My goodness! Have you ever seen a three masted sailing ship afloat. I was mesmerized when I put this fly on a smooth stretch of water and watched it get tickled by the currents. It flirted and flitted along for a distance and brought a trout from 5 feet of water! Wop, it hit it. More fish followed.
It’s a Preska Sedge. A product of Theo Preskaviec. The fly rewarded me after I read about it in Charles Ritz’s book, A Fly Fisher’s Life in the 1970’s. I still pull it out and give it a shot over deep water once in awhile.
Preskaviec owned a fly shop outside Paris in the 30’s. I have never found a whole lot of information of him, but he did influence me, he put forth the idea that soft hackle floated the dry fly better than the stiff cock hackles being so often recommended by the current thinking. Some of my caddis fly imitations have since had a combination of both stiff hackle and a face of soft hackle. They have worked great for me.
An older, vintage fly, but it’s worth your consideration.
Quote from: Fishbiscuit on July 16, 2008, 01:56:06 PM
Old pattern. Hey Gang, I was lucky enough to get hold of an old Wheatley fly box on E-bay recently and it had some great old patterns in it. I need help with this one. It’s really a pretty thing,wings done kind of like a Hornberg but I’m pretty sure they are Partridge. Nice brown hackle, maybe furnace, a amber or dark orange body ,looks like heavy thread, not dubbing. Looks like dark brown thread for ribbing which is coming unraveled. Tied on a nice old fashioned hook with an upturned eye. I don,t want to take this one apart to reverse engineer it, but I would sure love to tie it. Do any of you know what it is and what the pattern might be. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, and keep on tyin, Fishbiscuit
Fishbiscuit I think I solve your mystery. I recently found an English Fly book entitled Trout Fly Pattern; An International Guide to 300 flies, by Taff Price (ISBN# 0 600 61339 9)
The Book calls it a Preska Sedge
It is French and first tied in the 1940’s by T. Prescawiec
tied on a 10-14 hook
wing brown mallard breast feathers tied tent style either side of hook
As best as I can explain, The Preska is a style of tying, so basically the patterns are not rigid and are the tiers choice. I think what you are after here is the form of the fly that Preskaviec developed for his clients. You have a tented wing of a body feather, a body ribbed with either gold or silver tinsel, and a standard wrap of hackle.
The fly I tied that you see in my first post goes as follows:
The darkest dubbing from a hare’s ear ribbed with gold mylar tinsel to form a kinda robust body.
2 matched pheasant rump feathers, a hook length long, tented over the body.
Brown hackle for the collar.
Here is page 92 from my source “A FlyFishers life” by Charles (don’t call me Charlie) Ritz. Fig. 50 shows a drawing of the form of the Preska Sedge, and next to the first star at the top of the page you will find some material suggestions for the flies which Ritz preferred.
Thanks Hairwing and Normand! I’m itching to hit the fly shop on my lunch hour tomorrow to pick up a few items so that I can tie this and a few other patterns, but this will be in the vise Monday night. Thanks for sharing!
