Flies of H. C. Cutcliffe

[Hans Weilenmann]

Excerpt from The Art of the Wet Fly - W.S. Roger Fogg (1979)

James ("Jim") Leisenring championed the English North-country wet fly in his native United States...
...
It is fair to point out that Leisenring seems also to have derived an
amount of his expertise from the great Devonian wet-fly fisherman H.C.
Cutcliffe, whose great little book Trout Fishing on Rapid Streams
appeared in 1863. Cutcliffe's flies typify the West-country style with
their sparkling hackles of Old English Game pountry and Leisenring
adopted the stiff and sparkling cock hackles in his fast water patterns,
reserving the soft-hackled versions for moderate and slow currents.
Cutcliffe presented thirty-eight patterns in his book and arranged his
choices to the months of the season and precludes a more detailed study.
In the following dressings all hackles must be cock hackles which the
author stresses must be of the highest quality.

(HW - "highest quality" in Cutcliffe's days was not the same as today, so for the patterns I used a lower grade of today's hackle.)



No. 1
Hook: Sprite Perfect #14 (or equivalent)
Thread: Benecchi 12/0
Hackle: Rusty brown blue
Body: Equal parts of fox's and squirrel fur, from the back



No. 3
Hook: Sprite Perfect #14 (or equivalent)
Thread: Benecchi 12/0
Hackle: Cutcliffe states 'Black Red'. which I take to be either furnace or coch-y-bondhu
Body: Either dark peacock's herl with gold tinsel or cow's hair of a purple tint ribbed with gold tinsel

Cheers,
Hans W

[Hans Weilenmann]

A scanned version of the Cutcliffe book is available to those with a Google account:

https://play.google.com/books/reader?pr ... 0oAAAAYAAJ

[Greenwell]

Hans,

Your interpretations of the Cutcliffe flies are certainly up to your usual high standard of fly tying skill. However, I would like to respectfully point out that the traditional Devonshire style of wet fly is much more heavily dressed, especially with regard to the quantity of hackle, then your pictured ties would suggest.
The high gradient streams of Devon required a stiffer, denser, hackle for the local wet flies that were traditionally fished downstream. In contrast, the Spiders of Yorkshire and the Northern Counties, where the usual approach was to present the flies in a more upstream aspect, required softer, more mobile hackles.
Pictured examples of Devon Style flies are available in Skues' Way of a Trout with a Fly, Taverner's Trout Fishing from all Angles and Fly Tying for Trout and Lawrie's English and Welsh Trout Flies, as well as a number of other books. All show a fly with a denser hackle collar than we would usually associate with a wet fly. Roger Woolley gives tying instructions and patterns in Modern Trout Fly Dressing and I have examples of Devon Style flies dressed by him in the 1920's. Woolley describes the Devon type under the heading "Hackled Flies Tied with Cock's Hackles" and the example pictured looks more like a hackled dry fly than a soft hackled wet.

(HW - "highest quality" in Cutcliffe's days was not the same as today, so for the patterns I used a lower grade of today's hackle.)

I think you might be surprised at just how good some of the older hackles were, and Cutcliffe went to great lengths to choose his feathers. While the tiers of the past didn't have access to the genetic hackle we take for granted, they were working with some very fine feathers indeed. Skues describes a Devonshire pattern as being "dressed with sharp, bright, dancing hackles", hardly a reference to poor quality. (Page 80, Way of a Trout, etc.) In Frank Elder's Book of the Hackle he talks about the material collection in the Fly Fishers' Club of London and says; "Indeed if you read the Fishing Gazette of the late 1800's you will find references to the quality of the Devonshire hackles. There is even a series of hackles taken from Dr. Cutcliffe's dubbing book. In this collection we have actual examples of the finest that has ever been produced in hackles."
(I highly recommend Elder's book to anyone interested in fly tying materials and the history of fly dressing. Although it was published before modern genetic hackle was available, it is a wealth of information on color, quality, and the lore of the most important feathers used by fly tiers.)


The hackles from old collections I have examined over the years are often better in many ways than the genetic hackles that dominate today. The center stems on most of the old feathers are much finer and easier to tie with, the colors are often more vibrant and have a sparkle that is lacking in modern hackles, and they don't show the "chalkiness" on the back of the feather that is evident on a lot of genetic necks. I have a small stock of older hackles, some English and some of American origin that I seldom tie with but keep as examples of hackles of a quality that is rarely seen today.

[Kelly L.]

Very interesting thread. Thank you Hans and John. Hackle threads always grab my attention. I wish we could view specimens of the older hackle. I also wish I had just a tad of the vast info you guys have, stored up in your mind too...

[Mataura mayfly]

I cannot pretend to be any kind of expert in either the flies represented, nor the quality of hackle used long ago, but I do agree with some of Greenwells points in regard to colour plates in older written reference. Most all hackled wets, even the spiders will be shown with very full hackle compared to what we may consider "normal" today.
And of quality. I can find farmyard Rooster hackle on the "hoof" here that has finer stems and a real "glow" of shine, whereas most genetic hackle I own is duller and heavier in the stem. The modern hackles do not taper as much, are more conducive to many flies per feather and are usually stiffer barbed.

Of the flies, perhaps a touch slender, but then the original tiers would not have had access to Benecchi 12 either!
I am not sure Hans, just what you were intending to show? Modern interpretations of a classic style? Or honest representations of what the flies may have looked like in the day?
Not having access to your quoted reference, I am just guessing..... kind of stabbing in the dark, not trying to dismiss your offerings in any way.

[Hans Weilenmann]

Of the flies, perhaps a touch slender, but then the original tiers would not have had access to Benecchi 12 either!
I am not sure Hans, just what you were intending to show? Modern interpretations of a classic style? Or honest representations of what the flies may have looked like in the day?

Jeff,

The latter.

I am reasonably confident that the tiers from that era, indeed from any era, would put the materials they had available to them to their best use.

How would or could I do any less

Cheers,
Hans W

[Mataura mayfly]

Thank you Hans.
As I said, I have no reference so was not sure.
All of my tying and submissions here are pretty much the same, what I have at hand! NZ is not typically blessed with a wide selection of tying materials of an authentic classic nature.

[Hans Weilenmann]

Jeff wrote:

I am not sure Hans, just what you were intending to show? Modern interpretations of a classic style? Or honest representations of what the flies may have looked like in the day?

Jeff,

I mis-typed in my original response.

The former way more than the latter.

Cheers,
Hans W

[hankaye]

Hans, Howdy;

Jeff wrote:

I am not sure Hans, just what you were intending to show? Modern interpretations of a classic style? Or honest representations of what the flies may have looked like in the day?

Jeff,

I mis-typed in my original response.

The former way more than the latter.

Cheers,
Hans W

I know whta you mean... danged dyslexic fignesr ...

ha nk

[Donald Nicolson]

I had an article on H. C. Cutcliffe, on his flies and techniques on my web site, I hope temporarily(?) off line.
I still have a pdf file based on that article. If anone gives me an e-mail address here in personal mail file, my main
e-mail address is choc-a-bloc with about a years worth of un-answered mail, so all communications will have to be
via this site untill I get it cleared. I'll also post a list of other available titles if anybody is interested.