Chestertown hooks, Mustad 3298 Blind Eye streamer hooks

            Inspired both by the hooks that I recently acquired, as much as by the interesting feathers I found on a pair of Silver Pheasant skins I have, I just had to do something.  Here are the results so far. 

The first pattern is a retake on the old favourite The Blacknose Dace, originally by Art Flick.

Blacknose Dace
Hook: Mustad 3298 Chestertown size 9
Tail: red swan
Body: silver tinsel ribbed with fine silver twist
Throat: ginger hackle
Wing: two pairs dark furnace hackle with silver pheasant flank over







The second pattern is a new one of my own creation. 
The Wind among the Stars
Hook: Mustad 3298 Chestertown size 9
Tail: Vulturine guinea wing secondary
Body: 2/3 silver tinsel, 1/3 dark purple silk, ribbed with silver tinsel and fine silver twist
Throat: Vulturine guinea wing secondary
Wing: Vulturine guinea throat, Vulturine guinea shoulder, silver pheasant flank over


I am thinking of other ideas for these hooks.  I have roughly 600 or so of them.  Very nice blind eye hooks they are! 

Bucktailing in Puget Sound

     In about 1979-80 I was introduced to the following three patterns by Mr. Roy Patrick, so that I could tie them for sale in his fly shop in Seattle.  Little did I know at the time that these three patterns were to become my most successful salmon and sea-run cutthroat patterns for salt water.  Tied lightly, on small hooks and retrieved in a rapid, jerky motion such as a wounded bait-fish might have, these patterns are deadly.  Where they are really fun however is when fished by the method known as “bucktailing.” 
     Bucktailing is done when the water is flat and calm, usually in late summer.  In a small boat, going at a good clip, the fly is let out behind the boat and dragged along behind, right in the prop wash of the outboard.  You know that you are going fast enough when the fly begins to produce a rooster-tail of it’s own.  With the fly no more then about 15 or 20 feet behind the rapidly moving boat, with the drag off and the clicker on, you move around hunting for the fish.  If they are present, it won’t be long before they are streaking up behind the boat to snatch the fly, hooking themselves in the process (the reason for having the drag off) as they savagely grab the fly and bolt with it away from the boat.  The flies for this sport are usually tied on the heavy side to kick up a good wake behind them when they are dragged. 
     This is not how I usually have fished them however.  Usually it is a more standard approach of casting and retrieving.  My largest salmon caught though was on a tube fly version of the candlefish, sent down on the down-rigger to about one hundred and twenty feet, where upon the fly popped off the down-rigger, revealing that I had hooked into a king salmon of over 30lbs. 
     Easy to tie, versatile to use and extremely productive, these three have become my all time favourite salt-water flies.   I give you the patterns as best I remember them, which luckily are coincident with the patterns listed in Joseph Bates “Streamers and Bucktails, The Big Fish Flies,” as I no longer have the note paper on which Mr. Patrick wrote down the notes for me to tie from. The history given with each pattern is also from Bates, though anyone who has done any serious salmon fishing in Puget Sound knows this stuff already.  

Candlefish Bucktail    (As dressed by Roy A. Patrick)
Head:  Black, usually with white painted eye and black pupil
Body:  Medium flat silver tinsel. (If no ribbing is used, embossed tinsel is preferable.) 
Ribbing: Medium oval silver tinsel (optional)
Wing:  A very small bunch of white polar bear hair, over which is a very small bunch of pale green(*) polar bear hair, over which is a very small bunch of pale blue(*) polar bear hair. These three bunches make up the lower third of the wing. The middle third is a small bunch of medium red polar bear hair. Over this is a very small bunch of pale blue polar bear hair, over which is a very small bunch of pale green polar bear hair. As an optional topping a very small bunch of French blue (or violet) polar bear hair may be added. If this topping is not added, the two colors marked with an asterisk may also be eliminated. All the colors of hair are of the same length, extending well beyond the end of the hook.
     This fly, which originated in the Puget Sound area of the Pacific Northwest, was designed to imitate the candlefish, a prominent bait fish for coho (silver) salmon. It is the result of studies made by anglers there to obtain a combination of colors which would most closely approximate those of the candlefish. Prominent among these anglers were Roy A. Patrick, Letcher Lambuth, and Zell E. Parkhurst, all of Seattle, Washington. The fly is one of the few standard patterns, and one of the most successful, for fly fishing for coho salmon.

