Sometimes nature gets involved……<\/span><\/p>\n Three weeks ago a small bird hit our screen door. I found it in the morning and my wife demanded we\u00a0give it a decent send-off. We did.<\/span><\/p>\n The following week, Charlie and I were returning from a day’s fishing. There at the bottom of his drive was another, freshly deceased bird, \u00a0a\u00a0starling.<\/span><\/p>\n Not wanting to put my wife through the same anguish, without telling her, I put the poor bird in a small plastic bag and in the trunk of my car. (I must confess, I also wanted to make good use of the poor bird). I had a sleepless night trying to remember how to dissect a bird, and how to preserve the skin with Borax. The following morning as my wife was in the shower I retreated to the deck; and rather than go through the whole process of preserving the bird I frantically plucked off the feathers and placed them into the bag.<\/span><\/p>\n That evening in my man cave I prepared the following wet fly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When Charlie and I next fished the Grand River I pulled out the fly and caught seven brown trout that same day.<\/span><\/p>\n Charlie was suitably impressed\u00a0both with the fly fishing results and the not so heroic, deviant way that I had secreted the bird’s feathers. It was Charlie who christened the fly, tongue in cheek, The Starling Darling. (He pronounced it more as The Starling Dahling).<\/span><\/p>\n Have a go with this pattern. Don’t be afraid to use your own colors.<\/span><\/p>\n Materials:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Hook: Mustad Dry 2xl Size 16<\/span><\/p>\n Thread: Yellow 140 Denier<\/span><\/p>\n Abdomen Segmentation: Ultra Wire, Wine color<\/span><\/p>\n Thorax: Peacock herl<\/span><\/p>\n Hackle: Starling or Black Hen<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Method:<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Start the thread one hook eye down the shaft of the hook, and remove the tag end of the thread.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tie in the ultra wire and run the thread down the shaft to the point above the barb of the hook.<\/span><\/p>\n Run the thread back up to half way along the hook shank; then make five or six return turns of the wire.<\/span><\/p>\n Tie off the wire and helicopter the wire off the fly.<\/span><\/p>\n Tie in two pieces of peacock herl at the half way point.<\/span><\/p>\n Secure the herls\u00a0<\/span>and then remove the waste.<\/span><\/p>\n Prepare the starling<\/span>\u00a0or hen feather as shown.<\/span><\/p>\n Tie in the feather in front of the peacock herls.<\/span><\/p>\n Now for the delicate part; I found that I was able to palmer\u00a0<\/span>the feather twice around the shaft. (The attempts at using hackle pliers were unsuccessful).<\/span><\/p>\n Secure the hackle with two turns of thread and remove the waste. Finally, apply lacquer to the head of the fly.<\/span><\/p>\n Here is the same pattern using olive thread and green wire.<\/span><\/p>\n This fly is better when presented downstream on a short leader with as little of the line as possible being in the water. (The traditional wet fly presentation).<\/span><\/p>\n david williams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Starling Darling Wet Fly Sometimes nature gets involved…… Three weeks ago a small bird hit our screen door. I found it in the morning and my wife demanded we\u00a0give it a decent send-off. We did. The following week, Charlie and I were returning from a day’s fishing. There at the bottom of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3001","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/iwffc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/sdtitle.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1\")
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