Red Fox Squirrel Nymph

This dressing is an unweighted composite of primarily early directions for dressing the fly with a few of the later modifications, and in keeping with the standard for hook size and representation on the blog, it uses a size 14 dry fly hook rather than the nymph hook Whitlock prescribes. It largely follows Dave Whitlock’s “Standard Red Fox Squirrel-Hair Nymph” recipe from the June 1984 issue of Fly Fisherman magazine, using natural, prepackaged belly fibers for the abdomen and unblended back fur taken from a road-kill fox squirrel as the thorax. It adds the hackling and tailing that Whitlock suggests in the book chapter on nymphing. 

Hook:		6-16
Thread:		Burnt orange
Tail:		Red fox squirrel back fur (optional)
Rib:		Gold twist
Abdomen:		Red fox squirrel underbelly fur
Thorax:		Red fox squirrel back fur (dubbed slender)
Hackle:		Dark speckled brown hen hackle
		Including the Red Fox Squirrel Nymph as soft hackle might be criticized as taking too much liberty with the blog definition of the style, as in the case of the northeastern Breadcrust, the ubiquitous Greenwell’s Glory, or the Tup’s Nymph (or most other patterns dressed by G. E. M. Skues). Nevertheless, it an impressionistic pattern and lends itself to dressing in many familiar styles. Pinpointing the inception of one of Dave Whitlock’s most iconic flies is a task likely best left to Whitlock himself. Since tracking down every reference to the fly would be even harder, a sample of Whitlock’s own words on the pattern must suffice. An early publication that includes the Red Fox Squirrel Nymph was The Masters on the Nymph (1979), to which Whitlock contributed a chapter 7, “Nymphing Tackle.” The first of the four “favorite nymph patterns” he includes is the Red Fox Squirrel Nymph,” which he describes as his “favorite all-purpose nymph, as versatile and effective for a nymph as the Adams is for a dry fly. It works as well where mayflies, stone flies, caddis pupae, and scuds of similar colors exist, and where there are no nymphs. Hook:   Mustad 9671, sizes 4-18 Body weight:   6 to 10 wraps of lead wire at thorax Thread:   Black Tail:   Sparse tuft of red-fox squirrel back hair, including both guard and underfur ½ length of hook shank Rib:   Small oval tinsel Abdomen: Red-fox squirrel belly fur Thorax:  Red-fox squirrel back fur (with guard and underfur included) Wing case:   Dark-brown swiss straw or turkey tail Legs:   Either guard hairs of red-fox squirrel back or one turn of dark partridge hackle” He also cited it as the nymph he used in his nymphing system in a pair of articles in Fly Fisherman magazine from 1983, but did not give it an explicit treatment of the fly itself until a June 1984 article entitled “Red Fox-Squirrel-Hair Nymph.”  In this article, he describes how to trim a red squirrel hide to preserve the scarce belly fur—split the skin down the back when dressing the body—and how to sort the fur into like colors. (He also notes that a shaved, tanned red fox squirrel skin can repurposed into buckskin nymphs. Very little of the animal goes to waste for the savvy, creative fly tier.)  More importantly, he discusses the reasons for the fly’s success. Rather than clinging to a narrow representational niche, the Red Fox Squirrel Nymph aims for impressionistic representation and is, as a result, characteristically versatile. By adjusting the length and thickness of the abdomen, and thorax, as well as the sparseness and length of the hackle, the Red Fox Squirrel Nymph could give the impression of a broad array of insects. In this article, he gives a dressing for “Dave Whitlock’s Standard Red Fox Squirrel-Hair Nymph” that looks much more like a soft hackle: “HOOK:  Mustad 9671 or Tiemco Nymph Hook, #2 to #18. THREAD: Black or dark brown nylon. CEMENT: Dave’s Flexament. WEIGHT: Lead or copper wire. ABDOMEN: Belly fur from red fox squirrel skin, may be blended with synthetic sparkle dubbing. Abdomen should be ½ to 2/3 of the overall body length. THORAX: Back fur from red fox squirrel skin, may be blended with synthetic sparkle dubbing. Thorax should be ½ to 1/3 of the overall body length. RIB Gold wire or oval tinsel.” In his Guide to Aquatic Trout Foods (1982), Whitlock’s fly boxes illustrate this versatility: it shows up, for instance, in his “Box No. 1: General Utility Box” at the head of the list in sizes 6-16, as well as “Box No. 4: Terrestrials and Summer Midges” in sizes 16 and 18. Whitlock’s prolific writing has continued to describe the efficacy of the Red Fox Squirrel Nymph. He contributed a short article on the pattern in the September/October 2010 issue of Eastern Fly Fishing that reflects many of the modern, commercial interventions in fly dressing that have risen alongside media popularization of the sport, especially in print but also in film. This version updates the materials that Whitlock originally posted for the do-it-yourself fly tier of the late seventies and early eighties. In their blend of synthetic and natural fibers, these newer, branded materials regularize the color and consistency of the abdomen, thorax, and hackling, and they incorporate colors and sparkle that are more likely to attract a trout’s attention, particularly in off-color water. Both the original and contemporary versions have a place in the angler’s fly box. This Red Fox Squirrel Nymph uses: “Hook: TMC 5262, size 2-20 Thread: Orange Wapsi Ultra Thread 70 Weight: Lead Wire the diameter of the hook wire Cements: Zap-a-Gap and Dave’s Flexament Tail: Back hair of red fox squirrel Rib: Small or medium gold oval tinsel Abdomen: 50-50 blend of red fox squirrel belly hair and similar colors of Antron and SLF or No. 2 (red fox squirrel abdomen) Wapsi Dave Whitlock Plus SLF dubbing blend Thorax: 50-50 blend of red fox squirrel back hair blended and hare’s ear Antron and SLF or No. 1 (red fox squirrel thorax) Wapsi Dave Whitlock Plus SLF dubbing blend Legs: Dark ginger Metz hen back feather for hook sizes 2-12; for smaller hooks, pick out the dubbing guard hairs for legs Head: Orange thread or gold bead.”

