RED SPINNER - yesterday and today

RED SPINNER - yesterday and today

             Looking at the history of this fly, I should start with the proverbial that „already in antiquity...”, well, because Aelianus, etc... However, let's spare ourselves such deep backward divagations and limit ourselves only to modern times.

      This fly, in its current „cut” and appearance, appeared in the boxes of fly fishermen as early as the 19th century. Its first solutions were based on a red thread and a brown cockle - so to speak briefly. Among the numerous aberrations of the designs, it is worth quoting at the outset an opinion from the book by J. Rozwadowski, known to all: „Red Spinner -...- educated form (two varieties). Fly very good for the whole season. Thorax of dark-black floret silk, (strongly twisted silk or man-made fiber yarn, specially woven, with warp threads crossing each other in two or more - my note), interlaced with gold thread; tail of two black bristles; legs of brown cockerel feathers; wings of breast feathers more or less brown gray-striped wild duck.”. The content contained therein the author probably took from seeing and using the British (or perhaps German?) prototypes, which in his time (early 20th century) were available for purchase in the famous store of the no less famous Drobner at Szczepanski Square in Krakow.

Further noteworthy wet Red Spinner readers can view for themselves in this gallery as „Muskies from the British Isles (Hardy, Milward, Allcock) - from the private collection of the late Andrew Fox, from the 1930s”.

History flytying / Muskies from the British Isles( Hardy, Milward, Allcock)

            There we find several solutions of the time. I also can't refuse to present my very old copy of the Red Spinner, (remembering the times of J. Rozwadowski, I think). The fly was made on a #10 hook of the famous Limerick cut without an eyelet, on a leader of natural silk, (out of sheer curiosity I measured its diameter - it came out 0.32 mm). So everything points to the fact that it is a ready-made wet fly jumper. And that as much as 0.32 mm ? The answer is simple: as my long-deceased friend Tadeusz B. used to say. - „thick stands better”. And I don't know why some listeners laughed a lot at this! I have included a photo of this fly below.

            Heading further, it is worth citing regulations that have had an undoubted and significant impact on the assortments of flies used in our country. Again I will refer to the now famous CZSP/EG/85 Standard, where the recipe for the wet Red Spinner is as follows: „Tail - red rooster (or simply brown), abdomen - wool or beet silk (But why beetroot and not, for example, claret? I used to buy such wet Red Spinner, but with a red abdomen, in a store in Krakow on Sienna Street back in the late 1950s. I even remember the price - 5.65 zloty/piece!), wrap - silver lamé, wing - duck (wild duck aileron), blackberry - red rooster (meaning brown).” In italics (in parentheses) I added my comments.

It is worth mentioning at this point that in pre-war British literature I have more than once found solutions of wet Red Spinner with wings made of mallard bundle, applied flat along the torso of the fly. It should also be said that the once-popular, but now rare and expensive material was overused in the construction of decent company flies. Nowadays, real mallards, (and not dyed imitations of them), are quite difficult to get, and these feathers on the wide market of fly-tying materials are - and I am not afraid to say it - monstrously expensive, moreover, they usually do not sin of very high quality. Even in the case of very reputable British companies, the offered mallards (in pairs: left-right), are of despicable quality, not to mention the fact that they are not symmetrical pairs of any kind - just feathers inserted into envelopes using the method ”from Sat to Sat”. The names of these, often very respectable companies I'd rather not mention, because I don't want to embarrass them. So, there was a need for more common and cheaper substitutes. There will be more about this in a moment.

             Well, in view of the high demand for this type of popular fly, manufacturers quickly found a way to overcome the „mallard” barrier and began to use a much cheaper material, namely wings made from strands of first-order wild duck flies. This can already be seen in the collection of the late A.Fox (vide - fly gallery). Such a wet „modern” Red Spinner I show below, and next to it a slightly earlier one with wings from a bunch of feathers. Both of these copies I made myself recently.

However, if someone had the ambition to own a wet Red Spinner with mallard bundle wings, I suggest he take advantage of the inexpensive option of using a not very valuable substitute, namely the gray-brown spotted neck feathers of the mallard duck.

Also below I show three dry renditions of it: The first - with wings made from a bunch of mallard, the second - „cheated” with the neck of a mallard duck, and the third - now widely accepted - a solution with standing wings made from strands of gray duck's wild duck fly. By the way: Isn't the first solution reminiscent of the now historic Rozwadowski Fly flies ? Above I recall their images.

It is worth adding here that, in view of the ubiquitous fashion for CDCs, this fly can be boldly supplied with a bunch of these very feathers, although their natural coloration is only gray or white, while artificial coloring of CDCs is a senseless spoiling of the material. You will ask why? Well, in the dyeing process, these feathers lose their valuable natural hydrophobic properties, which is what was their greatest advantage!

Since we're talking about dry versions of the Red Spinner here, it's worth noting that tiny sizes (from #14 to smaller) have long been encountered in renditions of „hedgehogs”, popularly known by anglers as „jumpers”. I also made such a wingless fly and present it below.

               And so, for the record: I made all the flies presented here myself, and I certainly won't be fooling anyone with any copyright claims, which are all over the Internet these days. If anyone wishes to use these photos - all you need to do is to give the name of the author, which is mine. So much for full clarity on the matter.

Dry Red Spinner with wings, (whatever they may be), were and still are used in flies larger, i.e. usually #12,10 or 8 as very good dry trout baits for the whole season.

      Summary: The current Red Spinner, both wet and dry, are overwhelmingly supplied with wings made from strands of duck flies, while the tiny ones, (#14 and smaller), are used in wingless versions - and both wet and dry. And finally, one must address the extremely rampant mania for impersonating one's ducklings under traditionally respected and well-established fly patterns. Take a peek at the Internet yourself, browse the offers of various companies and firms appearing mostly under bloated Anglo-sounding names, flip through even the „Artificial Flies” section of Allegro. It'll make your hair stand on end - to put it politely - what kind of crap these various „fly tiers” offer, under mostly respectable names! I'm not even posting images of these screeds here, because - first of all - it's a waste of space here, and secondly - I have no intention of staking some copyright claim with the creators of such crap and their images! And with all this ocean of ignorance, I can't understand how many more suckers will fall for this ubiquitous crap!

And now completely - at the end - a question: why did I insist on divagating only about the most traditionally proven flies? The answer is as simple as an umbrella: I would like fellow fly fishermen to forget, if only for a moment, about these polypropylene wonders, with which they are currently flooded from everywhere, so that, at least for a moment, they would come into contact with - perhaps - somewhat old-fashioned flies, but whose nobility and subtlety of construction, however, induces a certain reverie about the beauty of fly fishing. And, (finally a cliché!), a noble-looking fly is an expression of our respect for the fish to which we offer our artificial lure.

Wojciech Węglarski

wwegl@wp.pl

Krakow, February 2022

Other articles by the author:

History flytying / Polish names of flies

History flytying / Polish fly names part 2.

History flytying / February Red - yesterday and today

History flytying / Hofland's Fancy - flytying-legend, flytying-nestor

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