La Peute (the Ugly) soft hackle dry

[ronr]

Thanks Variant for the visit today and the gift of the beautiful hen mallard breast feathers.
He suggested I look up La Peute tied from these beauties.
He must have known that this fly is so simple, even I could tie one that looks decent.
I found two versions...one with just a silk body, the other with biot... so here's one of each.

Really simple fly... FM 1180 all purpose light bronze size 14
thread: Pearsall's straw
Body: silk or turkey biot PMD
hackle: Hen Mallard breast wound like hackle and trimmed at back of hook

Described as a dry in the mostly Italian or French videos I could find, but I'll fish it also like a cripple.... Don't think the fish on the Crooked have seen many of these... Roadkill and I will try them out tomorrow...

[letumgo]

Excerpt from “French Fishing Fies” by Dr. Jean-Paul Pequegnot

Peut (in the feminine, peute) is a word of Franc-Comtois dialect that means “ugly.” In the Guerre des Boutons, Louis Pergaud sometimes puts this word into the mouths of his heroes, and even today it is in common use throughout Franche-Comté and part of Lorraine. The Peute, the most nonconformist of all flies, is the brainchild of Henri Bresson. A gypsy, encountered on the banks of the river Cusancin, passed on to him a deep secret: a feather taken from the breast of a wild female mallard duck has great power during the months of May and June. Bresson designed some rough suggestions of caddisflies with these feathers but the result seemed unpromising, so he did not try them out immediately. Sometime later, he tried them during an evening hatch on the Dessoubre river when the caddisflies were emerging. The result was so spectacular that the fly was immediately baptised and was not long in finding a local audience that has been enlarged continuously since then.

The design is simple:
Hook: 12, 15, or 18
Body: Yellow tying thread
Hackle: A female duck feather, with its fibers bent back along the body, held down by the finishing knot

The general hue swings between gray, brown, and cinnamon and its ragged appearance suggests an emerging caddis (see the color plate). The fly is not a curiosity but a true trout-killer in dry as well as moist fly use.

I just bought the digital version of this book last week ($2 bucks well spent).

[DUBBN]

Ray, "moist" fly fisherman is my new label.

[letumgo]

Ya gotta love the translation.

[Variant]

RON,
You nailed it! Great job.
I know the fly is not pretty ( hence the name -the ugly) but when there are Caddis on the water this pattern has worked very well for me. In a two fly rig I use it as a dropper fly , dusted with a little frogs fanny ,the mallard feather really holds an air bubble and rises to the surface.

Lou

[redietz]

Ya gotta love the translation.

I think the choice of words may have been deliberate. In my hardback copy of the book "moist" is set apart in italics, as though to say "fished in the film" rather than "sunken."

[letumgo]

Good point Bob. Similar to the use of the word “damp”.

[DUBBN]

I like when fly fishing books leave it for generations to argue the true meaning of what was printed.

It is not limited to fly fishing.

[redietz]

Good point Bob. Similar to the use of the word “damp”.

Exactly. I thought they may have been searching memory for the word "damp" and could only remember "moist" -- they knew it wasn't quite right, but hoped the reader would get the idea.

[wsbailey]

In French the word humide can be translated as damp, moist or wet.

https://quelleestladifference.com/quell ... -et-seche/