The Fleece
Gilles Dessureault
Hook - Single salmon
Thread - Black
Tip - Oval silver
tinsel
Tag - Gold/yellow
floss
Tail - Green hen
hackle
Body - Black floss
Ribbing - Oval silver
tinsel
Wing - Polar bear
Throat - Green hen
hackle
The Fleece (fabri-mouches.ca)
Night Beauty
Variant
Mario Dussault
Hook - Single or
double salmon
Thread - White
Tip - Copper wire
Tail - Peacock sword
Butt - Green uni
stretch
Ribbing - Copper wire
Body - 3/4 Rear:
White uni glo floss*; 1/4 Front: Peacock herl
Hackle - Heron
feather or Spey-like substitute**
Underwing - White uni
glo floss***
Wing - Squirrel tail
hair dyed green.
Throat - Peacock
sword
Head - White
glow-in-the-dark thread
*I Substituted white uni glo floss with uni stretch
**I used pheasant rump
***I used pearl krystal flash
The Night Beauty (fabri-mouches.ca)
Adam's Rib
Russell Langston of Brown's Valley, California, originated this pattern
Hooks - Single salmon
Thread - Black
Tail - Red hen hackle barbs
Ribbing - Fine silver wire over peacock only
Body - Rear half, embossed silver tinsel; the front half, peacock herl
Hackle -White bucktail tied in at the throat
Wing - Dyed black bucktail tied over the body
Cheeks - Grizzly hackle tip tied in at each side
Fish Flies: The Encyclopedia of the Fly Tier's Art - Terry Hellekson
Golden Girl
Roderick Haig-Brown, 1940s
Hook - Single Salmon
Tip - Gold oval tinsel (fine)
Tag - Orange silk
Tail - Golden pheasant crest
Body - Gold flat tinsel
Hackle: Yellow
Wing - Orange polar bear hair*, two golden pheasant tippet feathers
Topping - Golden pheasant crest
*I used orange bucktail
Classic Steelhead Flies - John Shewey
The preeminent British Columbia fly-angling historian, Arthur Lingren, produced two editions of Fly Patterns of British Columbia, one of several titles he has released through Frank Amato Publications. The original edition found a waiting audience in 1996, and then in 2008, Lingren again demonstrated his grasp of historical research methodology in an expanded edition timed to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Roderick Haig-Brown, the pioneering, British-born angler who fell in love with the waters of British Columbia and penned some of fly angling’s most poignant and powerful words. Lingren’s expanded volume was subtitled The Roderick Haig-Brown Centenary Edition and it is replete with captivating details about Haig-Brown and other prominent fly designers of British Columbia.
Of the Golden Girl, Lingren informs the reader that Haig-Brown devised this fly chiefly for winter steelhead; he wanted a simple fly dressed in shades of red and orange that would bear some resemblance to the ornate feather wing Atlantic salmon flies he knew so well from his British upbringing. “The pattern Haig-Brown developed,” explains Lingren, “was a combination of the slim-bodied Red Sandy and the golden pheasant tippet-winged Durham Ranger without many of the frills.”
Lingren notes that the original dressing had a tail made from the small red feather of the Indian fruit crow (a South American bird of the Cotinga family), but that eventually Haig-Brown opted instead for a golden pheasant crest feather (a “topping,” to use the Atlantic salmon parlance) for the tail. Indeed, the topping-tailed version is the familiar pattern, though the fly looks nothing short of riveting when the golden pheasant crest tail is itself topped with a layer of fruit crow feathers or substitutes, such as small, scarlet-dyed hen neck feathers or likewise dyed golden pheasant throat feathers. In later versions, Haig-Brown also included a tag of orange silk, which is made all the more lustrous if underlain and tipped with flat tinsel. As evidence to that variation, Walt Johnson (in the 1990s) supplied me with copies of steelhead fly recipes submitted to the Washington Fly Fishing Club in the 1950s and 60s, including a page of patterns submitted by Haig-Brown.
For the Golden Girl, Haig-Brown specifies a tag of orange silk, and says of the fly, “This is primarily a winter steelhead fly. Have also taken cutthroats and summer steelhead on it in sizes down to No. 8.” The other flies he included are the Quinsam Hackle, Silver Brown, and Stickle-Back.
