Hung. Partridge Hackle Sizing

[cohafly]

Thanks for tutorial.

[William Anderson]

I'm sorry to have just gotten to this, as John (Greenwell) Shaner was quick on the draw to get these images to me for posting. After some difficulty posting them with his earlier post in this thread, he requested that I post them for your enjoyment. Again, sincerely sorry for the delay in doing so. But I think you'll agree they were worth the wait. He shared with me many other shots of specific flies from several collections and some remarkable examples of patterns tied at the time many of the local "North Country" lists were being recorded.

Without further adieu, John asked that I post these "examples of original circa 1880 spiders with trimmed hackles. They were most likely tied by Mr. Henry Walbran Cooper and came from his signed and dated fly book." These are tied on a strand of horse tail, which he describes as being preferred to gut during this period. John has quite the collection of historic flies and documents. If he sees this maybe he'll comment further on these flies in particular.









I don't think this detracts from our current methods, but it does shed some light on actual flies tied during the time period we reference for the flies we reproduce and fish. I liked John's balanced take on what we all expect to see in our own flies today and what are the generally pre-conceived ideas about these flies. I'm not likely to be trimming my hackles either, but it's good to have some facts to support these comments and a pleasure to see these originals.

If you have not had the privelege of viewing John's own flies...you would be impressed with the expert execution of these standard patterns.

John, Thanks so much for passing these insightful images along.

w

[Ruard]

Hi William,

Thanks for sharing, reminds me of a thread on this forum about old spiders.

Could you give them names??

The last one could be a partridge and orange but the other ones???

Greeting

[tie2fish]

Ruard ~ Here's a link to a post from a while back regarding John's collection of North Country flies: http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... ner#p32480

[redietz]

There's a couple of other things to notice beyond the clipped hackles:

1) It appears the tier wasn't fussy about whether the snell was tied on the top of the hook or the bottom. Tiers today re-creating snelled flies seem to believe that only the bottom is correct.

2) Some of the hackles appear to be reversed, like Tenkara or Alpine flies.

[Ruard]

Ruard ~ Here's a link to a post from a while back regarding John's collection of North Country flies: http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... ner#p32480

Thank you Bill, but I thought of a thread from Johno (?)

Greeting

[Ruard]

Ruard ~ Here's a link to a post from a while back regarding John's collection of North Country flies: http://www.flymphforum.com/viewtopic.ph ... ner#p32480

Thank you Bill, but I thought of a thread from Johno (?)

Greeting

It was not Johno but Johnno.

Here is an old post of Johnno:

by Johnno » 29 Jun 2009 09:30

I have a number of flies that are quite possibly tied by Walbran and appear identical to some illustrated in a NZ fly book that are tied by him in 1899. ("New Zealand Fishing Flies" Robert Bragg) The flies were sourced from R K Bragg so maybe. Who now knows?

I had them and the pics of the flies from the book posted on the old forum. I'll dig out those pics and re-post if you like...

Does anybody know if he ever repost these flies??

Greeting

[William Anderson]

There's a couple of other things to notice beyond the clipped hackles:

1) It appears the tier wasn't fussy about whether the snell was tied on the top of the hook or the bottom. Tiers today re-creating snelled flies seem to believe that only the bottom is correct.

2) Some of the hackles appear to be reversed, like Tenkara or Alpine flies.

Bob, if you look close, you'll see that these flies were tied off at the bend, rather than the eye. I've seen other NCS from this period tied off at the bend as well. You can imagine if we can manage 100 ways to tie a soft-hackle, they did the same a few generations ago.

The resemblance to the tenkara/alpine flies is striking. Intentional or not, and by the literature...probably not, but the pics are interesting, regardless of the literature.

Bill, thanks so much for that link. I had a faint memory of that thread and I'm glad to have seen it again. John has offered to let me post some of this material on my site when I get to that section.

w

[redietz]

Bob, if you look close, you'll see that these flies were tied off at the bend, rather than the eye. I've seen other NCS from this period tied off at the bend as well.

I did notice that, but since I tie off some flies (such as the Light Spanish Needle) at the bend (and assume others do), I didn't think it was worth mentioning.

[NJpatbee]

I have to agree that the feathers do not have to be perfect to attract fish. I also realize that the feathers sometimes have to be perfect to catch a customer.
Here is a link which I am sure most people have seen. It is one of Charlie Cravens tutorials for using over size feathers. I practiced with it last Spring and have to admit the patterns turned out fair by most tyers standards, and great by mine.

http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox ... rentID=155

I am of the opinion that collars tyed with soft hackle mimic the body of the bug more than wings or legs. That being said, most of my patterns are tyed with a variety of hen hackle, shorter than the norm, and also a bit on the heavy (3 turns) side. It is just an uneducated opinion of mine. I dont have any proof to back it up.

The Charlie Cravens method shown on the link works great and for me has solved the problem of partridge small hackles.