Lady Caroline Shrimp Variant

[Ol'Nog 0]

I've tied a lot of Lady Caroline's recently; simply because I like tying this fly, the way this Spey fly looks and I've read a little of its history.

Somewhere I read that it was tied as a Shrimp fly. I can see that, the sleek Bronze Mallard Shoulder wing, the long soft Heron Hackle, a touch of red/orange In the tail and head hackle.

However I felt somehow something representing eyes was missing at the tail. Shrimp and Prawns have prominent eyes.

No way would I think I could improve on such a successful Salmon and Steelhead fly, I just wanted something a little different.

So I have used three materials in the tail: the usual Golden Pheasant Red breast feather (I used dyed orange) on top of which G.P. Topping, on top of which a small G.P Tippet feather.

The Tippet gives the impression of eyes, the Topping adds contrast.

A Blue Eared Pheasant feather is used for the body hackle

The head hackle consists of 2 G.P Red hackles from near the tail of the skin, dyed orange. I used 2 as my feathers were quite sparse.

The body is dubbed green/brown Wool with the usual 3 ribs; flat gold, oval gold with oval silver locking down the B.E.P. hackle wound counter-wise to the gold ribs

See photos for clarification. Apologies for poor photo resolution, I have no camera so used my iPhone with available light.

[cphubert 0]

Very nice variant, I like the addition of GP tippet. One of the few speys tied with a tail and yours is top shelf.

[SalarMan 0]

Well done indeed!!  Your bronze mallard work is superb. That bad boy will catch fish too.

[niveker 0]

That's a great job, nice fly.  

I like making little changes or substitutions to an established pattern, for your average fly tyer back in the day, I would say that was par for the course. 

Almost never do I sit and tie more than 2 or three patterns at one session, but if I'm tying a number of the same pattern over a few nights, very often I will change one or two things here and there on each fly.   Of course, mine never look as nice as yours.  

I would say that fly there is also a very passable crawdad pattern.