angling
magazines when talking of bumbles is the length of the hackle
fibre. All too often, the English version of the fly is tied with
far too short a hackle. The barb length, when measured from the
feathers shaft to the barb tip, should be at least as long and
preferably slightly longer than the hook length when measured from
the eye to the end of the bend. Such a feather when splayed looks
massive, but tie it on and palmer it and it looks right.
False hackles and head hackles. This is going to be a broad
generalisation, with many exceptions, but nevertheless is a trait
I do not see in English flies and is therefore worth a mention.
The Irish fly will quite often have a fully wrapped head hackle
where the original dressing may have dictated a beard or false
hackle. Furthermore the beard hackle, if one were to follow most
tying manuals, would reach the point of the hook. Not so the Irish
hackle. Here the hackle will reach the rear of the bend giving a
great flowing mass of life to a fly on a rolling wave. This, to my
eye, completely changes the appearance of the fly.
Colours - I know I'm going to get lots of disagreement here,
especially as a 'blow in', but I'll stick my size nine in my mouth
anyway. Firstly it is important to remember that the trout sees in
a different spectrum to we humans and therefore the colour we see
is certainly not what the trout sees. If we took two dyed hackles
from different capes of apparently the same colour, but dyed in
different dyes and asked the trout were they the same, the chances
are he'd say "no". This is simply because the different chemicals
used as dyes for the two hackles have different reflective
properties when moved out of the human visible spectrum. Therefore
being too pedantic about colour can be somewhat none productive.
However here are a few "secrets" of Irish colours.
Golden Olive - beauty is in the eye of the beholder on this one.
There are two different colours, both described as golden olive.
The first has a predominantly yellow base, with a dash of olive
added i.e. it is a yellow olive, this is what you will see all
over England sold as golden olive. The same colour also appears in
Ireland from dealers importing from English wholesalers. The
second version is variously described as "golden olive", "western
golden olive" or sometimes "Rogan's golden olive" (after Michael
Rogan of Ballyshannon) and is much the preferred colour in
Ireland. The big secret is there is absolutely no olive in it
whatsoever. It is in fact gold or burnt gold. I recall having a
conversation with Tom Schmuecker (head man at Wapsi). I had sent
various sample capes to him and asked him to copy the colours. I
had written the usual stuff of "well, hold it up to the light and
you can see a faint olive hue at the edge of the hackle". This you
can certainly convince yourself exists. Tom however, despite his
years obviously has better eyes than mine. "I've read your letter
ten times" he says "looked at the hackles as many times and I
still can't see the olive - it's gold". He then when on to accuse
me of seeing the fairies and drinking too much of the rocket fuel
available as bottles of "holy water" over here ( when you get
caught by the Gardai, the appropriate response is "Sure, 'tis a
miracle". Of course in the end I had to agree he was right - at
least about the colour. He further proved himself right by dying
some beautiful Chinese capes for me.
Claret. Again much argument to be had here. Lots of dressers ask
for a really dark claret (nearly black). Certainly this is the
preference for the shrimp flies. However, I go with many
professional fly dressers in Ireland and use a much lighter shade
of claret. The secret is it can't be produced from a claret dye.
The colour is actually more a maroon than a claret and the colour
is produced using scarlet and purple dyes in the correct
proportion. When dyed this way, although the hackle looks claret
in reflected light, it positively lights up with transmitted
light. The colour being almost a shade of magenta. When used to
produce a claret bumble and tied with a good black hackle, the fly
suddenly has life. I often use Grizzle dyed this shade to produce
a Claret Bumble with only one feather. The reason you don't see
the cheaper commercial flies doing the same thing is that good
Grizzly cannot be found in any sort of quantity on anything other
than genetic hackle. In fact I now produce nearly all my Irish wet
flies using genetic hackle.
Sooty Olive - I think almost a consensus could be reached on this.
Sooty Olive is simply as much dark olive dye as you can force into
the hackle and then it needs a smattering of brown. The American
equivalent of this would be sculpin olive, except sculpin olive is
not so dark.
Fiery Brown. Again it is likely that a consensus could be reached
on this. It is an orange brown. In my experience, the colour is
best judged by looking at the back of the feather rather than the
front. There should be a distinctive orange tinge to the feather
on the back, this is much less pronounced when looking at the
front. This actually tells you something about hackles which
should be noted when judging colours in future. The back of a
hackle, even a near white hackle is rarely the same colour as the
front and the dye absorption properties, or at least the resulting
apparent colour also appear to be different.
Fluorescence. As mentioned earlier, trout do not see in the same
visible spectrum as humans and veer towards the UV end of the
scale. What is noticeable from my point of view is the bright
vivid colours used by many good flydressers and anglers here.
Firstly the dye density used by many is high. By this I mean no
wishy washy colours but plenty of dye absorbed by the feather
giving a really strong colour. No washed out half hearted dyings.
