Ausable Spider

[Mataura mayfly]

You used the right dubbing-opossum, as Fran did, originally. His was a real cinnamon colour, and toward the end of his long stint and career in the Adirondacks, he began to "dye" the opossum the proper color.

Thanks for your tribute!

Mark

Mark, that is interesting. The Australian possum has a scent gland and pad in the centre of their chest that they use to mark territory by rubbing their chest on branches and tree trunks, on a pelt this can be found on both sides of the centre cut and just below the shoulders. This area, maybe 2 inches square is usually a dark cinnamon in colour and very oily on an unwashed skin.



You can see the area I mean between the front legs of the possum above. Do you think this is the area Fran would have used for the original?

[Soft-hackle]

Jeff,
This could be why Fran selected this fur in the first place. It probably made a great dry fly. I would assume that the right color was probably hard to come by, so he began to dye the fur, later. The original called for Australian opossum of a "dirty orange" color. I found the fur "cinnamon" in color-very much the color of ground cinnamon.

Mark

[Mataura mayfly]

The belly of the rarer "red" Aussie possum is kind of more dirty orange than amber/cream of the silver/grey variety. The brown yields a light tan belly fur (as seen above). I imagine any hides exported to the States would have been tanned and well washed so the oils may have been stripped from the fur, but all possum has hydrophobic qualities and floats well when used for emerger and dry styles.

[mkmury]

Sorry, just want to post a reply so this shows up in my posts, I LOVE THIS FLY!

[Kelly L.]

This is an incredible fly. Mark would LOVE IT, as I also do...