One of the most significant characteristics of the
Catskill style dry flies is the split wing of wood duck. There are, however,
really nice patterns in the genre without the magical wing of wood duck. Here
we will learn a little of one of those patterns, one of my personal favorites,
the grey fox variant. The pattern was created by Catskill celebrity Art Flick. The
fly was of what I heard one of the flies Flick had closest to his heart. Flick
tied the Grey Fox Variant to imitate the green drake in his beloved Schoharie
Creek. He says in his Streamside Guide,
“So far the most effective fly to fool large trout feeding on natural green
drake is a very large grey fox that has been tied with good stiff hackles”.
Art Flick at his vise
Many of those familiar with the variant patterns think
that it was Art Flick who originated it however that is not entirely correct.
Flick learned of the pattern by his master Preston Jennings, author of The Book of Trout Flies. Jennings’s book
tells us that the variants originally came from an English tier, Dr William
Baigent. So we could say that Baigent originated the pattern, Jennings
discovered it and finally Flick made it known to the modern world by his book Stream side guide.
I meet the variant for the first time in one of our
Swedish fly tying legends, Lennart Bergqvist´s book Flugbindning på mitt sätt (Flytying my way), Bergqvist writes that
his friend Paul Jorgensen told him to tie some of the variants for an upcoming
trip to the Catskills, he didn’t like them at first but after a while he
discovered it as a great attractor pattern. At this time I was a beginner
within the world of fly-tying, and this fly had it all, I loved it´s appearance
and it was fairly easy to tie. I tied loads of these and after a while all my
flies had bodies of stripped hackle stem. Actually this fly was the one that
got me interested in the Catskill style dry fly. I use these flies on both
trout and grayling, I like to tie them really small for the grayling, my
favorite is a size 18 gray fox variant, and the grayling love them.
I tie my gray fox variants with a slightly shorter
hackle and tail than what Flick did; I believe that the fly is better balanced
this way. Flick mixed light ginger, dark ginger and grizzly for hackle but I
used coachman brown mixed with grizzly, mostly because I don’t have dark
ginger. I fish the fly as free drifting
as possible, now and then I make it move that can sometimes trigger the fish to
strike, a great fly to use when there´s low activity on the surface. As some
will notice I use a different way of hackling this fly than what most
traditional Catskill style tier’s do, I tie in the hackle at the front and wrap
it backwards, finishing the fly by securing the hackle with the thread. This
way I belive that I get a slightly more durable hackle , this way also give the
fly a neater head.
An important issue with making flies with hackle stem
bodies is that you need a nice and even foundation for the body. I use Textreme
8/0 that is thin, strong and I can easily get it to lie flat on the hook. When
preparing a lighter shade hackle stem for the gray fox variant I just rip the
fibers from the stem, but when working with hackle stem of color, like a
natural brown/red hackle, I burn the fibers away in a mix of bleach and water.
If you rip off those fibers some of the colors also disappear.
This is what you need to tie a Grey Fox Variant, my
way.
Hook: Partridge SLD #12-18
Thread: Textreme 8/0 White
Tails: Spade hackle fibers Coachman Brown
Body: Stripped hackle stem ”Ginger”
Hackle: Cock
cape Coachman Brown/Grizzly
Tie in your thread, start 1/3 down from the eye of the
hook, tie thread down to where the bend of the hook starts.
Pick out 8-10 nice stiff spade hackle fibers as tails
and tie them in, make sure they stay on the top of the hook. The tail need to
be 2 times the length of the hook. Wrap the thread up to where you tied in your
thread.
Tie in the stripped hackle stem by wrapping your
thread down again to the tail, make sure you have a nice even underbody.
Wrap the hackle stem in tight turns towards the point
where we tied in the thread from the beginning. I try to finish the hackle stem
under the hook, secure it with a couple of turns and make sure to cut the
excess close to the body to avoid too much bulk.
Measure the length of your hackle feathers, 2-2,5 the
hook gape. Tie in both of the feathers just behind the hook of the eye. I tie
it onto the hook with an X winding which leaves the feathers in a 90 degrees angle
to the hook. I wrap the brown hackle first because of that I make sure that
that feather comes first. Cut excess when done.
Leave the thread where the body starts.
First wrap the brown feather, secure it with two
wraps, and don’t cut waste yet.
Now wrap the Grizzly feather, make sure that you hold
it quite hard and really work the feather through the brown hackle, and do not
end the feather at the same spot as the brown hackle that will give you
unnecessary bulk. Now make sure to spin your bobbin, we don’t want a flat
thread when working the thread through the hackle, which will mess up the
hackle. Now wrap your thread through the hackle, again a good tension on the
thread. When at the eye of the hook make two knots with your whip finisher.
Now work with the hackle, pull it too straight out
those irritating fibers. Cut of the ones who give you too much trouble.
Flick used lacquer to seal his quill bodies, I use UV
resin instead which gives me much better control, less smell and dries
instantly.
Now ready for the catch of your life..
