Thursday, March 14, 2013

Shades of Claret

As an American fly tyer, I've begun to feel a bit cavalier in my attitude towards the various shades of claret especially compared to tyers in the U.K. and even more especially compared to Irish fly tyers.  Through my visits to www.salmonfishingforum.com (a largely U.K. populated forum), I'm gaining new appreciation claret's many nuances.

A recent post about claret on that forum motivated me to post a photo of 3 different capes I had dyed claret.  A salmonfishingforum friend, Kenny (kgm on that board, and a scotsman living in Ireland), took me gently to task, mentioning that true clarets couldn't be gotten from dyeing over pure white.
Here are the capes in question:


Well, Kenny took the bull by the horns and sent me 6 or 7 claret-dyed seal samples from Frankie McPhillips of Northern Ireland and Steve Cooper (www.cookshill-flytying.co.uk) .  Yikes, my claret is so vanilla compared to those samples.  I mean, the Irish take their claret (the fly tying kind, dunno how they feel about the wine with all that Guiness flowing about) very seriously. 

Being a fan of visual comparisons, and dying to use Bridget's new label-maker thingy, I decided to lay out some differences for us all.  To wit:

 

Photo taken in direct sunlight (rare occurence around here) with my old Kodak point and shoot.  The good news is, and definately as luck would have it, I'm pretty close to 3 of the clarets.  And they're probably the ones that count for me.  That black claret is some myserious concoction, I'd say.

Kenny sent me one new pack of Frankie McPhillips dubbing in Fiery Brown.  It's so cool for me to have it's just getting tacked up on the wall, unopened.


Of interest to me is how lacking the color claret is in (particularly) atlantic salmon flies tied for the Miramichi system.  In days gone by, flies like the Logie, with its body of dark claret floss, was in use on that river.  There's a photo in John E. Hutton's book Trout and Salmon Fishing (Little, Brown and Co., 1949) of hisownself sitting in a canoe on the Miramichi, playing a fish.  The caption reads: "...Fish hooked on No. 12 Logie."   But even the poor Logie has become "de-claretized".

In Kelson (1895), the Logie's body is listed as that dark claret floss.  Along comes Pryce-Tannatt (1914) and voila! the body becomes ruby red.  If you peruse that excellent purveyor of salmon fishing equipment W.W. Doak's catalog, there is not a single fly that appears to use claret anywhere on the fly.  (Thus endeth today's academic adventures)

All is not lost.  Great fly innovators like Bob Warren have used the claret-ish colors of the Golden Pheasant to very great effect.  His Golden Pheasant Spey is one of the most effective autumn patterns I've seen:


I dyed a GP skin claret, and kind of like the Golden Pheasant Spey even a little farther into the claret spectrum:


Of course, then I went totally overboard, claret-wise, when my wildflower garden was in bloom:


The Celtic Beauty was born with a claret throat, and continues to be dressed with claret in its iterations other than pure hairwing:



and the latest, inspired by landlocked salmon fishing buddy, John Miniaci:


Dyeing and playing with colors has become much of the fun of fly fishing for me.  I'm very happy to have acquaintances like Kenny helping me enjoy it even more.  Thanks for the color, Kenny!












16 comments:

  1. If you like that McPhillips dubbing, have a gander on ebay, i picked up three packets for about $5 shipped, in the colors 'cowdung' (you read that right), green olive and donegal blue!

    Nice visual post - great job on the dyeing. My claret GP will be resurrected this weekend for some new flies!

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    1. Eunan, thanks for that heads up...I just emailed McPhillips today to see if they would ship to the States. And thanks for the compliment on the blog as well!

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  2. I WILL put the claret to use that you sent and SOON! How could I NOT after a great blog entry like this? =P

    Great post, Gary!

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  3. A keeper of a post. Which dye dis you use on that GP Pheasant Skin!

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    1. It's the claret from FlyDye. Their web address is in one of my other posts about dyeing GP claret. Glad you enjoyed the post!

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  4. The original Golden Pheasant Spey Renate handed to me a buch of years ago did not have a claret hackle, it was a natural golden pheasant red breast feather and a yellow one for the middle section of the body separating the peach floss and copper tinsel body. Is the claret a variant of that pattern and have you used it on steelhead? Emmett

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    1. Yes, it is a variant, Emmett. Alas, no, I've never fished for steelhead, but I get orders for it from steelhead, often 12 flies at a time, so perhaps it works for them, too.

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    2. that's "orders from steelheadERs" Emmett; I get very few orders from steelhead themselves.

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  5. Claret is great, as a drink and a colour for Atlantic salmon and brown trout, on loch/lough and river.

    The claret was from both Frankie McPhillips and Steve Cooper(cookshill.co.uk) I'm glad you like them Gary, they are great variations of the one colour. We would often use 2,3 or four shades in the one fly to give the body a wee bit extra depth. Claret works very well with many other colours, yellow, orange, sunburst, blue, black, etc

    I can't believe that the famous Scottish low water summer Logie fly is devoid of claret on that side of the pond. Golden gp crest, claret and light/kingfisher blue, otherwise surely not the famous Logie. Also remember the true blue charm with the claret rather than black floss body, another classic.


    That golden pheasant spey in your post is very similar to a fly I use, which is a park shrimp with the black replaced by claret. Give it a go over there and see how it goes :-)

    The story about fiery brown is for another day, for now good luck on the claret....

    Good Luck

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    1. I forgot to mention the samples from www.cookshill.co.uk, Kenny...my bad! Thank you again for the wonderful gift of those colors...and I'll be tying up some "classic" Logies and trying out a Park Shrimp clad in claret!

      Oh, and from what I can see, fiery brown WILL be another whole lesson! Which is a good thing!

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  6. Gary, thanks for a very interesting and thoughtful post. I really enjoyed the Rusty Rat story as well. Keep up the good work!

    -Ben

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  7. If you can, read the book "A man may fish" by T C Kingmill Moore. A learned man, great fisherman and a great book.

    TCKM regards claret together with black, golden olive and gentian blue as the main colours when fishing the fly for trout and Salmon. From personal experience, I would not disagree with him ;-)

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    1. I'll look for the book today, Kenny, thanks for the heads up! Haven't spent any time with gentian blue.

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  8. Gary,

    You are a simply awesome fly tier and your research into claret is very interesting. I do think, however, that if you were to look in a westward direction you would also find some trout and steelhead flies, old and new, that use claret - Cummings Special is a very old steelhead fly, and there are many others. Current steelhead tiers are also far less constrained by existing patterns, so fool around with material to create flies that just appeal to them, including ones using claret. I have a fly with mixed claret and hot orange marabou that is one of my favorite color schemes for winter steelhead. Trout guys in the West also use claret leeches in lakes.

    Keep up the good work and keep one eye peeled toward the west!

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  9. Thank you very much for the kind words, and I will definately keep my eyes wide open for other patterns....eyes to the west!

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