Blue Dun Hackle

Hook:		12-18
Thread:		Primrose
Rib:		Small gold tinsel
Body:		Mole fur with a little of the silk exposed at the tail
Hackle:		Gray hen hackle
		While it might have been intended as a separate dressing for an olive mayfly like the Blue Dun, James Leisenring includes the Blue Dun Hackle separately from the Old Blue Dun in his Art of Tying the Wet Fly & Fishing the Flymph (1941). He dressed is with “HOOK  12, 13, 14. SILK  Primrose yellow. HACKLE  Light-blue-dun hen hackle of good quality. TAIL Two or three blue-dun fibers optional. RIB  Very narrow flat gold tinsel. BODY  Mole fur spun on primrose-yellow silk, a little of the silk exposed at the tail.” Dave Hughes gives a dressing for similar fly, the Blue Dun Wingless, in his Wet Flies (1995 and 2015) and the updated second edition, which he configures like his Hare’s Ear Flymph, in the flymph style  he takes from Leisenring and James Hidy. He dresses the Blue Dun Wingless with: “Hook: 1x fine or 2x stout, size 12-18. Thread: Yellow Pearsall’s Gossamer silk or 6/0 or 8/0 nylon. Hackle: Medium blue dun hen. Tails: Medium blue dun hen hackle fibers. Rib: Narrow Mylar tinsel, silver. Body: Muskrat belly fur.”

This dressing used yellow thread and a found heron’s herl primary that the dressing prescribes as a body variation. It also leaves off the wings in favor of a hackled dressing comparable to Leisenring’s.

Leisenring’s dressing seems to be based on the Blue Dun that G. E. M. Skues includes in Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream (1910). Skues’s Blue Dun is dressed with: “Wings: Snipe Body: Water-rat on primrose or yellow tying silk. Vary body by dressing with undyed heron’s herl from the wing, and ribbing with find gold or medium silver wire. Legs: Medium blue hen.” Exclusive of the ever-popular peacock herl, herl-bodied dressings are rather rare in soft hackle literature, although they are common in Skues’ own nymphal dressings. Traditional soft hackles tend to opt for simple silk-bodied or dubbed fur dressings. Notable exceptions include Leisenring’s Black Gnat (dressed without the optional wings), the Old Master and Little Black that T. E. Pritt includes in North-Country Flies (1886), and especially Sylvester Nemes’ Pheasant Tail from his Soft-Hackled Fly (1975).

