Over the weekend I got round to tying some flies again. I tied these peacock spiders after bumping into an old acquaintance from Cumbernauld at the GAC on Saturday. He was telling me about his mate and him having great success with these patterns at the lake of Menteith in every variation you can think of. He told me they worked equally well with gold butts, silver butts and green, red, yellow and orange butts too. He asked me if could tie a few of these patterns up for him which I was only too pleased to do. Of course I kept some for myself and intend to try these patterns on the Clyde in the next couple of weeks or so. I tied the flies in size 14's and 12's the ones in the pic above are size 12 Kamasan B160 hooks which I think is a suitable hook for these spiders.Please feel free to leave a comment about these flies good, bad or indifferent... I don't mind, especially if you have any experience with this pattern on the rivers.
Allan,
ReplyDeleteI used to have great success with this fly (gold tag) on the lochs of North wales many years ago. Not tied as well as these though.
Billy
Nicely tied. I have had great success with this fly in the U.S., especially in Yellowstone National Park and in Colorado (where I live). I think of it as a caddis imitation and always have at least a half dozen in my box. Mine are most always tied with the body 1/3-1/2 the shank and the hackle palmered the full length of the body. I dead drift them through transition areas or cast them upstream with a relatively short line. One of my most productive patterns.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Thank you for your advice and comments. I will tie a few in the style you mention.
ReplyDeleteAllan.
I hope they do well for you. I normally tie them with medium to dark dun hen hackle and try and choose hackles that are 1 1/2 to 2 hook gaps long (this of course varies, I'd rather have some with hackles that I think are a little too long or short than not have any at all). My favorite sizes are 14 for caddis and 20 for midges.
ReplyDeleteSteve
These in size 16 have been my most successful flies on my local river here in central Scotland and they are easy to tie too.
ReplyDelete