Many years ago I tied up some spiders to try out.
They were made of a pair of dry hackles wound on the hook face to face with the hackle tips cemented together.They were about nickel to quarter size.
They were made to be skated across the surface with your rod tip held as high as you could get it. Maybe in a bit of a breeze.
The trout went NUTZ over them.
Unfortunetly I never hooked a single one of them. The hook point was too close to the hackle tips which acted like a weed guard keeping the fish from ever catching steel.

[This message has been edited by dudley (edited 21 November 2005).]