Carrot Fly; Carrot and Black Nymph; or, Carrot Nymph

This dressing substitutes yellow-green dyed quail undercovert for the green parrot Skues prescribed for the tail and yellow-green dyed covert in place of the poultry hackle.

Hook:		12-14
Thread:		Primrose
Tail:		Olive dyed quail covert fibers
Body:		Rear 1/3—pale yellow wool; Middle 1/3—hot orange wool; Front 1/3—green seal fur
Hackle:		Olive dyed quail covert
		G. E. M. Skues introduced anglers to the Carrot Fly in the journal of the London Flyfisher’s Club in 1912 as proof of “what asses trout are.”  In 1975 winter issue of Fly Fisherman magazine, T. Donald Overfield notes that the response to the fly was mixed. Some anglers questioned whether Skues was having a laugh; others, “perhaps shamefacedly, cast it to the trout, with surprising results.” Overfield notes that the “tying is not difficult,” but advises fly tiers to “aim for a steeply tapered body, as shown in the ‘natural,’” a carrot: “The silk is waxed primrose (1). Tie in two strands of green parrot feather-fiber, or its equivalent, (2) and return the silk up the hook three turns. Tie in a length of pale yellow wool (3), bringing the silk forward to one-third the length of the body. Wind the wool forward and secure (4). Tie in a length of hot-orange wool (5) and take the silk up the hook for another third. Wind the wool up to the silk and secure, (7). Now tie in a length of greenish seal’s fur dubbing (8), and a short, fibred hackle dyed olive-green (9). Wind the dubbing and secure. Take a few turns of the hackle round the hook shank and secure with a whip-finish (10).” Jay Zimmerman traces the history of the Carrot Fly in The Best Carp Flies: How to Tie and Fish Them (2015). He credits Skues with developing the first, but notes that Skues only casually mentions his Carrot Fly in the The Way of a Trout with a Fly (1921), where he called it "the famous Carrot fly." (Presumably, Skues deferred to this short-hand reference because of the fly's popularity following its introduction in the journal of the London Flyfisher's Club nine years earlier.)  For whatever reason, American fly tiers have exhibited a strong inclination to imitate garden produce in the pursuit freshwater species. Zimmerman notes that "Reuben Cross from Neversink, New York, introduced a nymph in his book Tying American Trout Lures (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1936) he called the Carrot and Black" fifteen years after Skues' Way of the Trout with a Fly (and twenty-four years after Skues' club journal article). Zimmerman cites Cross's directions: "'The Carrot and Black is tied with brown hackle tail, carrot-colored body with black Chenille shoulder and dun hackle wound on the same as with a wet fly. After you have finished off with the tying silk take your scissors and clip out the top and bottom whisks, leaving the side legs." Later a similar dressing, the Carrot Nymph as Elsie Darbee tied and named it, showed up in A. J. McClane's classic McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia (Holt, Rinehart And Winston, 1965).   Zimmerman also suggests that Randall Kaufmann further confused the dressing in American Nymph Fly Tying Manual (1975) by calling it the Carrot Fly and giving it a dubious lineage. Kaufmann noted that the an "old standby for years in the east" and, incorrectly, only recently in the west, and his dressing emphasized "halloween colors" untrue to Cross's American original that "account for many fat rainbows and brookies from pond and stream alike" More confusing was that Kaufmann's explanation of the dressing "is a slight variation from the original," presumably Cross's. His fly uses black hackle for the tail and unclipped front hackle, and orange tying thread with a black chenille thorax for the body.

Blue Dun

This dressing substitutes pale yellow seal's fur for the pale "wool, mohair, or fine dyed pig's wool" that John Younger prescribes and uses starling undercovert.

