Cumberland; or, Crimson Partridge

Hook:		12-18
Thread:		Red Pearsall’s gossamer silk
Body:		Tying silk
Hackle:		Medium partridge
		In his treatment of Hills’s A Summer on the Test (1924) in Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies (2004), Nemes cites Hills’s passing comment on the pattern: “One of the softest, most compressible, patterns is the partridge hackle, and, whether this be the reason or not, I consider it the best sunk fly on the Test. Its body, of silk, can be of many colours. I find the old Cumberland pattern, the orange partridge, best, and next to that the red.” By Nemes's account, anglers  on the Test seemingly drew little distinction between the red and orange bodies, although the Partridge and Orange has endured as a more distinct, popular fly for generations of anglers. In The Soft-Hackled Fly Addict (1981), Sylvester Nemes names the Cumberland, a fly which John Waller Hills seemingly only mentions in passing. Nemes notes that “Hills believed this fly to be the most effective sunk fly on the Test, particularly on hot days and in slow water,” and he provides this dressing for Hills’s fly: Body: Red or orange silk floss Hackle: Medium partridge Rib: Narrow gold wire Dressed with a rib, the Cumberland becomes the Orange Partridge that Harfield Norman and Edmond Lee list in their Brook and River Trouting (1916). In his River Keeper (1934), which Nemes also notes, Hills recalls a similar, ribbed pattern favored by the riverkeeper William Lunn, the Red Partridge Hackle. In list of his thirty North Country flies, included at the head of Fly Fishing: The North Country Tradition (1994), Leslie Magee attributes the dressing, the Crimson Partridge, to an unnamed 1887 publication by James Blades. Robert L. Smith includes the Crimson Partridge, one of James Blades’ patterns “taken from T K Wilson’s angling articles in the Dalesman magazine of 1949,” in an appendix at the end of his The North Country Fly: Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition (2015). He additionally notes that the Crimson Partridge is a “splendid fly in a full brown water from the beginning of the season to the end.” Many of the manuscript and publications that Smith includes list the fly less as a dressing for hot days and slow water, like Hills, and more of a dressing for discolored water.

Brown Watchet; Orange Brown

This dressing substitutes hen hackle for partridge back.

Hook:		12-18
Thread:		Orange
Body:		Orange Pearsall’s gossamer silk
Hackle:		Speckled hen; here, Whiting Brahma hen hackle
Head:		Peacock herl
		This In his North-Country Flies (1886), T. E. Pritt lists his No. 31 Brown Watchet or Little Brown Dun alongside the more famous, quintessential Orange Partridge, No. 32, noting that they are almost identical and that he prefers the simpler dressing, No. 32, without the peacock head. He dressed the Brown Watchett or Little Brown Dun with “WINGS.-Hackled with a well dappled feather from a Partridge’s back. BODY.-Orange silk. HEAD.-Peacock herl.” Pritt notes that “the angler may look upon one of them as indispensable on his cast from April to September, on warm days.” While he recommends them to match a mayfly, Norman Edwards and Harfield Lee note in their Brook and River Trouting (1916) that their No. 6, essentially the same as Pritt's No. 31 and 32, can be fished to imitate both a mayfly and a stonefly, the Red Brown.

This Brown Watchet substitutes quail covert for wren tail hackling and uses orange Pearsall's marabou silk for the body.

John Turton's Brown Watchet “by some anglers called the Orange Brown,” No. 3 in his Angler's Manual (1836), is almost identical to Pritt's No. 31, with the exception of the hackle. Turton claims the Brown Watchet “kills all year” and dressed it with “light orange silk; wing, a wren's tail feather; body, bright light orange silk; head, green peacock's feather. In dark water, with a little green peacock feather under the wing.” Rather than substitute a red grouse neck hackle for wren’s tail, this dressing follows the hackling equivalent that James Blades listed for his Wren Tail in a list Robert L. Smith appended to his North Country Fly: Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition (2015), available from Coch-y-Bonddu Books: Blades' dressing equates the hackle “from the outside of a quail wing” with hackling from a “wren tail.” Turton points out that “this is so noted a fly to kill with, that anglers, asked what the fish are taking, frequently say – ‘Wren Tail and Orange for ever!’” Interestingly, Turton also noted that “a little brown bear's down is used at the spring of the year, twisted round the silk.” This dressing, orange silk with reddish brown fur, recalls the Winter Brown that Roger Woolley dressed to include early stoneflies and included in the third edition of his Modern Fly Dressing (1950).

Little Red Partridge Hackle; or Crimson Partridge

Thread:		Red Pearsall’s Gossamer Silk
Tail:		Pale mourning dove breast
Rib:		Fine gold wire
Abdomen:		Red Pearsall’s Gossamer Silk
Hackle:		Brown partridge from the back, tied so that the fibers extend just beyond the hook
		In The River Keeper, which Sylvester Nemes excerpted in Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies, John Waller Hills gives a biographical account of William James Lunn, who dressed the fly this way: “Hackle: Feather from the back of a partridge, with fibres a little longer than the hook. Tail: Pale buff. Body: Red tying thread, ribbed with plain gold wire. Tying thread: Red.” Among the thirty favorite patterns he depicts on color plates at the front of Fly Fishing: The North Country Tradition (1994), Leslie Magee included No. 25, the Crimson Partridge, which he attributes to, presumably, a manuscript dating from 1887 and written by James Sproats Blades of Cotterdale, Yorkshire. The dressing is the same as Lunn's, excluding the tail and the wire rib. “Wings and legs Hackled with partridge back feather. Body Crimson silk.”