Thornfly Dun; Landrail Dun; Dark and Light Sedge; or, Silverhorns

This dressing substitutes American woodcock undercovert for landrail undercovert. It is dressed more heavily to align it with William Blacker's Red Palmer Fly, which T. E. Pritt lists as a precedent. It finishes the fly in front of the head rather than behind it. 

Hook:		14-18
Thread:		Orange
Body:		Orange silk
Hackle:		American woodcock undercovert
Head:		Peacock herl
		Two distinct strains of dressing the Thornfly Dun seem to exist. Drawing the connection between these two pattern groups makes two assumptions: first, that the name Thornfly (in whatever form) corresponding with a hatching period beginning in late May or early June correlates different representations; second, that these dressings are, as the name dun often seems to distinguish, caddis or sedge flies. The more popular dressings exhibit a general orange-red cast in the bodies, hackles, and heads. They have much in common with the Light Dun that Michael Theakston describes in his List of Natural Flies (1843). However, many of the dressings also emphasize a darker overall color, with purplish black bodies and darker dun-colored hackles. Dressings for this June hatch have more in common with the Silverhorns sedge that Alfred Ronalds lists for June fishing in The Fly-fisher’s Entomology (1837).  In the former category is the Thornfly Dun, no. 49, that T. E. Pritt includes in Yorkshire Trout Flies (1885) and its 1886 reworking, North-Country Flies: “Wings.—Hackled with a Landrail’s feather, taken from under the wing. Body.—Orange silk. Head.—Peacock herl.” Pritt notes that the Thornfly Dun is “a very excellent fly in a good bold brown water on warm days in summer, from June onwards. It is a variation of No. 5 [the Brown Owl], and equally useful. Dressed with a redder feather it is the same fly as that known as Blacker’s Red.” After Pritt, Harfield Edmonds and Norman Lee seem to offer two variations on the Thornfly Dun for June sedge dressings. They recommend, like Pritt, their Dark and Light Sedges for fishing from the “middle of June to the end of the season.” Despite the reference to Blacker, Pritt’s Thornfly Dun seems more aligned to manuscript dressings like Large Thorn Fly Dun recorded by Jonathan Pickard in 1820 and printed by Robert L. Smith in The North Country Fly: Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition (2015): “Orange silk, peacock harl in the head feather from the inside of a landrail’s wing.” Smith also prints another 1820 list by William Robinson with an almost identical dressing for the Thorn Dun Larger or Landrail Dun.

This dressing uses gold Pearsall’s gossamer silk, substitutes a mixture of ginger antron and orange acrylic for orange mohair, and applies gold twist rather than tinsel.

Pritt’s attribution to Blacker’s Red is presumably to the Red Palmer Fly that William Blacker includes in his Art of Angling (1843). The color scheme falls into the tawny category, essentially the same as Pritt’s Thornfly Dun, except that Blacker's fly is dressed as a palmer: “Hook ff.—Body, Red or orange mohair, with gold twist or tinsel up the body. Legs, Two red hackles, wound on from the tail up to the head, in rotation with the tinsel.” Blacker’s Red Palmer is the same as the Red Palmer that John Kirkbride includes in his Northern Angler (1837), except that Kirkbride recommends occasionally using gold wire as a rib.

This dress of James Chetham's Thorn-Fly dresses a winged fly into a soft hackle, using dove covert for the light gray mallard's wing.  It uses a mixture of black antron and raw Black Welsh Mountain wool for lamb’s wool.

In the latter, darker category of Thornfly dressings is James Chetham’s Thorn-Fly. In his Angler’s Vade Mecum (1681), Cheatham includes “Another Catalogue, of Flies, practiced by a very good angler,” in addition to the list he reprints from The Complete Angler (1657, 1676), that includes the Thorn-fly as the first choice for May. Chetham’s dressing calls for a “Dubbing of Black Lambs Wooll, and Dub’d with Black Silk, Wings of a Mallards light Grey; Note that all the Feathers got from Mallards for Wings, ought be got from a wild Mallard, and not from a tame one.” Stephen Braithwaite maintained a manuscript fly list, which includes a Thorn Fly dressed like Chetham’s, that Robert L. Smith reprints. Chetham’s early dressing seems to provide a precedent for the Alfred Ronalds’s Silverhorns a century and a half later. Ronalds notes that the Silverhorns “is extremely abundant upon some waters, and is well taken both by the Trout and Grayling until the end of August throughout the day, and principally in showery weather. The figure represents the female. The male has black horns.* IMITATION. Body. Black ostrich herl tied with black silk, and dressed off. Wings. Feather from a wing of the cock blackbird. Legs. Small black cock's hackle. Horns. Grey feather of the mallard. To make it buzz, the body is ribbed with silver twist upon the black ostrich herl, and a black hackle wrapped all down. * There is a variety upon some waters, which has a very shining highly polished jet-black wing.”

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.

Black and Blae

This version is dressed with black tying thread and a blue rib to emphasize the attributes of the fly’s name. It substitutes black plastic canvas yarn for dog's fur. The blue thread rib is taken from a spool and not teased or stripped from "some fair damsel's gown.". 

Hook:		14-18
Thread:		Black
Rib:		Blue 6/0 thread
Body:		Muskrat without the guard hairs and black plastic canvas yarn
Hackle:		Snipe covert
		Robert L. Smith includes fly list taken from Thomas Charleton’s poem The Art of Fishing (1819) in his The North Country Fly: The Soft Hackle Tradition (2015). Smith notes that Charleton's poem "offers further evidence of the ubiquitous use of the soft-hackled fly in the northern counties of England during the late 19th century." A rather unique fornat for an angling text, Charleton's poem draws on an earlier precedent that Smith locates in Thomas Scott'smid eighteenth-century poem The Anglers and "entwined the locally used fly patterns of Northumberland into his lengthy poem on the joys of angling in northern rivers." Charleton recommends fishing the Black and Blae when "March comes in." The dressing is  “Dubb’d with the fur of black dog’s skin, And water rat’s blae down; For wings snipe hackles far excel, Blue silk its rib can mimic well, From some fair damsel’s gown.”

