FLYMPH FORUM

Okay, so this is something I have been meaning to work out for the past year or so. For years I have wanted to tie all of Jim Leisenring's favorite twelve flies and many are simple enough, but the one that tripped me up was the Pale Watery Dun Wingless with it's requirement for raffia as the body material. A couple of issues present themselves as challenges. First, tying any fly with a body made of grass seems unappealing and second,the raffia that I tried from the craft store is just a crunchy, brittle material. If anyone else has tied this pattern I'd love to see several examples posted here for comparison and I hope this prompts some discussion of the fly. Has anyone else tied this fly?

After seeing a couple images of the original JL flies, I thought I would try to reproduce the fly as a way of understanding why JL would tie this fly and what he was thinking. How could it have been such a successful pattern for him to be included in his top twelve and what could it represent matching a particular hatch? I'm also curious to work out the best way to work the material and try to achieve the same overall appearance seen in the JL pattern. I tied dozens of flies trying to get the right effect. Please be patient with such an image heavy post, especially one that offers more questions than answers.

Pale Watery Dun Wingless - Jim Leisenring
Hook: 12, 13, 14
Silk: primrose yellow #3
Hackle: pale honey dun
Tail: pale honey dun cock fibers
Body: natural raffia grass, lacquer optional (it's a fly with a dried grass body, no rib and optional lacquer)


So to start, this is the fly I tied for the recent historic wingless wet swap hosted by Ray. This is tied with a thin length of the raffia tied in behind the hackle tie in point, wrapped carefully down toward the bend and back to the hackle. JL was not as concerned with creating a particularly smooth body and for some reason wasn't concerned with a taper based on the images of his own flies.


Pale Watery Dun Wingless - Lacquered


Many of you will recognize the card of raffia. I finally sourced some quality raffia from a weaver and the spool was enough to share. The technique requires flattening the length of raffia and slicing it lengthwise to about an 1/8th inch.

Raffia card and sliced length


The fibers take on an interesting glow when wet, either from water or from the lacquer. It's attractive and when lacquered is actually pretty tough. If you wet the raffia you can see it's translucency, but if you wet it to make it easier to wrap, it'll pull apart every time, demonstrating the very poor strength of the material as a fly body, especially without a rib. For a man who put such emphasis on durability of the body, waxing and spinning bodies that are indestructible, this seems an odd choice. Like most all the other flies in his top twelve, this one too may have it's origins in the UK. John Shaner remarked that there were dry flies listed before JL in the UK which incorporated raffia as a body material.

Raffia with wet tips



Below is a shot of the fly tied with the raffia without lacquer.

Pale Watery Dun Wingless - Dry



The most common reference to a sub for raffia regarding this fly is a Swiss Straw, which probably makes a productive fly, but is a long way from the results Leisenring intended. It's actually a very poor sub if you're interested in the fly from a historic perspective. It actually photographed okay, but when wet it doesn't darken or take on any of the attributes of the raffia.

Pale Watery Dun Wingless - Swiss Straw



I also tied the fly using Primrose Straw Silk #2. This when wet approximates the original raffia much better than the Swiss Straw. I would be more likely to fish this fly than any of the others.

Pale Watery Dun Wingless - Pearsalls #2 Straw Silk



Another substitution attempt.

Pale Watery Dun Wingless - Honey Dun Hen Quill Body



The last sub attempt.

Pale Watery Dun Wingless - DMC embroidery thread #738



Any of these flies seem productive, although I have haven't fished any of them. The substitutes seem a distraction from the topic of understanding how the raffia fly rose to the top twelve status for Leisenring. As a generic attractor mayfly or spinner, it's interesting, but it would still seem one of the last flies I would think to fish, even for a Light Cahill hatch.

Any additional flies or information regarding the fly would be much appreciated.

