This year ive caught a fair few broonies on a butcher with the wings cut off .
After you cut the wings off it looks like a spider pattern . Anybody else cut bits off flies ?
Now that ive started tying ( poorly ) im hopefully going to tie a few butchers without wings for next season . An old bloke I spoke to on my last outing said after cutting the wings off my butchers they looked like a fly from years ago called the " priest " anybody heard of it ?.

The 'priest' , 14-16,red ibis tag or red wool sub, silver body,oval rib and a badger hackle. Often used in coloured water for grayling.

I've often cut the underside hackle off a sherry spinner, sits nice and flat on the surface....

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Duncan

Yes - all the time: Trim the hackles on a dry fly from below to lower the profile; trim above and below to make it into a spinner; trim all the hackle and the wing (leave varying lengths of stub) to make it into a nymph; leave the hackle and remove the tails to make it into an emerger........... to mention just a few

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Vulgata (formerly fishgb - AKA Gary Bell) Dorchester, Dorset.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"

why oh why do we tie so many flies then ,the answer is because we love to.....

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dont you just love nature

Somone I used to fish with used to catch a good few on the priest.

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Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

If you make big, bushy dry flies for dapping, try cutting off the hackle barbs that hang below the hook shank of these 'shaving brushes'. I call these 'shave-belly' sedges, and they dap better because the palmered hackle doesn't mask the hook points; while they sit nicely on the water and fish really well after dark on summer nights; but have to be fished on a short line for best effect when after river trout.
BTW, the Loch Ordie dapping fly had to have a flying treble attached to improve hooking, because it was a very poor copy of an original dry fly that had a big hackle wound around a small hook shank. It was nothing like the fly that provoked it's tying. I think it would be better given the shaving treament.
One day I'll tell the story of what I think was it's evolution. TC

I tie most of my marabou tailed mini lures, tadpoles, lure patterns etc with extra long tails, because you can always pinch the tail shorter whilst fishing (eg at some fisheries where C&R'd fish wise up and take to tail-nipping), but you can't make it longer!

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Terry, I'd be interested to hear your account of that. I've read and heard various explanations of the derivation of the Loch Ordie. I tend towards that which that great advocate of the fly, Sidney Spencer, told me many, many years ago and which he recounted in 'Ways of Fishing' but I am sure that there are other versions.

I agree with your suggestion of a close shave for this fly and now do so when tying it, certainly around the hook point. I've also abandoned the flying treble, which is nothing but a nuisance because it regularly tangles with the leader. With the improvement of fine-wire modern hooks and their superior hooking power I am sure Sidney would have done so as well

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Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once - Lee Wulff

That would be John Neville's "Clipped Butcher". Cut the wings and throat hackle down to little black stumps, a deadly buzzer from the '60s.

richard

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Who resides on the right bank of the Derbyshire Wye and is lulled to sleep each night by the mutterings of a weir, dreaming that "When the rivers and their inhabitants come first, we ALL win..."

aye most flies are a little over dressed for my liking these days a lot of them need the snip here and there.
ive also started to simplifly a lot of my fly patterns, to make tying quicker and reduce some of the 'fuss' about the flies- some things just arnt necessary. one thing ive especially been doing is getting rid of the rib, instead just use a wrap of thread if needed.
the more you add to a fly, atleast you would think, that you are adding more triggers. however are these really necessary??? i rekon alot of patterns could be improved by being a little more 'minimalistic'.
and theres no harm in experimenting!!!!!!!!!!!