Fly of the month

During my last fishing experience on the Erriff river, in Ireland , I saw that a greater number of salmon were attracted by a small pattern of Ally's Shrimp. The fishing situation during that week of August was really good: the abundant rains had produced some spates, so that the fish run was rather intense. Despite the large selection of different flies used by the fishermen on the Erriff, nearly all the salmon recorded in the “catch book” were victims of shrimp flies, and in particular of Ally's Shrimp. An event that left me quite astonished and that induced me to reflect on the high attractiveness of those flies. In fact, Ally's Shrimp can be confused by the fish for a sea shrimp: a crustacean that salmon feed on during its marine life. In accordance with this, I started to share the hypothesis that the salmon, even if it does not feed while it goes up the river, can be induced to give free vent to its preying instinct if a bait is similar to its usual preys. The designer of Ally's Shrimp is the famous British fisherman Alastair Gowans, who realised this fly for fishing at the end of the season, when usually heavy dressed artificials are required for tempting the fish dulled by the first colds of the autumn. His fly, however, proved to be effective in any period of the year and for this reason many anglers learned to consider it one of the best flies for catching Salmo salar
THE DRESSING
Step 1: I start the building process of the Ally's Shrimp by inserting the hook into the vice jay and with a black thread, I tie in a tuft of orange bucktail hairs over the hook bends. These tails must extend backwards for a length equivalent to nearly the double of the hook shank

	Step 2: On the fixing point of the bucktail hairs, I tie in a piece of fine oval gold tinsel and orange floss and use this second one to form the first portion of the body, wrapping it around the rear half of the hook shank.

Step 3: In front of the first half of the body, I tie in a piece of black floss and I turn it around the front half of the hook shank, completing the body of the fly

	Step 4: With wide passages of the oval tinsel over the body, I realise the ribbing of Ally's Shrimp

Step 5: I cut off the tinsel surplus and I tie in a tuft of grey squirrel tail hair just behind the hook eye, positioning it all around the body, with the hair tips extended backwards to reach the hook bend.

	Step 6: I cut off the surplus of squirrel hairs and then select two golden pheasant tippet feathers of medium size. I join them back to back and I secure them in front of the fly body, positioning them like two wings. These wings have to be extended backwards just a little more than the squirrel hairs.

Step 7: Next I tie in an orange cock hackle on the fixing point of the golden pheasant feathers.

	Step 8: With the hackle pliers, I repeatedly turn the orange hackle just behind the hook eye, creating the collar of the Ally's Shrimp

Step 9: I realise the head of the fly with some turns of the black thread and then I whip finish it

	Step 10: Next I complete the head with a pair of red varnish hands, distributed one to some hour from the other.

Step 11: The Ally's Shrimp is ready to be used in my next fishing trip, maybe to induce to take a salmon that does not react positively to the traditional hair wing flies.

( Ally's Shrimp is one of the 90 flies described in Luca's new book entitled “Mosche – per Trote, Temoli e Salmoni”. To get more information about it click on http://www.edolimpia.it/lev_1/libri/catalogo/5050501.htm or send an e-mail to libri@edolimpia.it ).

Although it's written in Italian, it should be interesting to many fly tiers due to the many excellent photographs.

Luca Montanari

FLY OF THE MONTH