sitting in the box
I first came across this soft hackle wet fly, or at least one very like it, many years ago now. I was casting my flies along the edge of a deep drop off from the bank and to be honest, I wasn’t catching much, if anything at all as I remember it. As you do, I got speaking to another angler and in due course, he gave me the fly which was proving so successful for him on that day. It was a #14 soft hackle wet fly, with a green tinsel body and a black hen hackle. I liked the fly immediately and promptly tied it onto the point of my leader; I then went on to catch precisely nothing with it all day! Perhaps it was how he was fishing it or he had found a localised feeding hotspot – fly fishing can be like that at times for sure.
I recently bought some tinsel to add to the flytying materials collection, and I was particularly keen to use the Uni-Mylar #12 peacock and orange tinsel (peacock on one side and orange on the reverse). That was the body of the fly sorted at least. To strengthen the body, I decided to use some old clear tippet material as a rib along the body. The tippet material rib gave a slightly silvery, transparent look under certain light conditions to the peacock tinsel body. The colour of the body itself varies with the light giving an overall green/blue shimmer. The soft black hen hackle I used was perhaps a bit long in the fibre but I didn’t mind that at all.
I think this is a soft hackle wet fly for the upper layers of the water column or perhaps a bit deeper if the water is clear where you are fishing. It could also be fished just under (or in) the surface film and may make a reasonable terrestrial fly representation, or beetle pattern or it could be a useful soft hackle pattern for when the buzzers are hatching. With those natural flies in mind a slow retrieve or dead drift approach may be best when fishing the Green Bottle Spider.
SoftHackles 