The Dove

[Smuggler]

First off I must apologize for not being very active in posting photos lately. I hardly have the time between jobs to do much of anything.

Over the weekend I was sitting at my desk looking through materials thinking about what I could throw together to tempt the trout on my local spring creek with the warm weather we had on Sunday. I thought to myself wait, I have some dove wings in my dead animal parts stash sitting in the basement... they have been sitting in borax and salt since last October when I harvested them, I forgot about them completely.



Hook: Daiichi 1560 size 16
Silk: Langley "Ash" lightly waxed
Body: Otter (although you probably can't make it out)
Collar: Dove covert

This fly took a gorgeous brown on Sunday, the only fish of the day. I got out a tad later than I wanted to.
Enjoy!

[hankaye]

Smuggler, Howdy;

Thanks for the "Everymans" , photo of a very nice pattern.

Good to hear that it is a catcher .

hank

[tie2fish]

Very, very nice, Eric. How is the dove to work with? Is it soft and fragile?

[Smuggler]

You're welcome Hank.

Bill, surprisingly the coverts aren't as fragile as I thought they would be but, the body plumage is worse than starling. I could, and was sweeping back the barbules with tension held by the hackle pliers, no slippage, no breaks.

I like the center on each barbule, how it's dark then gets tan on the underside and on the top side it's the dark blueish grey.

[William Anderson]

It looks right to me. Beautiful hackles from the dove. Having seen the water you were fishing I'm wondering how you were presenting this to take the nice brown. And good for you getting out there while Ray is out replacing his worn out snow shovels.

[letumgo]

Eric - Excellent fly pattern. A capital killer for sure. Thank you for sharing and the inspiration.

I just went back and read the recipe. Wow! What a great combination of materials. This is the first pattern I've seen with otter. Very cool!

William - My snow shovels are still fine. I am the one who got wore out. Sucks getting old.

[Smuggler]

It looks right to me. Beautiful hackles from the dove. Having seen the water you were fishing I'm wondering how you were presenting this to take the nice brown. And good for you getting out there while Ray is out replacing his worn out snow shovels.

Poor Ray, I felt bad for him. That's a lot of snow and stress.

As for presentation, I presented downstream at a slight angle. Almost parallel to the far bank and let it drift, then swing right in front of the spot where I saw the last rise.

[swellcat]

Nice to see dove scoring. (Somewhere on the site is an expansive post explaining why dove feathers are no good for tying. )

[Mataura mayfly]

Yep, I remember that thread. Both Dove & Pigeon got a pretty bad rap when it came to hackle providing.
Seems if it is easily found- readily available and cheap to procure (ie: free) then it was deemed to be no good.

[Roadkill]

Good looking fly!