Hook:		12-16
Thread:		Yellow
Body:		Blue rabbit underfur and pale yellow seal's fur
Hackle:		Starling undercovert
		W. H. Lawrie’s Scottish Trout Flies (1966) reproduces lists of flies like John Younger’s list for fishing the Tweed. Of the six flies Younger dressed, the unnamed fly for April and May. His fly, undoubtedly a Blue Dun, is dressed with “Wing: Transparent feather from the wing of the bunting or that of a full grown cock sparrow. Body: Blue water-rat fur mixed with equal proportion pale yellow, inclining to white, wool, mohair or fine dyed pig’s wool.” Younger includes one additional dressing for April and May with the same body, but hackled with a body feather from a grouse. G. E. M. Skues suggested that Younger’s dressing imitated a “small darkish Watery” that hatched from “May throughout the season,” No. VII on his list of flies for representing the Medium Olive. He adapted Younger’s pattern thus: “Hook.—No. 16 down-eyed Pennel sneck. Tying Silk.—Bright yellow, waxed with clear colourless wax. Hackle.—Dark-blue hen short—not more than two turns. Whisks.—Two strands of darkish blue unspeckled feather from neck of cock guinea fowl- short. Body.—Thinly laid dubbing of mole’s fur mixed with yellow seal’s fur.” Skues also suggested that “the body may be varied by using English squirrel blue fur instead of mole.” Roger Woolley notes in the last edition of his Modern Fly Dressing (1950) that the olive fly is the usually known as the Early Olive Dun. He introduces his dressings by noting that, “although entomologies tell us there is no such fly in nature as the Blue Dun, anglers always have had and will have their Blue Dun. It is an imitation of the large, early spring Olive Dun, a fly appearing in early spring, the first of the Ephemeridæ family to show on our streams.” A proliferation of olive dun colored bodies matched with dun hackles, however, makes pinpointing which are intended to match Woolley’s mythological Blue Dun a challenge. The Waterhen Blae, for instance, might equally serve the purpose. To limit the scope of these possibilities, soft hackled Blue Dun patterns here will to create an olive shade that the yellow silk underbody accents, either by mixing yellow and blue or by overwrapping the main body with a yellow or olive rib. John Waller Hills traces the development of the Blue Dun in A History of Fly Fishing for Trout (1921) from Dame Juliana Berners and her A treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle (1496) to the twentieth century: “The progress of this fly is of extraordinary interest. It starts with a black wool body, dark mallard wings and possibly a jay's blue feather as hackle. This dressing is too dark altogether in body and wing. Cotton lightens both, and gives a fairly good fly, and Chetham a still better one. His Blue Dun has no hackle it is true, but its rough body of fox fur could easily be picked out, and except for this it is almost as it now exists. But there were one or two improvements, the snipe wing, which I think is better than the starling for the sunk fly, and mole's fur body. So we get the fly of to-day.” Hills suggests that flies like the Old Blue Dun are variations of the Blue Dun, utilizing a rib in place of blended blue and yellow body. The effect either way, he implies, simulates the olive hue that is characteristic of the Olive Dun. In their Art of Angling (1757, 1774), both Richard and Charles Bowlker include dressings for the Blue Dun that includes bodies “made of a blue fur of a fox, or the blue part of a squirrel’s furr, mixed with a little yellow mohair.” Many dressings of the Blue Dun, like those of the Bowlkers, are winged. John Kirkbride includes, as he often does, dressings for winged flies and for hackles: “when dressed as a hackle-fly, a fine feather from the underside of the wing of the jack-snipe, or moor-pout, answers very well for the hackle.  The body must be the same as described above”—“from the light blue fur of the rabbit, or the grey squirrel, mixed with a very little yellow mohair.” The “moor-pout” is a Scottish term for a young grouse.

This dressing of Vernon S. Hidy’s Blue Dun uses primrose Pearsall’s gossamer silk for the tying silk and light olive Pearsall’s gossamer silk for the rib.

