prepare yourselves!
1 card of yarn
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? … earch.ebay
heres the currency conversion from www.xe.com
41.01 GBP
United Kingdom Pounds
1 GBP = 1.96516 USD
=
80.5911 USD
United States Dollars
1 USD = 0.508865 GBP
you can figure the shipping
It’s a bloody ridiculous price.
Frank Sawyer’s Killer Bug is a good fly for Grayling,
but no fly material is worth that price. The people who pay that kind of price for a card of darning wool are complete idiots.
It is a good but limited fly, there are others which do the job just as good. I’m sure a close approximation to the wool would work just as well.
Anyway I don’t believe in magic flies.
redacted google
All I have to do is ask myself if I would be proud to brag about my purchase.
Doug 
A quick search on the Killer Bug revesled this web site. [url=http://www.flyfishohio.com/Killer_Bug.htm:ee293]Killer Bug[/url:ee293]. Apparently Chadwicks 477 is a big deal. The author even mentions it by name.
The right yarn is the important thing. The original material was a Chadwick’s number 477 - if you find some on Ebay expect to pay as much or more as you would for a premium fly line! In truth, any good medium to dark gray yarn will work. I like 100% wool for its translucency and bugginess. One good skein of yarn will tie thousands of flies for about the price of a high-fat value meal.
Still a crazy amount of money for part of a ball of yarn.
yes the author does mention chadwicks, but in the next sentence, says that “any good medium to dark gray yarn will work”. I have used a copy of the original and it works, but I think it’s more due to the tying and the presentation rather than the exact material used.
What you have to remember is that when Frank Sawyer originally tied this fly, must be fifty years ago now, people were still darning woolen socks etc. and darning wool was available cheaply and in a large range of colours. What he did was to choose a shade that suited his idea and tried it. It worked , so he gave the precise make and colour in the recipe. There were several colours close to 477, and I am sure if he had tried one of them it would have been just as successful.
I believe any pinkish/grey/brown wool will work just as well. It was only because of Franks later status as the originator of the Pheasant tail nymph and stream keeper on an exclusive southern chalk stream that affected the obsession with Chadwicks 477. It is an excellent fly for catching grayling and a very good imitation of a maggot.
just checked the link in my first post. heres an update. its now up to 131.78 british pounds
131.78 GBP
United Kingdom Pounds
=
259.526 USD
United States Dollars
1 GBP = 1.96939 USD = 1 USD = 0.507771 GBP
for one card of wool to tie a grub/larva/maggot fly
Its about the colour of dryer lint dubbing.
Do you think we could sell Lint on E-BAY?? 8)
You could sell anything on E-Bay, the world is full of nutters and that applies to to whoever buys the card of darning wool.
When I was working, I used to travel all over Scotland to small country towns, I always went into the Haberdasheries when I saw them and had a look at anything available. This was in the late seventies, eighties and nineties, in the early says a lot of them had Chadwick’s darning wool, but never 477, it was out of production. I found quite a few colours that were pretty close. I also bought any other colour I fancied, all at very cheap prices, usually about $1.00 a card.
The elderly ladies who ran these shops often thought I had been very well trained to do my own sock darning :lol: They would say to me, “next time bring in the sock and I’ll see if I can match it”, I would then tell them what I was going to use the wool for, they would have a good laugh as they usually had a fisherman in their family.
I now have a large collection of Chadwick’s darning wool of various hues. They are worth exactly what I paid for them. They occasionally come in useful when tying old pattern flies.