Hi,

During my recent attempts to re-create a fly that my grandfather used to fish I had to tie a bunch of flies with married quill slips for wings. I really enjoyed this, and liked the results (after a bit of practice).

So, I thought I would tie up a Silver Doctor, simplified version. This is a trout fly version of the salmon fly pattern. The dressing is:
Tail : Golden Pheasant Crest overlaid with blue hackle fibres
Butt: red dubbing (seal's fur, wool, or dyed red rabbit dubbing as here)
body: flat silver tinsel
rib : silver wire
Throat : teal and blue fibres (I used white mallard breast instead of the teal)
Wing : (bottom up) red, blue, yellow, hen pheasant wing, with the coloured section being about a 1/3 of the wing height.



The next two are just free-style patterns. The first is a black gnat type variation:


And this is just an olive and yellow type thing:


I've only started back on playing with married wings again, and I really encourage anyone who is thinking about giving it a go. There's some tutorials here on FAOL that are really useful. Once you get the hang of tying in quill slip wings in the first place, building married wings really isn't that hard to do. The final fly, however, just can't help but have a classy look. And, many of these patterns are proven fish takers that are certainly worth having in the box.

- Jeff