Stendalen wrote:Mike, that is a great story!
I cannot though find the dressing Skues proposed in any of these books. Did he write about that elsewhere or am I missing it?
There are two spellings, "Indispensable" and "Indispensible" Skues used both.
Martin
Austin was a tobacconist and professional fly-dresser in Tiverton, and he kept the pattern secret. His daughter took over the fly dressing side of the business and continued to dress the pattern with minor changes such as replacing the mohair with seal’s fur.
When she retired Miss Austin gave G.E.M. Skues permission to publish the correct dressing in 1934. The secret of the Tup’s Indispensable was published in the Flyfisher’s Club Journal, here is a partial quote;
Here is the true and authentic pattern. It is too much to hope that at last we may now see the true patterns on sale in the tackle shops?
I have always had it in my mind that the prescription was so valuable to anglers at large that it ought not to be lost, and it was my intention, if it were not disclosed in my lifetime, to leave a record of it to be made public when the time for its disclosure came.
That time has now arrived, and I have been generously released from the moral obligation which so long bound me to keep it a secret, while fuming at the many absurd abortions which tackle dealers were selling as the real thing.
I believe I was the first angler to use the magic dubbing. I was, at the time, in constant correspondence with Mr. R. S. Austin. The date I do not exactly recall, but, from a note in Mr. Austin’s handwriting describing its first use, I judge the date to have been June, 1900. He sent me a sample on a broken Limerick eyed hook, telling me that with it (the actual fly) he had killed at the mouth of the Loman, where it debouches into the Exe at Tiverton, in two or three successive evenings a number of big trout which the natives there counted uncatchable, one of them exceeding 5lb. another 3lb. ½ oz. another 2½lb. and another about 2lb. Being naturally very much interested I asked Mr. Austin (in returning him the pattern) what was the nature of the dubbing, and he very generously not only gave me the prescription, but also sent me enough of the made-up material to dress a number of examples of the fly.
I told Mr. Austin that I thought the fly deserved a title, and in his reply he asked what I suggested. I replied that there was “So and So’s Infallible”, So and So’s Irresistible”, and so on – “Why not ‘Tup’s Indispensable’?" He said he did not care to name it and for the moment the matter dropped.
The essential part of this dubbing is the highly translucent wool from the indispensable part of a Tup, thoroughly washed and cleansed of the natural oil of the animal. This wool would by itself be, like seal’s fur, somewhat intractable and difficult to spin on the tying silk, but an admixture of the pale pinkish and very filmy fur from an English hare’s poll had the effect of rendering it easy to work. There was also in the original pattern an admixture of cream coloured seal’s fur and combings from a lemon yellow spaniel, and the desired dominating colour was obtained by working in a small admixture of red mohair. For the mohair I generally substituted seal’s fur, and I believe Mr. Austin did so himself. When wet the Tup’s wool becomes somehow illuminated throughout by the colour of the seal’s fur or mohair, and the entire effect of the body is extraordinarily filmy and insect-like.
UNQUOTE
In an unpublished volume of his favourite dressings Mr. Austin described the pattern in the following terms:
No. 28 - The Red Spinner
This is a hackled fly tied with yellow silk on a N. 00 Sneck bend hook. It is made with a body sparsely dressed, of a mixture of white ram’s wool and lemon coloured Spaniel’s fur in equal parts, and a little fur from a hare’s poll, and sufficient red mohair to give the mixture a pinkish shade. It is hackled with a yellow spangled lightish blue cock’s hackle and has whisks of the same colour.
About 1890 Austin made a manuscript of dry fly fishing on various North Devon streams, but it was never published. However, W.H. Lawrie, in his classic work, “A Reference Book of English Trout Flies”, 1967, gives a list of flies from that manuscript. The Tup's pattern was called the "Red Spinner", it was much later that Skues christened the fly the "Tup's Indispensible"
This is a joke based on the fact that a tup could not possibly lose the source of the wool as it was indispensable! A tup with no testicles is no longer a tup! I have heard loads of explanations for this, they are mostly rubbish.
TL
MC