The other aspect is changing from, say a yellow hackle to a
fluorescent yellow hackle can really liven a fly up. Certainly I
know of a few who claim this as the secret of many of their
patterns. Do not be afraid to try it. However we are not talking
garish lures here, merely the changing of one component of a fly
to brighten it up. The difference can be subtle to the human eye.
Black. Many black dyes do not dye black, they dye dark blue. Even
those that appear black, when viewed under a UV lamp are far from
Black. This is why many Irish professionals will use only natural
black. If you care to read that most readable of all fishing books
"A man May Fish" by the late Mr. Justice Kingsmill Moore, he, when
creating the Kingsmill found only one material that was black in
UV light and that was natural black Ostrich. So, I maintain, it is
with black hackle. For the purist only the natural will do.
Green Peter green. I have to mention this as the knowledge has
been gained through many an argument. Text books say "Pea Green
Seal's fur". I used to sell five different shades of wet Green
Peter. I eventually discovered that everyone has a different view
on what shade of green that should be and my five shades would not
satisfy everyone. In fact, I am firmly convinced, had I the
proverbial forty shades of green, I would still get some "expert"
telling me I didn't have the right colour. By how much the Peter
actually varies in colour from lough to lough, I wouldn't like to
say, but equally it is clear that there is some variation. What I
do know is the paler shades, tending towards the brightness of
insect green are the most popular (in pure selling terms). I sold
a dry peter with a really bright green body, and tied with a
grizzle hackle rather than a red game, that I know killed a lot of
fish, both on the Brosna river and on many a local lough, large
and small. I had several reports back that the fly considerably
outfished the more traditional dressing. So my answer as to "what
colour is Green Peter green?", is "take your pick".
Hook sizes. Here I am to some extent drawing conclusions based on
the volume of hooks and flies that I sell. Without any doubt
whatsoever size 10 is the most popular size for brown trout.
Second would come size 12s for when there is not such a good wave
and in third place would come that veritable shark hook of a size
eight. Very very rarely do I get asked for hooks larger than an
eight in a trout hook (actually the same is also true for Salmon
hooks). Demand for fourteens is there, but the three sizes
mentioned, I would say account, in percentage terms, in the high
nineties. I do get asked for variations in hook styles. The
standard wet fly hook which would be the most popular would be a
Hayabusa 761 or similar. This is a heavy wire sproat hook with the
weight to cut through a wave. If your not familiar with this hook,
a Kamasan B175 appears to be identical even down to micrometer
measurements. As an alternative to this, some would go for gape.
This means buying a larger size hook with a short shank. The
theory behind this is that the point is not as obstructed by
hackle on a palmered fly, such as a bumble, as the standard shank
hook. I wouldn't like to state a preference here. I'm not sure,
other than as a confidence measure in the fly, it makes any
difference at all. Lake trout are generally speaking not gentle
sipping creatures. You either get a good pull or the fly isn't
taken at all.
Perhaps surprisingly, in these times of cheap flies, there are
still a lot of professional and semi-professional fly dressers in
Ireland. I do not see these fly dressers as competition for my own
commercial operation, but rather I am happy to sell them materials
and encourage their efforts. Here however, I am going to pass
opinion that will please some and infuriate others. The best of
them are truly great fly dressers in the best traditions of Irish
fly dressing. The flies are the same time after time. The colours
and proportions are right, the same number of hackle turns is used
each time. They use real seal's fur, real bronze mallard (a lot of
Irish patterns specify its use) and Golden Pheasant tippet and
topping. The flies are also finished properly and won't come apart
at the first false cast. In short, quality materials are chosen
and put together with experience and care. Flies of this quality
tied in Ireland from the best fly dressers are likely to cost you
about a pound apiece and rightly so. Unfortunately there's the
other end of the scale in evidence also. Flies lashed together for
a cut price as bad as some of the cheap foreign flies I sometimes
see. Not only are all the materials poor quality substitutes, but
the hook is also suspect in such cases. I would run a mile from
such offerings. I even know of one company based here, thankfully
no longer trading, who were boxing up poor quality Kenyan flies (I
mean poor quality by Kenyan standards, there are some good flies
that come out of Kenya) they were getting from a big name English
tackle dealer and were putting the "Guaranteed Irish" symbol on
the box. I was given these flies as Irish flies and asked to
comment on them. When I said they looked like bad Kenyan flies
(everything sub, rubbish hook, wings tied on at strange angles) I
was told where their origin was. I then asked how was it they
could put the "GI"(guaranteed Irish) symbol on the box. The answer
was because they put the flies into the box and thus the product
was considered made in Ireland. This may have been legal, but I
would argue somewhat economical with the truth. So you know what
to expect. As in all walks of life there are the good guys and
there are graspers. If you find a good fly dresser and are
prepared to pay the little extra for a quality product, look after
him. The good ones usually have plenty of business and don't need
you giving them earache. Give them the time to produce the flies
for you. You cannot reasonably expect someone to drop everything
to lash you up a dozen peters because you forgot to order them and
you are going fishing tomorrow. Many of them will, but it gains
you an entry into the black book and will be noted for next time. |
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