This is a challenging project, William, and you have done an admirable job of looking at it from several angles. Based on what you have reported and shown in your photos, I would venture a guess that raffia was the material of choice for JL primarily for the translucent appearance it takes on when wet -- it looks both pale and watery to me. Despite his stated desire to produce flies that were durable, I suspect that he might have been willing to forego that characteristic in the case of a delicate pattern that would attract a large, selective fish that had spurned less ethereal offerings. As far as the hatch this pattern was intended to "match", it looks as though it might be the sulphur pattern I have previously mentioned to Lance was seemingly missing from the flymph family.

I would probably have to agree with Bill on the translucency aspect here. I wonder how it looks after being chewed on by a couple fish? All ragged and buggy looking, I'm sure that would attract quite a few fish as well.

Great write up Will.
Not to jump of topic but, I can't help but wonder if JL used different colored silks for an underbody through the raffia.

This is by no means the only pattern to call for raffia as an over wrap body, look back through older tying volumes and you will see mention of it in many of them.
Bit busy at the moment to find quotes, but a lot of British pattern books will call for raffia.

Bill has it pretty well nailed. Raffia was the vinyl rib or latex sheet of the day, before synthetics ruled the roost. If you carefully "peel" the covering of a feather stem, you get a nice opaque material that can be wrapped over a silk underbody like raffia- but not as fragile, looks like crap (cloudy white) dry, but comes to life wet.
All of these over-wraps give an aura/halo like "glow" of translucency to the body of the fly- not unlike the living insect one is trying to imitate. This in turn may be more of an important trigger than the shape & form (tidiness and taper) of the body.
Tied with natural raffia grass (not the craft store synthetic version) I see these being "one fish flies", as I do not imagine it will play well with trout teeth, much like unprotected Peacock herl or stripped herl flies. Lacquer may help here, but off hand I cannot recall reading a pattern for a raffia body that called for such treatment, back in the day they may have used thinned varnish or modelling "dope".

On the particular hatch? I would only be guessing- seems you get different insects over there to what I am used to seeing. However, a lot of British reference to the pattern elude to the "pale" being the body (light yellow olive) and the "watery" referring to the hackle.
Eric Taverner (Fly Tying for Trout) gives the following list for imitations of the Pale Watery Dun.
Tup's Indispensable-- Lock's Fancy--
Ginger Quill-- July Dun--
Little Marryat-- Pheasant Tail--
Whitchurch Dun-- Light Snipe & Yellow--
No. 1 Whitchurch-- Poult Bloa.

Which covers quite an array of shades. However, in the pattern descriptions there is a lot of use of words like "Pale- buff- lightest" when referring to whisks, dubbing and hackle.

Personally- I think the natural grass unlacquered would be the most "fishy", but possibly the shortest lived.

A few years back I went through this as well William. I liked the raffia and found it relatively easy to work with. I would soak a strand first then split it thinner as you describe and wrap it in overlapping it a bit. The picture is my interpretion from back then. I also would take a permanent marker and run it down one edge of the raffia which, when wrapped, gives a nice biot color effect.

I need to return to these and get some better photos as well.

How the heck did I miss this post before?!

Wow! What a cool and informative post. I have used raffia for winging material, but never played with it as a body material. Thanks for the inspiration.

letumgo wrote:How the heck did I miss this post before?!

World travelers occasionally have to forego some domestic happenings ...

Actually, now that you mention it, I think I was in Europe around the time this was originally posted.

several years ago I tyed a dry from the Dette book that used raffia as the body, it made an nice looking fly but I don't ever remember if I ever fished them.

Bob, that's interesting that Dette used raffia on a dry fly. I had a conversation with Lance once about how JL, who was so concerned with a durable body, would use grass. He thought there must be some connection to the English dry fly tradition although we never found an English pattern to support that. I don't recall looking very hard. But this week I sent a note to Catskilljohn (John Bonasera) asking the same question. That guy is a marvel. He didn't have any knowledge of a raffia bodied dry either. Joe Fox might know.

Do you recall the book you used that included the Dette fly?