Water Spider (Peacock & Black)

[Roadkill]

I found Roger Fogg's discussion of THE BLACK AND PEACOCK SPIDER in The Art of the Wet Fly this morning, and was intrigued by his musing that the Black and Peacock "was actually taken as a water spider"

I took his suggestion to add a silver tag to suggest air bubbles to The Water-Spider mentioned as fly 66 in Henry Wade's Halcyon, or Rod Fishing with, Fly Minnow and Worm,1861 as listed in Andrew Herd's Trout Fly Patterns 1496-1916 V2

My version to finish out my new peacock fly box...

RIMG7335 by William Lovelace, on Flickr

Hook-TMC 2457 #12
Thread-UTC 70 Black
Tag-Silver Mylar
Body- 3 Peacock Herls twisted into a rope around the tying thread
Hackle- Black Hen Saddle since I did not have black cock's hackle

[Ron Eagle Elk]

The peacock and black has been a staple in my fly boxes for decades, though, without the silver tag. It's been there for so long because it works so very well. I'll add a silver tag to a few and see if I notice a difference. Very nicely dressed, Bill.

[letumgo]

Bill - It’s funny you posted a Water Spider. Yesterday I was fishing a tiny trout stream (thin blue line) near here and when I god to the stream, there were many water striders skittering around on the calmer sections of the stream. On my first cast, my fly landed on the water, floating on the surface film. All the other water striders zipped over and attacked my fly, trying to defend their territory from the invader. I’d never seen this behavior before, so it captured my attention.

As for my fishing adventure, I got lots of bites. Unfortunately all of them were from mosquitoes...

Beautiful dressing, btw. Will be adding some to my “thin blue” box to fool the locals.

[DarrellP]

If it fooled the other water spiders, it must be realistic!

[Roadkill]

I fished this pattern in a 3-fly cast on 3 different sections of the Crooked River today, and it will be a keeper. Sunny midday, literally fishing in a shadow of an Osprey and it produced 6 out of 12 Rainbows landed. Only 7–10-inch fish but not too bad with the overhead observer. Other flies that landed fish: Peacock Fly 1, Hot Gray Hackle Peacock 2, and Baltic Bobwhite Flymph 3.

No idea what the long-distance release fish took!

[ronr]

Bill your transition flymph was my top producer on the Crooked yesterday.... I don't have a picture to illustrate, but its somewhere on the forum. I also had some bites on the jig sculpins...but couldn't land either of the two LDR's. Sorry we couldn't connect, but the river pullouts were a little crowded yesterday.

[Johnno]

I like that. I’m going to tie up a few for around this side of the black stump. But I’ll go with Pukeko Hackle, see how that fishes……