The Original Recipe
When it comes to Scottish salmon fishing, few rivers have more history or mystique than the Spey. The highly identifiable style of salmon fly that evolved on that river in the early 19th century has proven to have a lasting appeal and still influences flytiers today. The Lady Caroline, with its aristocratic origins, is one of a small number of Spey flies that continues to be used, unchanged, on both sides of the Atlantic.
SALMON ON THE FLY
References to fly-fishing for salmon have popped up in the literature since Dame Juliana said that you may take a salmon with a dubbed fly “but it is seldom seen,” presumably because the tackle of the time wasn’t up to the task of getting a fly out to a fish in a wide river nor of landing it once hooked.
In the 17th century Walton was not a great deal more positive, saying of the salmon “…he is very seldom observed to bite at a minnow, yet sometimes he will, and not usually at a fly.…” His contemporary, Thomas Barker was more optimistic about our chances and tells us more about the fly: “…if you angle for him with a flie (which he will rise at like a Trout) the flie must be made of a large hook, which hook must carry six wings, or four at least.…”
Richard Bowlker, in his Art of Angling, published in the mid 18th century, had this to say: “The artificial flies should generally be of large dimensions, and of a gaudy glittering color; the Dragon Fly, and King’s Fisher, are particularly adapted for Salmon fishing… although Salmon will take almost any of the flies used for Trout, if made larger than usual.”
By the early 19th century fly-fishing for salmon was a growing sport in Britain, facilitated by advances in rod, reel and line technology, and by a rapidly extending network of improved roads. During this period regional differences in salmon fly patterns were starting to emerge, and in Ireland there was a growing trend towards “gaudy glittering color” through the use of feathers from exotic birds, a trend that was later to have a huge impact in Scotland and England (see this page [Silver Doctor]). In Scotland, however, where recognizable fly tying styles were being developed on specific salmon rivers—especially the Spey and the Dee—the flies in the first decades of the 19th century were generally much more sober.
Over 100 miles (160km) long, the River Spey, seen here at Blacksboat to the east of Inverness, rises in the Scottish Highlands and flows northeast through Abelour and Craigellachie to the Moray Firth.
Lady Caroline—Kelson’s Instructions
Tail: Golden pheasant red breast, a few strands only
Body: Brown and olive-green Berlin wool mixed together in proportion of one part olive-green, two parts brown
Ribs: From separate starting points, of gold tinsel (narrow), gold twist, and silver twist, wound the usual way, an equal distance apart
Hackle: Gray heron, from tail (tied in at the point as usual) wound alongside gold tinsel
Throat: Golden pheasant red breast, two turns
Wings: Two strips of mallard showing brown points and light roots
TWEED AND DEE
Given their relative isolation, it isn’t surprising that the various salmon rivers of Scotland developed their own styles of fly, nor that the flies were tied using largely local materials. It is fortunate for us that the excellent fishing and the aristocratic landowners attracted anglers with time on their hands to enjoy the hospitality and record some of the fly patterns.
William Scrope, writing in 1843 (Days and Nights of Salmon-fishing in the Tweed) records the tying instructions for Tweed flies with such intriguing names as Meg in Her Braws and Kinmont Willie, and in his Angler’s Companion to the Rivers and Lochs of Scotland, published in 1847, Thomas Stoddart includes an illustration of six Tweed flies in use at the time.
Examples of the long and slender strip-winged flies of the River Dee, such as the Balmoral, the Dunt and the Akroyd, are described in some detail by Kelson, who was to play a major role in the popularity of the fully dressed salmon fly. Many of the Dee flies had long, flowing heron hackles, a feature that they shared with the flies from the Spey valley.
Stoddart includes an illustration of six Tweed flies, all of which have mohair bodies, tail tufts of yellow or orange feather fibers, and wings of mallard, teal, turkey or pheasant feathers.
STRATHSPEY
Our record of the traditional Spey flies is even better, thanks largely to the efforts of Arthur Edward Knox, a personal friend of Charles Gordon-Lennox, Duke of Richmond and Gordon, and a frequent visitor to the Duke’s Speyside estate. In Autumns on the Spey (1872), Knox gives detailed descriptions of what were already being termed “old Spey flies.” Sadly, not one of them is illustrated, but we can be confident that the descriptions are accurate as Knox himself was an accomplished ornithologist and his source for the flies was none other than Geordie Shanks, head gillie at Gordon Castle for more than 50 years and a man who, it is said, knew more about the river, the fish and the fly-fishing than anyone else.
In 2008, John Shewey traveled to Speyside to carry out research. Having tracked down Geordie Shanks’s former home in the village of Craigellachie, he visited the nearby Craigellachie Hotel and was able to identify a collection of Spey flies on the hotel wall as having been tied by Geordie himself, which no-one had realized. The hotel allowed the priceless collection to be shipped to the USA so that John could photograph and study them.
LADY CAROLINE GORDON
The Spey flies, tied on long-shanked hooks, were generally dubbed with Berlin wool, had a flowing body hackle of rooster tail or saddle, or of heron hackle, with a counter-wrapped gold or silver rib, and had distinctive wings of bronze mallard strips tied low and tent-like, curving over the body like an upturned boat hull.
The fly known as Lady Caroline is a classic example of the Spey fly, and yet it does not appear in Knox’s list of 16. Nonetheless there is every reason to suppose that it was created by Geordie Shanks. John Shewey of Oregon, author of Spey Flies and Dee Flies: Their History and Construction (2002) and an expert on the subject, makes a convincing argument that Shanks, with his long connection to the Gordon family, designed the fly after Knox had compiled his list and named it after the young Lady Caroline Elizabeth Gordon-Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, then in her late twenties. Several other Spey flies bear the names of family members at that time, and it is thought that they were all the work of Geordie Shanks. According to Kelson, Shanks was also the originator of the Miss Grant, the only Spey fly other than the Lady Caroline to sport a tail.
A few of the traditional Spey flies are still tied and used today, the Lady Caroline—the most famous of all—being a very popular and deadly fly not only for Atlantic salmon but also for steelhead in the Great Lakes and in the Pacific Northwest, where it is also fished for Pacific salmon. The long flowing body hackle and the slim wings give the Spey fly a unique action in the water, creating a very lifelike impression of a shrimp or prawn, significant food items in the diet of the ocean-going salmon.
The Spey fly has also contributed to a new generation of specifically steelhead flies, such as Syd Glasso’s Sol Duc Spey (see this page), and there is a resurgence of interest in this genre along the American Pacific coast.
NEW MATERIALS
The choice of materials for the tier has changed in the last 150 years and the reddish brown spey cock hackle that was formerly taken from the sides of the tails of specially bred chickens (now thought to be extinct) is now replaced by schlappen.
The poor heron, which once came under a lot of pressure, particularly in the areas around the Spey and the Dee, is now fully protected and the hackle material that has taken its place, having similar color and length, comes from blue eared pheasants bred for the purpose.
