Red Spider

[cholcomb13]

We've looked at Black, how about Red now....dun will have to wait....it's on backorder....I tied it in reverse...butt first near the eye and palmered hackle to about the middle of the shaft I then wound the thread back through the hackle to the eye

Stewart's Red Spider

[Donald Nicolson]

A good Red Spider, what did you use for the hackle?

[cholcomb13]

Donald, I used brown hen neck hackle (color is really almost furnace)...however, you can really see the thread as I went back through the hackle...first one looks more uniform where the second .... although, I don't think the fish will be able to tell

[Donald Nicolson]

That is as good as anything, Stewart spiders always look a bit scruffy, that is the way I do them to.
Nowadays here in the UK, the landrail, or corncrake to give it the old country name, is a protected bird as it is reduced to the outer Hebrides. There is still a very traditional and old time way of farming there that exists nowhere else in the UK.
Veniards until very recently sold a substitute for landrail, it was a brown dyed starling which worked very well. I have a skin among my
materials somewhere. What would we do without starlings, Skues himself praised the starling as a most useful bird to the fly dresser.
From Skues**Starling. - This bird is the fly dresser?s stand-by, and if he had only one bird to rely on all the year round he would chose the starling without hesitation. The birds usefulness begins early in life. When his plumes are just out, and he is leaving the nest, he is a delicate dull brown dun in hue, and then his wing feathers, primary and secondary, afford lovely pale wings for flies of all sorts. As he grows older the colour of the wings darkens, and in an old bird the fibres become very dark indeed. The wings are often dyed in onion and other olive dyes.

A large range of colour is thus obtained. The hackles from underneath the wing, both of young bird and old, are used as substitutes for the dotterel hackle, though not considered equal to it. There are numerous feathers about the body and wings tipped with yellow which make beautiful glossy green black hackles, and in the cockbird the neck hackles have a purple black metallic hue at the back of the neck, and a greenish metallic hue under the throat, and are long and shapely. The short side of the secondaries of this bird is used in Scotland to dress the well-known Tweedside pattern, the White Tip, so called because of the pale yellowish tip to each wing. The tail, with a soft brownish edge, wings the female Black Gnat. The quills of the primaries and secondaries stripped off make good bodies, dyed or undyed.

[cholcomb13]

so true....I'm learning so much about the many uses of starling....although, I've only used them on the black spiders top notch skins here in the US are relatively inexpensive.

[hcmiller]

Thats a pretty fly, I like the first one. Is that a scud hook?

[Ron Eagle Elk]

Casey,

Nice looking red spider. myself, I prefer those that have the scruffy appearance to those neratly tied. They seem to get eaten by more fish.

REE

[cholcomb13]

Thanks....bud it's a wet fly hook 2x short 2x heavy sproat bend...1st pic is a 14, 2nd is a 16

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

I like these ones as well. I think we're getting a nice collection of the Stewart patterns here.

And, I agree that starlings provide very useful hackles. I've found similar "metalic green hues" on feathers found on a furnace dry fly cape. The feathers underneath the ones you would use for dry flies can be entirely "web", and are just the dark centre strip. These feathers have a green sheen to them as well, and work really well as soft hackles.

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Hi,
Ok, here's my version. The only hackle I had that's close to a decent colour for this is some rooster hackle, so the fibers are a bit thin looking. I waxed the thread as well, just to see how it would turn out. This is a size 14.



- Jeff