While many historical soft hackle patterns use a blue fur body mixed with yellow to create an olive effect, others are dubbed on dubbed on primrose or yellow thread and include a rib. James Leisenring’s angling companion, Vernon S. Hidy, included such a dressing for the Blue Dun in Chapter 10 “Soft-hackle Nymphs—the Flymphs” of The Master’s on the Nymph (1979): “Sizes 12, 14, 16; muskrat fur on primrose silk; olive-yellow thread ribbing; two turns of blue dun hen hackle.” The Old Blue Dun that Leisenring includes in The Art of Tying the Wet Fly & Dressing the Flymph (1941) seems dressed to achieve the same effect.

Hare's Ear Flymph; Hare's Ear

This dressing winds the hackle forward from a point a third of the way down the shank from the eye and ties it off behind the eye. it also substitutes red badger for true, black stemmed and tipped furnace. And in keeping with the established standard for hook size and representation on the blog, this dressing uses a size 14 dry fly hook rather than the nymph hook Hughes prescribes.

Hook:		12-16
Thread:		Red Pearsall’s gossamer silk
Tail: Rib:		Red badger Narrow gold tinsel
Body:		Medium dark hare’s ear
Hackle:		Red badger
		Even before the advent of the barrel-bodied, highly effective versions of the Hare's Ear that gained popularity in the 70s and 80s and the gold-bead-headed variety that showed up in the 90s, the Hare’s Ear nymph was long a staple of the modern fly box, just as the the winged wet Hare's Ear had earlier been a stock pattern for southern chalkstream anglers and their North Country counterparts in England. In his Wet Flies (1995) - a new, updated edition is available - Dave Hughes nodded to American wet fly traditions established by James Leisenring  and Vernon “Pete” Hidy in the first half of the twentieth century, which drew on the nymphal dressings developed by G. E. M. Skues. Leisenring and Hidy tied wet flies that Hidy would term "flymphs." While Leisenring readily lumped flymphs among traditional North Country Patterns (like his Light Snipe and Yellow), classic winged wets and Stewart's spiders, Hughes explicitly distinguishes the flymph from the soft-hackled fly by virtue of the spiky body and hackle.  Drawing on Leisenring and Hidy, Hughes explains that the hackle of a flymph “should not dominate the body of the fly. In a well-tied flymph, the body and hackle entrap bubbles of air and take them beneath the surface. A properly tied body shows the primary color of any insect that is around when fish are feeding, plus some slight undercolor that shows through when the fly is wet in the water. The primary color comes from the dubbing fur selected. The undercolor comes from the silk on which the fur is spun. The two colors should harmonize with each other. They should also be in harmony with whatever insect is available to fish the time you’re using the fly.” Hughes' description certainly distinguishes the Hare's Ear Flymph from traditional soft-hackle dressings like the Grouse and Green or Orange Partridge, but the uniqueness of its thoracic hackling and the important role the plays in creating the overall effect of life qualifies it for inclusion here, much like the thoracic hackling of nymphs and hatching duns qualified W. H. Lawrie's Book of the Rough Stream Nymph (1947) for inclusion in Sylvester Nemes's Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies (2003). However contentious this point of definition may be, Hughes' Hare's Ear Flymph (and his flymph in general) is  a pattern somewhere between a soft hackle and a winged wet or between a soft hackle and nymph tied in the round, like the nymphal patterns that Charles Brooks advanced in his Nymph Fishing for Larger Trout (1976). Hughes dresses his flymph with a tail and a full body dubbed on silk from the bend to eye of the hook and a rib wrapped over that to the thorax. He ties a hackle in behind the eye, dubs the thorax, and winds the hackle from the eye of the hook back toward the bend, tying it off in the front third or fourth of the body. He finishes by winding the silk back through the hackle toward the eye of the hook (a technique he recommends for dressing and strengthening Stewart's spiders) and then whip finishing the silk behind the eye of the hook. “Hook: 12-16. Thread: Pearsall’s Gossamer silk, crimson red. Hackle: Brown or furnace hen. Tails: Brown or furnace hen hackle. Rib: narrow gold tinsel. Body: Hare’s mask fur, or #7 Hare’s Ear Plus, tan.” Prior to modern Hare's Ear nymphs and Hughes' Hare's Ear Flymph, the classic, winged Hare’s Ear that Leisenring includes in The Art of Tying the Wet Fly and Fishing the Flymph (1941), which shows the influence of the Hare’s Ear wet fly that G. E. M. Skues included in Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream (1910), was the predominant dressing of the Hare's Ear.  While hare's ear often appears as the body material in North Country and Scottish patterns, it rarely shows up exclusively as a soft hackle  In the Practical Angler (1857), for instance, W. C. Stewart described the importance of “hare’s lug,” a Scottish denomination for hare’s ear fur, in dressing Border patterns, particularly for dressing his winged wet fly, the Hare-lug, which he fished alongside his famous, wingless spiders. Stewart draws distinctions like Hughes' for considering the silk in conjunction with the body to create a specific representational effect. He does prescribe specific wings for his three Hare-lug dressings, but the body remains consistent throughout. The variations in each of Stewart's dressings recalls the Art of Angling (1843), where William Blacker lists similar dressings for the Hare’s Ear, identical in its versatility and the suggestion that any hackle or winging coupled with a hare’s ear body will fish: “Body, Hare’s ear fur, and a little yellow mohair, mixed. Wings, Starling, bunting, or woodcock.”

