For all us “soft hacklers”, that really enjoy tying and fishing soft hackle flies and also enjoy reading S.Nemes’s books on the same topic, here’s s link
worth checking out, if you’d like to see Nemes tying up the “Tup’s Indispensable” soft hackle wet fly!
http://www.midcurrent.com/video/clips/twf_indispensible.aspx
Thanks Paul,
I have S Nemes’ book, The Soft Hackle Fly and Tiny Soft Hackles. I do like soft hackle Flys.
Thanks for posting that.
Hook: 16.
Thread: Yellow.
Tail: Heavily Yellow/red -spangled lightish-blue cock hackle fibres.
Body: Mixed ?white? fur from a ram’s testicles, this is usually stained with urine, dye, and other things, and is a bright yellow colour when washed, unless it has been tainted with sheep dye! * lemon-coloured fur from a spaniel, cream seal’s fur and a small amount of yellow mohair. A small tip of yellow tying thread is exposed at the rear of the body.
Hackle: Heavily Yellow/red -spangled ( rusty blue dun )lightish-blue cock.
Note: Skues suggested replacing the yellow mohair with crimson seal’s fur which resulted in the “pink” colour. Austin followed this suggestion.
As a substitute, light mixed tan hare?s mask blended with light yellow and red mohair is OK. The fly in the picture is an ?original? dressed by Austin?s daughter, although it does not look much like the recipe described. Many Tup?s Indispensables are dressed with bright pink single colour dubbing. They are less effective than the original. The ingredients are not so massively important, but the mixed dubbing is.
The fly in the photo has been treated with floatant, is dressed a little chubby, the hackle is not ?blue?and the ?spangles? on the hackle are not visible. Such spangled blue hackles, referred to as ?rusty blue dun? are very rare in any case. I have not seen any for a long time, apart from a few I have in my collection, and it is most unlikely that many are available anywhere. The original material for this fly was urine and dye stained wool taken from a ram’s testicles mixed with lemon coloured fur from a spaniel and a little yellow mohair, replaced later with crimson seal’s fur.
About Tup’s: This unusual dubbing material originated from a dubbing described by Alexander Mackintosh in his book, The Driffield Angler, in 1806. It was used in his Green Drake pattern and described as “a little fine wool from the ram’s testicles, which is a beautiful yellow.” The word “tup” refers to a ram that hasn’t been castrated. The material used by Austin was obtained from a local slaughterhouse. He did not chase wild rams around the countryside!
Although G. E. M. Skues put a name to the Tup’s Indispensable, ( as a joke, because the source of one of the main ingredients is indispensable to the tup!) the fly was actually created by R.S. Austin in 1900. It represented a female Olive called the Red Spinner.
Austin’s dubbing ingredients for the body were kept secret so that he could maintain a monopoly on it. The secret continued for 20 years after his death in 1914, so his daughter could maintain the monopoly. It wasn’t until 1934 that the secret was revealed.
The fly is often dressed as a wet fly using blue dun hen hackle, but honey dun hen hackle is more accurate, and the fly is very much more effective as a wet fly, “spider”, or “soft hackle”, when dressed with golden plover hackle. This not only looks more like the original, it is very much more deadly when olive spinners are extant.
*Sheep farmers used a special dye on their rams, so that when a ram ?tupped? a ewe, it left evidence in the form of a dye mark on the ewes back. Such ewes could then be separated from the flock. Various dyes were used. So if you obtain ram?s testicles and the hair is bright pink or blue, or green, this is because the farmer used such a dye. Many farmers keep large numbers of free ranging sheep on the North York Moors, and these are also dyed for other purposes, identification, and after they have been dipped. Sheep are ?dipped?, which means sending them through a bath of various chemicals in order to kill various parasites. After dipping they are marked with a dye so the farmer knows they have been dipped. These dyes all wear off more or less quickly. Visitors to the moors are always asking why the sheep and rams are dyed, and some locals take great pleasure in telling them various fairy stories!
TL
MC
My Gawd I love the history of this sport. Thank you, Mike, for the enlightening post. Paul, thanks for posting the link for the Syl Nemes video.
REE
PS, I used a reddish dye on the ram I had on the farm. The system worked well. Never thought to clip his private parts for dubbing though. He had a very nasty temper.
PS.- The floatant on this specific fly is liquid paraffin. ( An Alkane known as Kerosene in America, Australia and New Zealand) which was used very widely and almost exclusively as dry fly floatant ( water proofing agent) for quite a long time. It has severe disadvantages, not least the oily rings it leaves on the water, and it discolours silk and various other things permanently. Bright yellow silk treated with paraffin turns dark olive. Refining techniques were also not particularly efficient at the time, and such paraffins were not “clear”, and also smelled strongly.
(This fly is 75 years old, but the discolouration from the paraffin is still evident, although no smell is discernible. The various volatile molecules have long since evaporated, although the silk shows no signs of rotting, a result of the impregnation with heavier oil molecules, and I keep these flies in carefully sealed boxes).
Unwaxed silk wet flies of the same and older periods have more or less disintegrated in the meantime.
The various breeds of poultry which produced the natural rusty duns, among a number of others, were never common, and are now extremely rare.
Austin?s daughter also used the next best thing she had, and this was a dun/ginger hackle, not a blue dun! I have no idea what she used as dubbing on this fly, but certainly not her father?s original dubbing, as I dissected its twin over forty years ago, and there was neither ram?s testicle hair nor spaniel hair in it! It was mostly yellow mohair, and badly dyed crimson seal fur, which is why the whole thing looks pink, the dye from the seal?s fur coloured the mohair. Although the flies are waterproof when treated as described above ( at least for a while), the alcohols, alkanes, etc will also transport dye quite well, especially when in close proximity over time, and this is what has happened to the above fly. In the meantime, the dubbing has all “gone pink”.
TL
MC