Priest

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flyfishwithme

Priest

Post by flyfishwithme » Tue Nov 17, 2009 4:29 am

From time to time I go back through my library, just flicking though books really, especially during the slower fishing months. I tend to do a book a week. Amazing what you pick up.
Anyway, this week I was concentrating on books in my library that relate to Grayling fishing and I just happened to focus in on 'The Grayling Angler' by John Roberts. This book was written in 1982 and Roberts was able to fish with some of the great Grayling fishermen in the UK. The likes of Arthur Oglesby, Reg Righyni (probably the most noted), Eric Horsfall-Turner, Richard I'Anson and many others.
This book was full of information and re-affirmed some of the experiences that I have had while fishing for grayling here in Yorkshire. Not least his observations on how grayling rise to a fly, something which Charles Ritz wrote about in his famouus book - 'A Flyfisher's Life - which I think is a classic.
But to cut to the chase. In his observations on 'Downstream Subsurface' fishing (yes Mike, downstream, you must be starting to roll your eyes up now - hahahahaha) he noted that during the colder months he preferred to use fancy flies in the often coloured water associated with those months in Yorkshire. The two favourites he mentioned were the 'Red Tag' and 'Priest'.
Here is my version of the 'Priest'.

Priest Spider
Image

Robert goes on to talk about the virtues of Red in flies, notably the two mentioned above, and how that grayling fly fishers over 100 years ago realised it's potential. Pritt lists five popular casts of the 1880's and four of the five tail flies have red in their dressing. Carter-Platts in the 1930's includes the Red Tag as one of his favourite flies and Reg Righyni also includes it. So if three of the greatest grayling fishermen in Yorkshire over the past 100 odd years have a theory on the colour red, then who are we to argue.
Of course these days we opt for a range of colours when tying grayling flies, but I have used this particular fly with great success.

The tying is:
Hook of your choice. I have used a Tiemco 103BL with the eye heated and straightened. I use this for all of my spiders in various sizes
THread: Black. I have used 8/0 Uni Thread
Tag; Red Ibis or wool is stated by Roberts. I have used 4 strands of red Danvilles Floss (This is a preference of mine and I use it in all tags)
Body: Silver tinsel ribbed with fine silver wire
Hackle: Badger (believe it or not this fly is tied with a 'silver badger' hen hackle.
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