Brown Owl

[bobsmith]

In reply to Mr Wiltshire's Orange Partridge post of earlier. Here is a Brown Owl dressed on the new Partridge Classic Spider Hooks

[grannom]

HI Rob

That's more like it !!

Can I ask.... do you tie-in the hearl first, then the Owl followed by the body finishing off behind the hackle ???.

Grannom.

[bobsmith]

Hi Kenny,
Yes I whip-finish behind the hackle. You can't see the bump due to the angle that the picture was taken. There is a flat bit just behind the eye of the hook but that is just the **** peacock herl I used
Rob

[GuyFromLaw]

Now that's a bonnie wee beastie.

[caddisfan]

Great fly Bob !

I presume that is Pearsall's 6A ("new" lighter Gold) ? What did you use for hackle (I presume not tawny owl !) ?


Ordered some of those hooks from you today-similar to R50's (which I currently use) but seem to have a longer point which should be better. Will be crimping the barbs down on mine though.

Cheers,

Lindsay

[falsecast]

Also wanting to know the thread colour. The fly is simply beautiful

[bobsmith]

The hackle is in fact Tawny Owl
The silk is the old Pearsalls 6a, I have several old wooden spools of the stuff. The colour of the new stuff when you compare it to the old is actually not that bad. The modern Hot Orange is however hard to judge as I have a dozen spools of the stuff and there is a distinct colour change in them. This is probably due to a change in the dying process. Some of them seem to be pre decimalisation as the spool lengths are given in yards whilst others are given in metres.
On the fly, the herl head is tied in and wrapped first, then the hackle and finally the body is formed and the whip finish is behind the hackle. To flatten the bump from the whip finish behind the hackle I often untwist the silk so it lies flat and forms less bulk.

[caddisfan]

Thanks Bob. As long as Owl was road kill I suppose you are okay - they do get clobbered quite a bit. I got 6A from GAC and it looks like the colour you have there, a yellowy golden colour. I also got 6A elsewhere and it was a more brown/orange colour, hence my confusion.

Thanks for the tying sequence - I have done these and tied the herl in last so I will have to try it in reverse so to speak !

Cheers,

Lindsay

[North Country Angler]

That's nice Bob. And it's nice to see spiders being tied on proper bronze wire hooks instead of those infernal TMS B103s which people insist on using these days. I haven't tried these hooks but they look a lot like the Mustad R50s which I use - nice wire colour, round bend, maybe a fraction shorter in the shank?

I ran over a tawny owl one evening this summer. Came around a bend and there it was bolt upright in the middle of the road like a little statue. It was too late to avoid it so I made sure I got my wheels either side....but unfortunately it must have cracked its head on the underside of the chassis. Disappointingly it turned out to be a new fledgling - all fluff and dust, so I couldn't even make use of the corpse!

Nice tying!

Matt

[demon boy]

lovely we fly