On such a simple fly I was surprised to see that while the front hackle is white and the rear one brown there are some descriptions on the web that show them reversed. It was my recall that the front one was white for visibility by the caster’s since that would be the end of the fly facing the caster. Is the suggested reversal of hackles an error or is there a demonstrated reason for the change ? Thanks for comments.
Ray;
I wouldn’t, really, call swapping the hackles end for end color wise “an error”, it’s more like "another tier’s idea/concept of what they think/want, the fly to look like.
There isn’t a pattern to be had, associated with this fun and mad obsession of ours, that hasn’t been altered, changed, redone, rethought and retied in some manner or another. I’ve seen “The Adams” tied with blue floss for a body and the tier responsible simply calls it “An Adams”, even though it’s not even close to the original pattern.
“The Fore and Aft”, another Renegade “spin off”, I’ve also seen labeled “A Renegade” not a Fore and Aft.
Many, many, tiers will claim that they’ve tied; “A true, replication of a Tup’s Indispensable” but VERY FEW have actually obtained one of that fly’s true and original needed materials to make it “authentic to the original pattern recipe”… “Urine stained pink, hairs from the scrotum of a male mountain sheep”.
I don’t think the swapping of hackle colors, on a Renegade is much more than another tier’s version of “The way that I see it”!??!
Urine stained pink, hairs from the scrotum of a male mountain sheep?
The recipes I googled called for the hair from just a ram, not a Mountain Sheep. Do they have Mountain Sheep in England?
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/oldflies/part244.php
http://users.cybercity.dk/~bcc25154/Web/tup’s_indispensable.htm
I agree with all that you say but it would be fair if those tying variations of patterns considered an old time standard would just add a word like “variation” to their title. I’m assuming they would know what the standard really called for. (Just call me cranky.)
Ray -
Two points:
(1) you are cranky; and
(2) your suggestion would lead to the word “variation” being the most used word in the English language !!!
John