(1853), and Francis M. Walbran, who edited a later edition of Theakston. This style of fly was later catalogued by T. E. Pritt in Yorkshire Wet Flies (1885), reprinted the following year as North-Country Wet Flies. These are still often fished today, on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Antipodes – they are therefore described more fully here.
Spider wet flies have the simplest of bodies, often just of tying thread (silk), perhaps with a wisp of dubbing, and they have only two or two and a half turns of a soft hackle; a few also have very slender wings . They therefore suggest a fragile nymph or a waterlogged adult fly close to the surface.
Plate 8 of Pritt’s book includes six that are not included in the later section on North Country Spiders, and they have been included here to illustrate this style of trout fly.
OLD MASTER
Hook: Size 14.
Thread: Ash coloured.
Body: Tying thread, wrapped over with heron’s herl.
Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Woodcock underwing covert.
STONE MIDGE
Hook: Size 15.
Thread: Ash coloured.
Body: Tying thread, dubbed sparely with heron’s herl.
Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Pewit’s [lapwing] neck, breast or rump.
Head: Magpie herl.
GREY MIDGE
Hook: Size 15.
Thread: Yellow.
Body: Tying thread.
Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Woodcock breast.
Head: Peacock herl.
KNOTTED MIDGE
Hook: Size 15.
Thread: Ash coloured.
Body: Tying thread, dubbed heron herl.
Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Back of a swift or a martin, or pewit shoulder.
Head: Magpie herl.
SANDY MOORGAME
Hook: Size 15.
Thread: Dark brown.
Body: Tying thread.
Hackle (called ‘wings’ by Pritt): Reddish feather from the back of a grouse.
Plate 8 from T. E. Pritt’s Yorkshire Wet Flies – note that in the 1880s, fly hooks were eyeless.
BLUE PARTRIDGE
Hook: Size 14.
Thread: Blue.
Body: Tying thread, dubbed with a little blue lamb’s wool.
Hackle (called ‘Wings’ by Pritt): Partridge back.
These styles of flies reached maturity in the Victorian era, at the height of British imperial power. As they travelled the empire, so the British took with them the brown trout that they loved to catch back at home – and to catch those trout they took their flies.
Captain G. D. Hamilton first visited New Zealand in about 1845 and he moved there in about 1860 to farm sheep, turning 40,000 acres of virgin country into ‘English grasses’. In his book Trout-Fishing and Sport in Maoriland (1904), Hamilton relates how he stocked the river that flowed near to where he settled in the early 1870s, with brown trout. Ova were transported by ship on ice halfway round the world – with their journey completed on the backs of pack-mules. Others stocked the watercourses of New Zealand with rainbow trout from North America. Some of these stocked fish became migratory, swimming down to the ocean and returning to spawn as sea trout; others migrated into big lakes. The trout grew much bigger in New Zealand waters than they did back at home: ‘It may be taken as a rule that all streams with sufficient water contain some exceptionally large trout, up to 8lb., 10lb., 11lb., and 12lb. in weight.’
Hooks for tying flies were imported from England, but the hooks sent out to New Zealand were not strong enough to hold these big trout. So Hamilton wrote to manufacturers in the then capital of hook-making, Redditch, requesting they make especially strong hooks for him. These, together with the five fly patterns that Hamilton came up with, were all that anyone needed to catch New Zealand trout.
These flies are commonly known as red hackle, hare’s-ear, black hackle, black spider, hare’s-ear spider.
No. 1, red hackle, light-brown mallard wing, yellow-silk body, is the most easily seen when the water is discoloured, and therefore best for use at that time.
No.2, turn of brown partridge hackle, hare’s-ear body, light woodcock wing, put together with yellow silk: A killing fly when the weather is clear and low.
No. 3, black hackle, grouse wing, brown-silk body, put together with brown silk: Easily seen when the water is clear and low, and kills well then.
No. 4, spider, black hackle, tied with brown silk, brown-silk body: Easily seen when the water is clear and low. A good fly to use as a tail fly when the trout are getting into high condition and shy, and when there is bright sunshine.
No. 5, spider, brown partridge hackle, hare’s-ear body, put together with yellow silk: Very killing, when the water is clear and low, among high-conditioned and shy trout. Used as a tail fly this is perhaps the most reliable of the whole, particularly among large trout of 2lb. and upwards.
Colour plate from Captain Hamilton’s Trout-Fishing and Sport in Maoriland, showing his five fly patterns.
A similar influx of fly-fishers occurred into the United States and Canada, though, because they had their own indigenous rainbow and cutthroat trout in the west, and a char that the colonists thought was a trout and that they called brook trout, the introduction of brown trout was later than many other parts of the English-speaking world. The first arrived in about 1880 – the fly-fishers had arrived much earlier. Paul Schullery provides excellent evidence that Richard Franck, author of Northern Memoirs, lived (and fly-fished?) in the United States between 1660 and 1687. Schullery also showed how many others took fly-fishing to the New
