Traditional Tying

[scotfly]

The point about maintaining original dressings and calling them by their traditional names is so that new patterns get the recognition if they deserve it. If someone asks a hundred years from now, how do I tie a Gold Ribbed Hares Ear, he will have the correct tying instead of a few hundred tyings that will bear little resemblance to the original.

What is the original dressing and what is your reference?

[Wildfisher]

Looking at Sandy?s post re. the black pennel. I often wonder if some of  these traditional  flies were thoughtfully designed or  just tied to please the eye. The tippet / crest tail for example ? a shuck or just pretty? What?s the  blue jay throat hackle on the Invicta all about anyway? Looks pretty for sure but does it serve any purpose? 

Fully dressed salmon flies are the best of all.  The late Hugh Falkus claimed they scared  more salmon than they caught  and the only reason they caught at all is  they were used in the days when our rivers were stiff with fish and the chances of encountering a particularly stupid salmon were far higher. They are very nice to look at though.

[Fishtales]

What is the original dressing and what is your reference?

Your point being, Denis? If your book is older than mine and it is a different tying then I am wrong? If a GRHE is tyed with synthetic dubbing it is no longer a GRHE, if it has a silver rib it isn't one either. These are the changes that I mean, not the fact that mine has three turns of rib and yours says four, that is just preference and style.

[Fishtales]

Sandy, I accept completely that you and possibly some others wish to maintain as best you can, the integrity of the original dressings of flies.

For myself though, fish are the arbiters of flies, not men.

wee bri.............

The point of the discussion isn't whether the flies catch fish or not, it is whether we should try and maintain the integrity of the traditional/classic/standard patterns or should we just ignore them and call every fly the same name. If someone handed you a fly with a yellow tail, black chenille silver ribbed body and lead dumbbell eyes and when you asked him what it was he said, Black Pennel, would you agree with him or correct him with the traditional/classic/standard tying? What if you didn't know the tying for the Black Pennel? You would go off and give the next guy the fly and so on and before long the Black Pennel becomes the black dognobbler called the Black Pennel and nobody remembers what the real Black Pennel looked like.

[Fishtales]

Sandy does that mean you have to prove without doubt that a particular tying is the absolute first in order to claim a true traditional pattern?

What difference does it really make??

Allan

Of course not. That would be practically imposible to prove. There are a lot of traditional patterns that have been proven, and the dressings handed down, over the years. There are also some that have been changed, but renamed, that have become looked on as traditional. There are a lot of variations of all the flies out there but some have managed to hold on to their classic tyings and are still tyed the same way today. It would be a shame to lose them now because we can't be bothered.

[Wildfisher]

I agree with what Sandy is saying, however, where do we draw the line? Is a golden olive bumble still a golden olive bumble if we use dyed guinea fowl instead of blue jay? I don?t believe it changes the fly sufficiently to rename it just as using thread of a different colour really makes no difference at all since you can?t see the thread. OK, others may disagree with that but we have to be careful we don?t focus on the minutiae too much

[.D.]

................... 1 was on a traditional style parachute, 1 was on a traditional style wet, 1 was on a traditional style dry and 1 was on a traditional style American hair wing dry.
How many would be thinking of Parachute Adams, Blae and black, Greenwell?s glory and a Humpy? ( or flies along those lines)
Still sure you don?t know what a ?traditional? is?

Hmmm..........

The section of your post cited above  seems to imply it's a synonym for "conventional". Unless you can define the difference between a "traditional" and modern parachute hackled fly.


To my mind it's a pretty ambiguous expression used to describe a certain style of fly fished in a certain way. Usually wet flies it would seem: hackled wets on rivers (and some winged "regional" styles), but otherwise on lochs. I couldn't really define it, but I'd have a general impression of what someone was talking of when referring to traditional loch wet flies . And I don't think material choice really covers it: there are plenty of "traditional" wet flies with synthetic yarn tails. Pattern integrity: yawn............. :lol:

The phrase is seldom applied otherwise (to my mind); people tend to refer to "standard" dry flies when discussing those with a conventional collar hackle. I've never read any talk of "traditional" nymphs.


"Classic" (as mentioned) nymphs, dry flies, streamers etc...

That rings more of a bell!

.D.

[.D.]

I think we can get too hung up on traditional materials. By and large, I am quite sure, a tier designs with what  he has available. Back in the days when it was OK to shoot tawny owls tiers used tawny owl. ...........

Dark Watchett

Hook: 16
Hackle: from a Merlin's back
Head: orange
Body: twisted orange and purple thread, with a little mole fur

That's Sylvester Lister's 1898 prescription for a Dark Watchet. Jackdaw scalp seems to be the usual choice these days.

What if I use Jackdaw rump (as I typically do) or a small feather taken from a Rook's wing? Or Magpie?
I don't use silk either: does the use of polyester or nylon threads render my Dark Watchets "variants" too?

I reckon not.

.D.

[.D.]

Makes them completely diferent flies if you are using different hackles.
Take for example a Partridge and Orange or a Woodcock and Orange spider pattern.
All that is changed is the hackle but they are totaly different flies.

Davy.

One webby dark grey hackle looks much like another. I'd challenge you to tell me which was which if I posted images of Dark Watchets tied with a range of dark grey hackles, if you could confidently predict you would be able to differentiate between them. It's not quite the same as a pattern in which the name of the fly is intimately linked to the (distinctive) material used to hackle it!

Are you suggesting you have to employ Merlin feathers to tie a Dark Watchet, just because  Lister did?

I doubt if many of his peers did  :wink:.


.D.

[scotfly]

Your point being, Denis? If your book is older than mine and it is a different tying then I am wrong?

My point is that with older patterns, such as the GRHE, it is at best difficult to be certain of the original. Even with newer patterns it is not always easy to be sure.

The section of your post cited above  seems to imply it's a synonym for "conventional". Unless you can define the difference between a "traditional" and modern parachute hackled fly.

True, perhaps not the  best analogy I could have cited.
Of course it could be argued that traditional and conventional could well be synonyms (in the context of this discussion at least)