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| Dabbler-style Platte River Special |
Anybody who has been fly
fishing since the 1950’s, or is familiar with the beautiful winged wetfly
designs of Ray Bergman, knows that we once had a tradition of beautiful trout
flies meant for swinging. And I’m not saying that has disappeared (that
evidenced in the winged wetflies of Davy Wotton & Don Bastion) just
diminished quite a bit with the popularity of nymphing, which has spiraled
American fly fishers toward the bobber & jig as the preferred subsurface
method.
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| Sulfur Variant |
Been faffing around at the
vise lately, working up a batch of lures for swinging in early Spring before
the hatches get going. I’ve lately become enamored of the ‘Dabbler’ design
frame popular in Ireland , Wales , & Scandinavia ,
as it allows for some elegant & effective trout flies, incorporating all of
the essential elements of good soft-hackle design & good fly design in
general.
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| Olive Chieftan |
This will probably cost me
even more readers than my politics, but I’m gonna say it anyway: In our market
(& writer) driven hustle to get onboard with the latest & greatest,
Americans have a singular propensity to throw some damn nice babies out with
the bath water. Just sayin.
That said, lets: Make Fly
Fishing Great Again.
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| Coachman Variant |
Indigenous fly-design frames
are fractal, allowing for infinite variation within the proven effective frame.
The ancient design frames, or ‘patterns’, are ancient for good reason,
providing tyers a reliable frame of reference to start with when considering
good baits for swinging. A basic shape. The broad palette of materials
available invites the tyer to get recklessly imaginative dressing the frame.
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| Camp Dog |
The basic design frame of a Dabbler
fly is thus, back to front, roughly in the order tied in: Usually a tinsel tip.
Tailing is often composed of more than one material & often golden pheasant
tippet in the mix, particularly in the Irish flies (traditional Irish anglers
use this design pattern for everything from wee mayflies to Atlantic salmon
flies). Bodies might be anything, commonly tinsel or dubbing, a bit of dubbing
built up behind the hackle collars to provide body mass & flare the hackle.
Dabblers are generally tied with more than one hackle & palmered over the body. Saddle hackle or shlappen make a
good palmer for these. I tie in behind the hook eye (leaving room for the
hackle collar) & make three or four turns before winding four or five turns
down the length of the body then winding wire or tinsel forward to cinch the
palmered hackle down. Generally, two hackle collars are wound, the rear hackle
known as the ‘wing’. This is usually a longer hackle, extending beyond the hook
bend. Barred waterfowl flank is often used for this, wound, & sometimes the
upper portion of the hackle gathered up to form a clump wing over the body.
Pheasant rump, marabou tips, longer partridge spades, whatever you may have
that is long & soft will work for the rear or wing collar (a good use for
those nice but too-big hackles at the end of a cape). The front hackle can be
anything the tier thinks fit. The Irish seem very fond of the various church-window
feathers taken from pheasant (& these may be dyed with a pen).
Though one may go smaller,
Dabblers for trouting are generally tied on #4 to #12 hooks. They may be tied
drab to simulate stream food items, but I think the design’s greatest value is
in tying attractor patterns that fill the gap between wee flies & big
streamers – that place winged wetflies used to fill.
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| Swing Clown |
