Hi,

Ok, from time to time I've posted about some old flies that I used to fish as a kid with my Grandfather. One was the Parmachene Belle (often called a Par-Belle or even just P-Belle) the other we called a "P-Beau", but I realise that is not the correct name for the pattern.

Anyway, I had forgotten what the pattern for the mystery fly was, I just remembered it as being redder than the P-Belle. Chatting over the internet with me in New Zealand and my brother in Nova Scotia, we recovered what we thought it looked like (in short, a P-Belle with a red body rather than a yellow one). We were close actually.

Since comming home, I've had a scrounge through my Grandfather's old fishing gear and found examples of both flies. I usually tie wee wets with quite sparse beards, throats, or "false hackles" (all different names for the same thing - tying in a clump of fibres underneath the hook). What I've noticed about these is that they were tied with full collar hackles, and the wings are placed over top of the upper half of the hackle. This creates a neat shroud around the body, an effect that I now remember and realise this is why my own "P-Belles" never quite looked "right" to me.

Anyway, trying to recreate this look has been driving me bonkers. If I tie the hackle full enough, getting the wings to sit properly overtop the hackle is a nightmare, and if I use less hackle so the wings will set, then the shroud effect isn't created because the hackle is too sparse! What I've resorted to is to wrapp the full hackle, then pull the top half down and under. This fills out the hackle underneath, and allows me to sit the wing on top. It's not quite the same, but ok for now.

Sorry for the poor quality photos. I've not found a good location to take photo's yet.

Here's an "original P-Belle":


And here's my cheat version:


And here's an original "misnamed P-Beau":


And here's my cheat version: (I don't have any jungle cock at the moment)


All of these have been tied on size 8 hooks, which are much bigger than what I'm used to using. I usually fish size 12s and 14s, with size 10s being my "large flies". These look monstrous to me, and the hackles also look huge to what I usually tie, but because of these differences I think they should be fun to fish. I've tied up a bunch of flies using this pull under hackle technique now so I'm developing a box of large full figured flies.

- Jeff