Rat Faced McDougall

When visiting British flyfair a couple of years ago a bought a book by Harry Darby -Catskill Flytier. Harry Darbee are one of those guys responisble to that we today have something called the Catskill style dry flies. In his book he has a list of flies "Darbees deadly dozen", among these we find soem Deer hair bodied dry flise which were one of Harry and Elsies trademark. I have tried to tie the Rat faced McDougall before in my early days, not very succesfull though, it was before I got the proper material etc. Last week  I finally got my sticky ones on one of those Deer hair packers, so now it was time to try it out properly.

As with all old flies there is a story, I love those. In this case I found about how this fly got it´s name, found it in the book offcourse.

"As I was ting up an order of Bastards late one evening in the summer om 1939, Percy Jennings a amateur flytier from Cold Spring Harbor. Known among anglers for the time he cought a 3,5 pound brown on a backcast, came by our house. He looked down at my vise and asked why I didn´t tie the same fly on a smaller hook. He thought it would work better for the local trout population. I said, "why dont you do it" So he did, and it was while Percy was tying one of these that a young friend of his daughter, Mary Dimock came by. She saw the fly and said "Boy that´s got personality."Percy, knowing that the fly had a troublesome name among our more gentle fly-casting friends, rose to the chance and challenged Mary to give it a name. She was up to the chalenge, saying, "I think it´s a Rat Faced McDougal." And so the fly was dubbed."
-Catskill Flytier Harry Darbee with Mac Francis

Rat Faced McDougall -Original pattern
Tail: Ginger Cock Hackle fibers
Body: Cliped tannish-grey deer hair
Wings: Cream grizzly hackle tips
Hackle: Ginger cock

This is one of these flies you dont want too loose in your first backcast, it takes a while to get it proper. I fisrt tie in the tail, then the body in two portions. Then  Istart the cliping, which takes a while, and dont forget to watch that tail, you dont want to clip that off. Well, I´m quite satisfied with this one. Now let see if Percy Jennings was right about it´s "troutability".