This dressing substitutes a mourning dove covert for the snipe undercovert John Kirkbride prescribes, and it uses tan thread. Also, it has"a tip of gold" for "when the water is brownish."

One of the few references to a Hare’s Ear dressed as a soft hackle or "spider" is in John Kirkbride’s Northern Angler (1837). Kirkbride gives dressings for two varieties of Hare’s Ear, one dressed with a dark fur body and the other dressed with a mixture of fur and yellow mohair; each body can be alternately winged or hackled, the wings and hackles being substituted for soft hackles. These are hardly the modern Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear or even Hare’s Ear Flymph. Kirkbride dressed the soft-hackled, dark-bodied  Hare’s Ear with a “fine hackle from the inside of the wing of a jack-snipe” and suggested that the fly tier “add a tip of gold when the water is brownish.” Kirkbride regards the Hare’s Ear as “an excellent spring fly; indeed, it will kill during the whole season.”

Gordon Hackle

This dressing combines attributes from two flies that Theodore Gordon described without naming. It uses rabbit underfur to match Theodore Gordon's use of dubbing that is "mouse colored," though much less "light bluish dun," particularly on dark brown thread. The dressing also pairs the mouse color of the underfur with the silver twist of the other dressing.

Hook:		16-18
Thread:		Dark brown
Rib:		Fine silver oval French tinsel
Abdomen:		Blue rabbit underfur
Hackle:		Brown, mottled partridge hackle
		Sylvester Nemes reprints selections from the letters of Theodore Gordon germane to his study of historical soft hackles in Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies (2004). Gordon mentions two, though he gives neither a name. In a letter to G. E. M. Skues dated February 18, 1909, Gordon relayed some of his experiences with soft hackles: “I have tried the hackles of small birds and from grouse, woodcock, snipe, etc., but rarely with much success. A brown, mottled partridge hackle on a light bluish dun body, ribbed with fine silver twist was quite killing.” Similarly, in a letter to Skues written on March 10, 1912, Gordon recalled “a very small fly with mouse colored body and gray partridge hackle that killed well on slow streams, fished wet.” (This dressing has much in common with Dame Juliana Berner's Donne Flye.)

Pale Watery Dun or Nymph

G. E. M. Skues' short-hackled nymph pushes the soft-hackle definition established by the first Soft Hackles, Tight Lines blog post, since the emphasis is less on the hackle than its incorporation into the fly. To distinguish it as a short-hackled nymph at all directs the attention to representational importance of the hackle, however different its function might be from longer hackled soft hackles, whether they use poultry or game bird feathers. 

