Hi everyone.

Last week I was down at the local fly and picked up a number of colours of bucktail. When I first started tying flies, I didn't have any red quill feathers to tye up some Parmachene Belle's, so I tied a few bucktail style, but used hackle fibres instead of bucktail. These were fairly small, size 14 type things. Anyway, on my last fishing trip, I tied one of these early flies of mine on and it caught a few fish. Since it had been slow up until that point, I was quite pleased. So, I decided I would tie a few more patterns up, hence my latest purchase.

Now, I got to thinking of when I was a kid and the flies my grandfather used and recommended. He was a big fan of the Parmachene Belle, though he just called it a "P-Belle". He also liked a "P-Beau". Now, my memory of the P-Beau is different from the pattern I see on the net (which is a Parmachene Belle with an peacock herl but and junglecock eyes). What I recall, and this could be entirely a false memory, is that the wing of the P-Beau was red-white-red, rather than white-red-white as for the P-Belle. Also, and this is more vauge, but I seem to recall it being a silver bodied fly rather than yellow.

Anyway, here's a bucktail version of what I recall:


If anyone knows what this is called, please let me know!

For comparison, here's the P-Belle:


The Parmachene Belle is an excellent Brook Trout fly, very popular back in Nova Scotia (and probably the North East of the USA as well). 100 years ago, the book "The Tent Dwellers" was written, and this told the story of a fishing trip to the wilds of Nova Scotia. The Parmachene Belle is one of the flies mentioned.

Also mentioned was the Jenny Lind. Jenny Lind was an opera singer who made quite a splash back in the 1800s or early 1900s. A Mrs. O'Connel from Halifax designed this fly and named it after her.


The Jerry Madiddler isn't really a married wing pattern. Rather, it's normally a mottled turkey wing with small slips of red swan tied in along side. However, I figured I would try a version of that as well. There's a wee bit of red burried under the brown bucktail, honest!


- Jeff