POSTED ON BEHALF OF CASTALINE

Castaline inherited an assortment of flyfishing tackle from a relative, which has largely been unused until we both decided to take the sport up this year.

On sorting through the flies, he came across this rig/arrangement which looks a bit of a vicious curio. Can anyone shed any light on it? I can only guess it might be a pike fly of some kind.
The whole arrangement is perhaps 1.5 inches long.

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Around the steel no tortur'd worm shall twine,
No blood of living insect stain my line;
Let me, less cruel, cast feather'd hook,
With pliant rod athwart the pebbled brook,
Silent along the mazy margin stray,
And with fur-wrought fly delude the prey

Looks a little like an Alexandra variant. For estuary seatrout maybe?

It is an Alexandra "terror" or "demon", a multi hooked fly. Usually used for sea trout in the sea.
I'm never sure if the three hook ones are terrors or demons or whether the names can apply to either.

Andy

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Alexandra right enough. Whatever happened to them then? Not fished with an Alexandra since I was a teenager. Regulary used in Scotland though in lochs as a trout fly at one time. An Alexandra on the bob on a wet fly cast was a killer.

Don't give much for its chances of swimming straight either! A pretty nasty tying but some 'terrors' were pretty effective and not too far away from the Falkus sunk lure.

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A two-hook version used to be my "go to" fly and I used to slaughter the trout at Chew with one of these in the early season, they do swim OK and I also got a 3.5lb perch on one.

One serious word of warning is to keep checking the link between the back hook and the front. I lost a brown trout of at least 10lbs that departed with the back hook! You always learn the hard way in fishing.

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Thanks for the info chaps!
I thought somebody on here might know what it is!
As codenamemilo says, I found this fly amongst my late uncle's fly boxes, which had been sitting there gathering dust since 1979.
I don't think I'll ever bother using it, as the 30 year old hooks are looking a bit pitted, and not to be trusted...

Might stick it in me hat, though!

Thanks again; cheers, Castaline

Had my best brown last season on one. A beautiful 5Lb fish from Lough Inchiquin. Size 12, fished on the point.

Don't discount these old boys!

looks like that old loch leven fly called a mary ann

Might be a variant of the Mary Ann.

The original was gold tinsel on the bodies, orange hackle on the front fly and green sword peacock herl over the lot.

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