Herring Bucktail    (As dressed by Roy A. Patrick)
Head: Black, usually with white painted eye and black pupil
Body: Medium flat silver tinsel. (If no ribbing is used, embossed tinsel is preferable.)
Ribbing: Medium oval silver tinsel (optional)
Wing: A very small bunch of white polar bear hair, over which is a very small bunch of pale green polar bear hair, over which is a middle band of a bunch of polar bear hair of gun-metal gray. Over this is a very small bunch of dark green polar bear hair, with a very small bunch of dark blue polar bear hair over this.
     This is a companion fly to the Candlefish Bucktail, and is a scientifically designed pattern made to imitate the herring, a common bait fish for coho (silver) salmon. The fly is used extensively in the Puget Sound area of the Pacific northwest and is one of the few standard patterns for coho fishing. It was designed from the angling experiments of a group of Puget Sound anglers, notably Roy A. Patrick, Zell E. Parkhurst, and Letcher Lambuth, all of Seattle, Washington.

Coronation Bucktail       (As dressed by Roy A. Patrick)
Head: Black, usually with white painted eye with black pupil. (The heads on  many coho flies are made purposely large to imitate the heads of bait fish)
Body: Medium flat silver tinsel
Ribbing: oval or embossed silver tinsel. (This is optional but is preferred by many anglers in order to give greater light reflection.)
Wing: A bunch of white polar bear hair, over which is a bunch of bright red polar bear hair, over which is a bunch of medium blue polar bear hair. The three bunches are of the same quantity and length, extending well beyond the end of the hook.

     Usually these flies are dressed rather heavily. Single-hook flies can be tied on No. 2/0 or 3/0 long-shanked hooks, usually with ringed eyes so that a spinner may be attached for trolling.

The Little Trout of Samuel R. Slaymaker II

I have been tying these trout imitations for decades, in sizes from 12 all the way up to size 2.  In the smaller sizes I often omit the cheeks and may even just paint a white dot on the head.  I have found it doesn't matter though.  Fished accross and down, or dragging in a frantic twitch accross or up stream, these flies can be murder.  Tied with polar bear hair in place of bucktail they virtually come alive in the water. 

I present the patterns as originally listed in Bates' "Streamers and Bucktails, The Big Fish Flies."  1979 with commentary as needed. 


Little Brown Trout Bucktail
As per Bates, with a slight alteration*
Hook: size: 2-12, 6x long
Head: Black
Tail: A very small breast feather, with the dark center removed, from a ringneck pheasant.  The feather is as long as the gap of the hook and curves upward.
Body: Wound with white spun wool
Ribbing: Copper wire (narrow flat gold tinsel may be substituted, *I used medium oval copper tinsel)
Throat: None
Wing: Of four very small separated bunches of hair, extending slightly beyond the tail.  A very small bunch of yellow bucktail over which is a very small bunch of reddish-orange bucktail, slightly blended.  Over this is a very small bunch of medium dark squirrel tail, topped and slightly blended with a very small bunch of dark brown squirrel tail. 
Cheeks: Jungle Cock

Little Brook Trout Bucktail
As per Bates
Hook: size: 2-12, 6x long
Head: Black
Tail: A very small bunch of bright green bucktail, under or over which is a section cut from bright red floss, both slightly longer then the gap of the hook.
Body: Wound with cream coloured spun fur
Ribbing: Narrow flat silver tinsel
Throat: A small bunch of bright orange bucktail, the same length as the tail. 
Wing: Of four very small separated bunches of hair, extending slightly beyond the tail.  A very small bunch of white bucktail over which is a very small bunch of bright orange bucktail, slightly blended.  Over this is a very small bunch of bright green bucktail, topped with a very small bunch of barred badger hair
Cheeks: Jungle Cock

Little Rainbow Trout Bucktail
As per Bates
Hook: size: 2-12, 6x long
Head: Black
Tail: A very small bunch of bright green bucktail, slightly longer then the gap of the hook.
Body: Wound with pinkish-white fur
Ribbing: Narrow flat silver tinsel
Throat: A small bunch of pink bucktail, the same length as the tail. 
Wing: Of four very small separated bunches of hair, extending slightly beyond the tail.  A very small bunch of white bucktail over which is a very small bunch of pink bucktail, slightly blended.  Over this is a very small bunch of bright green bucktail, topped with a very small bunch of natural badger hair
Cheeks: Jungle Cock

The first of this trio to be tied was the Little Brown trout, followed by the Little Brook trout.  The colours were decided by having a pair of small hatchery fish, a brook and a brown, cast into clear plastic resin.  This could be manipulated to expose the different colours of the fish separately.  Then the correct shade of material was chosen.   They were originally tied for production by the Weber Tackle Company of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. 

