Lady Caroline (Kelson)

[eunanhendron]

This is my first whack at this style of fly.
Hook is a Blue Heron #3. I don't have any blind eye hooks i thought were up to the job (long and low).

Pretty happy overall, though I wish my BEP had been longer, as i ran out of hackle on the stem. this was the longest hackle i had, started at at the second turn rather than the tail and i still only got three wraps on this hook.

Made my own dubbing for the fly, from berlin wool i dyed myself, then blended. I think the colors could be darker, particularly the olive, which is something i will likely work on achieving.

Apart from the glaring hole at the head where there should be some hackle, as well as the broken mallard, i'm pretty happy.

Eunan

 

[whheff]

Very nice!!
I will gladly take all the misfit flies you have.

 

[turkey]

Nice Eunan. I always find that setting the BM wings is the biggest challenge on these. You're right about the BEP not giving up many turns on the body too. John Shewey shows a technique in one of his books for using 2 hackles consecutively on the body to get more turns tied on. Personally I like using burnt schlappen. Its not as pretty as BEP but the stems are long. Again, nice work.

 

[Maurice]

I remember in I think it was Flytyer magazine in the 90's the correlation of salmon flies to crayfish. Meaning they are tied to represent crayfish or their silhouettes. They had on the cover or in the story (I forget) a salmon fly and a ghosted drawing of a crayfish scooting next to it. There was an eerie resemblance. Since then I have tied them together in my mind.

This fly sure does remind me of that correlation.

 

[sandfly]

spey type flies (lady Caroline) were tied to imitate shrimp not crayfish.

 

[Chaz]

Looks like a baby brookie to me, therefore it would be a good fly to try out on brookie streams.