1960s South Platte Brassie

[Normand]

hook: your favorite
body: copper wire
head: black heat shrink tubing

On the South Platte River in Colorado, Gene Lynch, Ken Chandler & Tug Davenport collaborated to create the South Platte Brassie.

The original Brassie tied in the 1960s has a copper wire body and a short piece of black heat shrink tubing for its head.

Brassies sold in the 1960s were packaged in gelatin pill capsules to keep the copper wire from oxidizing.

Reference: Tying Small Flies by Ed Engle (Chapter Five - Wired)

[Buddy Sanders]

Normand,

Been gone, so I don't know....Are you tying all of these to show us? If so or no, thank you for your efforts.

I really like this fly. Simple and I have some places where it will be very effective. I really like simple flies.

Thanks,

Buddy

[chewydog]

I still tie and fish a variation of this fly.

[Joe Billingsley]

It seems like I read somewhere (from Scott Sanchez, maybe?) that it was by pure accident that this fly came to be. Lynch used the copper wire as an underbody on some of his other nymphs for weight and mistakenly threw some of the unfinished flies in his fly box. He was having trouble getting his flies deep enough one day, tied on a copper wire wrapped hook to merely add weight to his tippet to get his "real" fly deeper, and caught a few nice fish on it. Thus, the Brassie was born.
True or not, it makes a good story!

Joe

[Normand]

yup theres always more than one story

http://books.google.com/books?id=_aT...rassie&f=false