All three of these streamers have done so well in catching fish that they have been featured in several national magazines and in Slaymaker's own book "Tie a Fly, Catch a Trout"(New York: Harper & Row, 1976).  It was this reputation and the obvious beautiful looking realism that drew me to these streamers, and I have not been disappointed. 

Bali Duck or Yanosh streamers

At left we see two streamers, the Bali Duck and the Jesse Wood Streamer.  They are both as per the patterns in Joe Bates' 1981 tome, Streamers and Bucktails.  I will describe the patterns momentarily.  Firstly though I wanted to pose a question:  What really is Yanosh, also known as Bali Duck? I don't mean, what do we substitute for it today, I mean, what was the real thing?
I did a web search and found references to cooking recipes and other non-related things, but not the answer to my question.
I began examining ducks to see if I could decipher from the pictures where the feathers would come from on the duck, and what the original Bali duck was.
There are several species of  duck where the drakes possess feathers resembling in some way the feathers I see in Bates;  Baikal teal, Falcated duck, Pintail, Gargany, and Oldsquaw in early summer plumage for examples.  Endeavouring to find the one most like the photos though was tough.  I don't know any one who owns any of the above mentioned ducks, and though I have several Pintail skins, these initially seemed to me the least like Yanosh/Bali of the lot.   I managed to get some winter Oldsquaw, and was disappointed, still havent managed Falcated, Baikal or Gargany.
After talking online with many people though, and locally to a few old-timers who remember this stuff as a kid, I re-examined my "hoard" of Pintail, compared it with better photos and decided it was close enough, and in fact was later informed by a couple of reliable sources that indeed Yanosh was Pintail.
So here I present two Yanosh streamers, the Jesse Woods and the Bali Duck.  Attributions are listed in the photo.  The patterns are as follows:
Bali Duck Streamer
Head: black
Tag: narrow flat gold tinsel extending well into the bend
Butt: two turns of black chenille
Tail: fifteen or twenty strands of golden pheasant tippet, tied rather long
Body: medium embossed silver tinsel.  Just behind the throat is a forward butt of about four turns of peacock herl
Ribbing: medium flat silver tinsel between the two butts
Throat: two turns of brown hackle, tied down.  The hackle should be very soft and sparse.
Wing: two Bali  Duck feathers (sometimes known as Yanosh) back to back with the bends exactly alike and extending out past the tail by a tails length.
Cheeks: Jungle cock
Originated by Arthur Bates of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, for fishing the St. Marys river at the outlet of Lake Superior, and named by Ray Bergman in 1948.  As the trout (known locally as "Soo" trout) are very large, this fly is usually dressed on a size 2 hook.
Jesse Wood Streamer
Head: black
Tail: A narrow section of red duck wing feather, tied rather long.
Body: medium embossed or oval silver tinsel.  In early versions the body was dressed with fine silver wire.
Throat: furnace hackle tied back and down.  It should be short and thinly dressed.
Wing: two Bali duck feathers extending just beyond the tail. The upper part of the feathers should be light brown, the lower jet black.
Cheeks: Jungle cock, fairly short.
Originated by Jesse Wood of Warwick, New York in 1926, and developed with help from Ray Bergman.  Originally Wood preferred it dressed as a tandem, but Bergman liked it better in singles.  Known in Canada as the Demon Streamer.
The feather described here for the wing sounds a lot more like Baikal teal then it does Pintail.  I have been thinking lately that perhaps Bali or Yanosh wasn't so much a particular duck, as maybe the body part of a group of ducks.  I don't know really, so I leave it as an unanswered question.  What was the real Bali originally, and how do I get some?  (of course!)