This fly came about after I tied the Eastern Sunset. I felt on an artistic roll, and decided to break out the big 8/0 4.5 inch hook I’ve had stashed away for over a year.
Truth be told, I had a completely different idea for this hook, which I kind of started out on, but it soon morphed to what you see before you. The already started fly is pictured (below) with a 3/0 hook, similar to that on which I tied the Eastern Sunset.
You’ll notice from the final fly, and the earlier pictures that I changed the tail. This was to complement the tail veiling, Amherst tippets flanked by smaller jungle cock nails. The early tail was just a Golden crest, but I soon switched it out to an Amherst crest. You might even see the very tip of the tail is banded like the Amherst tippets; I thought this was cool. The jungle cock, as you will see, ended up being a running theme through out the whole fly. Perhaps the only section that doesn’t fit with the rest of the fly is the white floss with blue rib This was a transition section, and I wanted it to be a bit different. White floss and blue tinsel are not often seen on flies. Soon after tying this part, the fly began to morph to its current form. There is also a fine gold tinsel rib leading the blue tinsel.
The copper tinsel section, is again another feature not often evident in classic flies, and I went with embossed tinsel to futher enhance the appearance. This is the beginning of the metamorphosis from what I had intended to what came out. The tippets veiling this section are from an Am-Gold pheasant, as are the crests (light coloration) veiling both sets of tippets. At this point I started to see more of a color theme forming, so I went with Jungle cock cheeks for the tippets, and an orange herl butt.
Keeping the jungle cock theme was something I did on a whim. The Chatterer fly (Traherne) is a fly I’ve long wanted to tie, but never really gave it a shot. That fly has chatterer, or more often these days, Kingfisher feathers, tied along the body. I’ve seen other artistic flies using Jungle Cock, so I decided to give it a try. It work out ok. There is a black floss body under the jungle cock body. For the most part all are in the right place, except one or two. I’ll let you try to figure out which ones are not up to scratch. Veiling this section we have back to back Jungle Cock nails, surrounded by dark Am-Gold crests, and butted with black ostrich.
The last body section is simply orange floss, with two tinsel ribs. Between them is an experimental rib I wanted to try. Orignally I wanted to have a very bushy and almost ‘mohair mane’ like rib, but that didn’t quite work out, so instead it ended up a more compact rib threaded between the tinsels – it is a hand blended mix of yellow and orange mohair in the ratio of approx 2.5 yellow : 1 orange. Hackle here is blue eared pheasant.
Finally the front wings. These are comprised of back to back spear shaped Jungle cock. There was literally only two pairs of those shaped nails on the cape so everything worked out well in that regard – i.e. I didn’t screw up any of them. The married wings are custom dyed sunburst goose shoulder with kori bustard. Cheeks are jungle cock. I decided to forego toppings over as the head was already pretty bulky and I didnt want to ruin the wings, an easy thing to do with toppings. Head is black thread varnished to a high gloss finish.
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Wow!!!!! That is a beautiful fly! Show us some more when you get time.