interesting…
What can I tell you about the Bo Diddly? Well not a great deal as until very recently it was a hackled wet fly pattern that I’d never even heard of! Discovering new patterns is always fascinating and despite knowing hundreds of patterns there are always many, many, undiscovered patterns out there just waiting for us to find. I always enjoy discovering new patterns and I came across this one in my recent purchase of George Barron’s book: At The End of The Line. In the book he tells us that the pattern is a variant of the Red Arrow wet fly pattern and I get that. What I didn’t realise however was that the Red Arrow and the Bo Diddly both have a few turns of badger hen hackle separating the rear and forward bodies, right in the middle of the fly. ‘That is interesting!’ I thought. I quite like the effect of this mid-way hackle. Does that make it a palmered hackle wet fly? Does it matter? Probably not. I do not mind if the trout don’t.
The dressing itself is more complex than I usually incorporate into my patterns and to be honest it was quite nice tying a slightly more complex fly using a range of materials. Firstly, there is a silver tinsel tag, a lower tail of pheasant tippets and an upper one of pheasant crest, a silver wire rib, rear body of red dubbing and a forward body of sooty olive dubbing both split in the middle with a few turns of that badger hen hackle and finally the greenwell/furnace hen collar hackle. In the book it lists the pattern as consisting of a junglecock wing, but in the photograph of the pattern it doesn’t seem to show this wing so I just left it out. It is an interesting pattern, junglecock or not. I will certainly give it a swim next season and see how it performs.
Will it be Bo Diddly for me or diddly squat? I will just have to wait and see…
Bo Diddly – Tag: silver tinsel Tail (under): pheasant tippet Tail (over): pheasant crest Body (rear): scarlet SLF Body (front): soofty olive SLF Palmer Hackle: badger hen (between rear and front body) Rib: silver wire Hackle: furnace hen
SoftHackles 