Hook:		14-18
Thread:		Pale primrose
Tail:		Blue dun
Rib:		Silver wire
Abdomen:		Tan hare's ear plus
Thorax:		Dark hare’s ear plus
Hackle:		Pale ginger, one turn tied short
		G. E. M. Skues gives multiple dressings for Pale Watery Nymphs or duns in various books. In Minor Tactics of the Calk Stream (1910), Skues includes one dressing for a winged Watery Nymph; in Nymph Fishing for Chalk Stream Trout (1939), six short-hackled dressings. This dressing, Pale Watery XVII, is listed in the latter. “Hook.—No. 16. Tying Silk.—Cream, waxed with colourless wax. Hackle.—Palest ginger hen—one turn—short. Whisk.—Two strands of palest creamy neck feather of cock grinea-fowl—short. Rib.—Fine silver wire. Body.—Abdomen: Pale rabbit’s Poll. Thorax: Hare’s poll, or, for a variation, English squirrel’s blue   fur.” Skues notes that he has seen the Pale Watery Dun “from mid-April to the end of the season and later. I have seen them hatching in bitter weather when fishing for grayling in December.”

James Leisenring includes two dressings for the Pale Watery Nymph in his Art of Tying the Wet Fly and Fishing the Flymph (1941). He assigns the following dressing for the second: “HOOK  15,16 SILK  White, waxed with colorless wax. HACKLE  One turn of a very short honey dun cock hackle. TAIL  Three strands of very short, soft-blue-dun cock fibers. RIB  None. BODY  Undyed seal fur or pale buff Australian opossum fur dubbed lightly at the tail and thicker at the thorax.”

This dressing of (2) below substitutes mourning dove undercoverts for sea swallow hackling and tailing, and it uses naturally yellow raw Gulf Coast Wool.

Roger Woolley included a pair of simple soft hackle dressings for the Pale Watery Dun among a list of twelve nymphal, soft hackled, winged, wet, and dry fly dressings for the Pale Watery Dun in Modern Trout Fly Dressing (1932): “(1) Body.—Pale ginger fur. Hackle and Whisks.—Palest blue dun hen. (2) Body.—Pale watery yellow lamb’s wool. Hackle and Whisks.—Palest blue dun hen. Or a small feather from the outside of a sea-swallow’s wing.” Woolley's second dressing, minus the tail, bears a strong resemblance to the Blae Hen and Yellow. He notes that the Pale Watery Dun “appears on our streams from May onwards throughout the season, but is most prevalent in August and September. Under suitable conditions it hatches out in great quantities, and is a prime favourite with trout, and especially grayling. It is about the same size as the Iron Blue Dun. This fly and the Blue Winged olives with their spinners are mostly the cause of the made late evening rise of fish.”

Blue-Winged Olive (XVIII); or the Bright Brown

This dressing makes substitutions based on color for the tail, body, and hackle. While it would be more properly dressed in smaller sizes, it is shown here on the size 14 dry fly hook standard for the blog.

Hook:		16-20
Thread:		Orange
Tail:		Three strands of dark dun dove hackle tied short
Body:		Rust sculpin wool and maple plastic canvas yarn
Hackle:		Dove primary
		In Nymph Fishing for Chalk StreamTrout (1939), G. E. M. Skues lists various dressings for the Blue-Winged Olive. For fishing at nighttime, he preferred: “Hook.—No. 1 or 2 down-eyed round bend. Tying Silk.—Hot orange. Hackle.—Dark but definitely blue hen—as woolly in the fibre as can be had—two turns. Whisk.—Three strands of dark hen hackle—short. Body.—Cow-hair the colour of dried blood, dressed fat—the nymph itself being fat and not taper like the other dun nymphs.” Given the distinctions he draws among ten different styles for dressing nymphal flies at the outset of The Way of a Trout with a Fly (1921), G. E. M. Skues would likely balk at having one of his short hackled nymphs grouped among soft hackles. Nevertheless, its hackling, though short, is dressed in the round with soft hackle.  Charles Cotton's winged Bright Brown, from part 2 of the Compleat Angler (1676), might also be dressed as a soft hackle. The coloration achieved by the materials in Skues’s dressing is quite similar overall to the second dressing that Charles Cotton lists in his additions to the Compleat Angler (1676): “2. Also a bright brown, the dubbing either of the brown of a Spaniel, or that of a Cows flanck, with a Grayling.” James Chetham corrects what must be a typographical error in Cotton, “with a Grayling,” to “with a Grey Wing” in his Angler's Vade Mecum (1681).