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Lunn's Particular
Text and photos by Luca Montanari

The sunset hours of a warm summer evening generally represent the magical moment for many fly anglers, especially for those who use floating imitations. When the temperature sinks, a myriad of bugs leave the places of diurnal rest to begin the rituals of their wedding and the deposition of their eggs. Ephemeras, Trichopteras and Plecopteras assemble together in large groups on the banks or the surface of the river, beginning a dance that does not fail to excite the trout and grayling, inducing them to rise in order to catch the small animals which lie on the surface. Sometimes it may seem that the entire river is "boiling." The more hungry fish can make their rises to an un-restrainable rhythm.

To catch similar adversaries, however, we must involve ourselves in a quite demanding job. Despite the scarce visibility and the abundance of food, the trout does not seem to reduce its suspiciousness or attention in choosing the single prey. Indeed, the situation in which the fish shows to be more selective is often the one that takes place in the darker hours of the day. This will frequently lead to the defeat of the angler, who is incapable of identifying which insect is really interesting for the trout and then choose an appropriate imitation.

Considering that it's quite often Ephemeras that will allure the fish in such circumstances, and in particular spinner-stage insects that are floating on the surface, the fisherman can put his confidence in a classic with proved effectiveness, flies such as Lunn' s Particular.

This fly was born around 1930 in England and became one of the best artificials for fishing on the river Test. Thanks to its ability to reproduce the shape and the particular colour shadings of the Ephemerella ignita and of some species of Baetis (Ephemeras that become reddish in the last phase of their existence), it can be used in many different situations, helping us, in some cases, to attract the bigger and shrewder trout.

Materials List:

    Hook:   Partridge E1A size No.16 to No.14.

    Thread:   Red.

    Tail:   Fibres of a natural red neck hackle.

    Body:   Stem of a natural red neck hackle.

    Wings:   The tips of two blue dun neck hackles.

    Hackle:   Natural red neck hackle.

Instructions - Lunn's Particular:

    1. I take the first step of the building process of the Lunn's Particular by fixing the hook into the vice jaw and tie in the red thread on its shank. This thread I use for nailing, over the bend, a tuft of fibres stripped off from a large natural red hackle. The tails so created must have a length approximately equivalent to the hook shank.

    2. By removing all the fibres that cover the same hackle that supplied me the material for the tails, I gain a clean stem for the creation of the body.

    3. I place the lower extremity of the hackle stem over the two rear thirds of the hook shank and I stop it with tightened wraps of thread.

    4. Wrapping the stem along the hook portion covered by the red thread, I now make the abdomen of my imitation.

    5. From a blue dun neck, I choose the tips of two wide hackles and I place them over the middle section of the hook interposed between the eye and the body, giving them a "V" shape with crossed turns of thread. These wings must be long, nearly the double of the abdomen. Next, I select, from a natural red neck, two hackles that have the fibres as long as the hook shank and I tie them in front of the body.

    6. Using a hackle plier on each hackle, one after the other, I wrap the two hackles around the front part of the hook, passing them behind and in front of the wing structure to create a fluffy collar.

    7. Next I cut off the surplus of the hackles and I create the fly head with some turns of the red thread, which is then finished with a whip-finish.

    8. A light layer of glue uniformly distributed over the head will prevent the thread from untying itself, increasing the resistance of the Lunn's Particular .

    9. My imitation can now be introduced into the fly box, ready to be used during a summer evening, when I see a good swarm of reddish Ephemeras on the river surface. ~ Luca Montanari

Credits: This fly is from a collection of flies produced for the Partridge of Redditch Limited website. We thank them for use permission.

Lunn's Particular is one of the 86 flies described in Luca's recent book entitled Flies - Mosche da pesca. To get more information about it click HERE, or send an e-mail to libri@edolimpia.it . Although it's written in Italian, it should be interesting to many fly tiers due to the many excellent photographs.

For more great flies, check out: Beginning Fly Tying, Intermediate Fly Tying and Advanced Fly Tying.