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).

Hackled Deul Cruik

This dressing substitutes red-brown fur from a rabbit’s neck for the “brown fox’s ear” in the original dressing, following the cue from a similar dressing in Sylvester Lister’s later manuscript. It also uses an American woodcock covert in place of an English woodcock covert.

Thread:		Orange
Body:		Yellow and orange Pearsall's gossamer silk wound up the shank alongside each other and dubbed with red-brown rabbit's neck fur
Hackle:		Woodcock covert
		Robert L. Smith’s recently published The North Country Fly: Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition (2015), available at from Coch-y-Bonddu Books, highlights manuscripts and largely forgetten fly fishing publications dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. He cites “The Wharfe Dale List” from Joseph Wells’ Contemplative and Practical Angler (1842), which includes a Hackled and Winged Deul Cruik. The Hackled dressing is dressed with “Wings outside of woodcock’s wing, yellow and orange silk, brown fox’s ear for body.”  Smith notes that the Deul Cruik is includes in six additional texts. In other texts, its shows up under different names, like the Great Brown Deel Crook in William Lister’s manuscript (1712), the Deel Cruik in James Pickard’s manuscript (1794), and the Devil’s Crook (Hackle) in Stephen Braithwaite’s list (early eighteenth century). In his 1820 manuscript, Jonathan Pickard’s list notes that the Dule Crook is another name for the March Brown. The Hackled Deul Cruik almost identical to the dressing that Sylvester Lister includes in his manuscript (1898) for the March Brown or Drake. Like Smith, Leslie Magee includes the manuscript in his Fly Fishing: The North Country Tradition (1994). Lister’s March Brown or Drake is dressed with a “feather reddish speckled from a partridge tail or outside woodcock wing. Head, yellow silk, body orange and yellow silk twisted and dubbed with reddish fur from fox’s ear or rabbit’s neck. Remarks Appears about April 1st. Good killer until beginning of May.” Unlike many the dressings and lists Smith includes, Braithwaite's manuscript list gives separate dressings for the March Brown and Devil Crook (Hackle): the former is dressed with a buddy of "cinnamon silk dubbed with fur orbrown bear"; the latter, with "ash-coloured silk dubbed with a little fur from for a hare's ear." (Using alternating, side-by-side wraps of silk dubbed with fur is noteworthy body for the effect it creates, but it is by no means unique. The Little Dark Watchet that T. E. Pritt dressed used orange and purple wraps of silk dubbed with muskrat.)

Red Spider

This dressing substitutes American woodcock undercovert for landrail covert. W. C. Stewart's spiders are better dressed on a short shank, light-midwire hook, but in keeping with the established pattern of the the blog, this is dressed on a regular size 14 dry fly hook.

Hook:		14-18
Thread:		Yellow Pearsall’s gossamer silk
Hackle:		American woodcock undercovert
		W. C. Stewart—famous for the straightforward simplicity of his Practical Angler (1857)—states that “killing spiders may be made of all the feathers we have mentioned [“starling, landrail, dotterel, mavis, grey plover, golden plover, partridge, and grouse”], but the three following are all we consider necessary”: the first is the Black Spider; second, the Red Spider; third, Dun Spider. Stewart dressed his Red Spider “of the small feather taken from outside of the wing of the landrail, dressed with yellow silk.” He notes that it “is deserving of a very high rank, particularly in coloured water.” Much like the namesake hackle of the traditional Dotterel, landrail is, as Robert L. Smith points out, "almost impossible to obtain." In his North Country Fly: Yorkshire's Soft Hackle Tradition (2015), available from Coch-y-Bonddu Books, Smith notes that landrail hackles "are of a ruddy brownish coloration" and suggests that "a suitably dyed starling feather is reasonable replacement, or the marginal covert feather of a jay." On the other hand, Sylvester Nemes in Two Centuries of Soft-Hackled Flies (2004) suggests using "a reddish-tinged hen feather," but the illustration he includes shows a fly dressed with red silk and a red grouse hackle.  Stewart dressed spiders differently than soft-hackled flies are traditionally dressed. Roger Woolley elaborates on how to dress Stewart’s spiders: “Commence tying half-way down the hook shank and wind typing silk to the shoulder, tie in hackle by its stem, then laying the waxed tying silk along the centre stem of the inside of the hackle, twirl them round together until the feather is rolled round the tying silk, and in this state wrap it round the hook, taking care that a sufficient number of fibres stick out to represent legs. This is a difficult operation to do neatly and well, though it is a method of dressing that makes a strong, hard-wearing fly.” Woolley also suggests that Stewart’s dressing was, as the Red Spider above, “just a soft hackle taken half-way down the hook, palmerwise, no body as in the usual type of fly, half the hook left bare.”

John Turton also gives a dressing for a Red Spider in the Angler’s Manual (1836) that shares elements with Stewart’s own. He describes it as a hackle rather than winged fly, “for March and April,” describing it as a dressing “made with yellow silk; wing, a red mottled partridge rump feather; body, hare’s ear, dark coloured at bottom, and grey at top, twisted around the yellow silk.” Turton recommends a color combination of yellow and red “in summer, for dark waters,” when “yellow dubbing is used.”