Sandy Nelson takes a look at the natural fly and applies what he has learnt to his fly tying
Over a hundred years ago R S Austin created a well known fly called the Tups Indispensible, the moniker was attributed to the fly by my great hero G E M Skues. The fly had a secret recipe as many great patterns often do, but this came out in time and proved to be an interesting concoction. As with most things in fly tying the source material, being scrotal wool from a ram was not so new an idea, but did lend the fly a pleasant pale pinkish yellow hue.
I have seen many variations on the original including my own and have spent many hours wondering why it would be such a good fly, and why my hero thought of it as indispensible.
Being a yellow themed fly, to me, it always appeared a Yellow May imitation and indeed it proved very successful when used thus. But over the last few years as my macro photographs of insects taken while out fishing have improved, I have noticed an interesting feature of upwings as they emerge as duns. Again this is nothing new but it’s an observation worth sharing.
When Duns, no matter what species are emerging, they flush with blood to pump up their wings and get going, this flush appears to go through their whole body but is most predominant in the thorax area. It doesn’t last very long, so is most predominant in flies still on the surface , once they fly they seem to loose the flush of colour fairly quickly.
Buzzer fishermen on stillwaters have known this for years and have actively imitated it with all sorts of things to make the bright orange cheeks. What I have noticed is that standard upwing dryflies are much improved during a hatch of duns if there is a hint of orange or pink to them, again this is nothing new and using an orange fly during a olive hatch is well known and has been for over a hundred years.
With the help of my good friend Andrew Ellis at Andrew's Scruffy Dubbing, we have discussed this at length and he has come up with some nice subtle blends that take advantage of this knowledge. Andrew's dubbing is predominantly rabbit and squirrel, dyed in various hues, which he mixes with some other fibres to create very easy to dub blends that work straight from the pack.
We had a good discussion regarding the Tups Indispensible and about my opinion that it is the pinkish hue that makes the fly work so well, so by mixing up a couple of his colours we came up with a creamy yellow with a hint of pink for the body and a more mixed distinct pink blend for the thorax, very much in the mould of the original but with a modern twist.
I have applied this theory to Olive mixes too and the subsequent flies have proved to be extremely effective the last couple of seasons. Andrew’s Scruffy Buzzer is a brilliant Baetis colour providing the flushing orange effect to a nice darker olive body and can be tweeked further with cinnamon if you really feel the need. Changing the colour of the thread can intensify or subdue the effect as well, so plenty scope for experimentation.
I have started to think of this as the Tups effect and that perhaps the secret that makes the fly so effective was not so much the secrets around the dubbing, but that pinkish hue which imitates that flushing Dun as it emerges and struggles at the surface. Keep it subtle, add a touch of Pink or Orange to your dries and find an edge that will leaves the flies truly indispensible