Quill Gordon

What could be better to start up the blog of 2011 than with a true classic Catskill Style Dry fly. The "Quill Gordon" or "Gordon Quill" Theodore Gordons legacy. This is one of my absolute favourite flies to fish and tie, both offcourse equally important. Gordon tied this fly in different shades and sometimes with a gold wire to get a bronze shade to the body.

A couple of weeks ago I got a copy og John McDonalds "The Complete Fly Fisherman". In this very heavy volume of flyfishing history I found loads of intresting stuff to read. It´s easy to get kind of afraid of the book at first sight as it is loades of pages and small letters. But I assure you, it is great and full of nice small talks and letters.

Here is what  Gordon wrote to G.E.M Skues on May 7, 1906
"I would like to have you try the following. Body plain quill, peacock, light color, hackles and tail, light blue hackle, wings wood-duck plain, mottled from a good sized finely mottled feather, using double for each side of the stem. I usually varnish the foundation to strenghten the quill. It is a light blue quill with wood-duck wings, and I will gamble on it killing, if dressed to suit the water..."

As well as I love to tie the classics by original recepie, I also sometimes love to play a little and do some changes to them. One idea I have had for a while is to put a boddyhackle on this lovely pattern. With a body hackle I believe this fly will work even better in rough water. I didn´t wan´t it to bushy though so I stripped one side of the feather before wrapping the bodyhackle. I didn´t want to strenghten the hackle with wire or thread either because I wanted as much of the quill possible still visible, so I gave the quillbody a small amount of clear superglue before wrapping the bodyhackle.

I´m really looking forward to try this one on Trout and Grayling hiding in the rough water. Will do my best to try and remember to tell you how it worked.