I don’t ever tie Mary Orvis Marbury style flies, but they are beautiful fly patterns. Probably my favorite M.O.M. fly is the Cracker. Mary describes the fly as “A fly with a record, and evolved by most careful study and experiment. It is intended for the coast and river fishes of Florida, and is named after the natives of that State, the “pore whites”. The pattern was created by Dr. George Trowbridge way back in the year 1888.
One of the questions I had about tying the Cracker, is the goose wing in multiple colors. Mike Boyer is a skilled classic fly tyer and he was nice enough to answer that question for me. They are called “Married Wings”. The Cracker that I posted here is his work. Mike has a very nice website, so check it out.
To learn how to tie married wings I searched and found some information that explained it quite well. Davie McPhail who is known as one of the best tyers in Eurpoe has a great video on how to put together married wings. The other trick is tying them on after putting them together. I found a good tutorial at the Classic Fly Tying forum posted by Bud Guidry, with photos included, that helps with that.
Hopefully this will save someone some time when wanting to learn to tie married wings. I hope to follow this post up some day when I tie my own Cracker.
