Since I first started fishing I have always been fascinated with these wonderful fly patterns from the deep history of British fly fishing. To the untrained eye, which mine certainly was when I started fishing , they look very simple. It wasn’t long before I had a tying vice some silk and some feathers and was trying to figure out how on earth I was going to wrap this tiny feather around the hook and tie off the thread without it all falling apart ! In truth though once we have aquired some of the basic fly tying skills such as tying in, tying in materials, tying off – whether hand formed half hitches/ head knots or using a head knot tool spiders are quite simple flies. As with all things though the devil is in the details such as the shape of the hook, how many turns of thread give the right proportions, how many turns of feather hackle, how neat the head knot is etc. Not to mention key ingredients such as beautiful pure silk, increasingly hard to source (we are fortunate to be able to offer wonderful silk from historic fine silk producers Au Ver Γ Soie ) and the correct types of feathers. With all the right ingredients in the right places these flies are a kind of distillation of fly tying skill and fly fishing practice through the generations.
Robert L Smith is a continuation of this line of anglers having caught a river Wharfe brown trout at the age of 7 years old ! I am happy to have learned much more about these enigmatic patterns from reading his book ‘The North Country Fly – Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition’ and also the privelage to be able to fish those same rivers. I must admit that I mostly fish modern flies such as weighted nymphs or dry flies but on the right day spiders can still be very effective and I’m looking forward to fishing them again this year with the new trout season starting soon for us here in Yorkshire. I learned about the various techniques for fishing spiders watching Oliver Edwards DVD’s and recently came across these now published on Youtube ‘How to Fish North Country Spiders’ – Oliver Edwards . I think this is still a good guide and rewatching is a useful refresher.
If you want to buy some wonderfully balanced true North Country Spiders to fish with or to study in tying your own we have new stock hot off the vice of Robert Smith himself:-
So I encourage you to be part of the tradition and give spiders a try in your vice and your fly box this season. Tight lines !
