Spinnerino

By Luca Montanari

		Materials:
Hook:		Mustad ref. 80000, Signature R30, or Partridge mod. CS20, size 20 to 14
Thread:		red
Body:		red seal’s fur (or substitute)
Ribbing:		the fine stem of a natural red cock hackle
Wings:		natural grey cul-de-canard fibres

When ephemerals are done with their “reproductive efforts”, completely exhausted, they tend to take a rest on the river surface where the current transport them downstream. In this manner the river becomes the grave of many small insects, which can be easily preyed on by trout and grayling.

Floating on the water, the dead ephemerals look like a small creature with transparent and sometimes fringed wings. The body is often red. Such insects can be well imitated by one of those classic flies with the wings completely spread and built with pale cock hackles. An alternative to the cock hackles, if we need a fly that imitates the etheral aspect of an ephemeral, we can use cul-de-canard feathers, which will give life to a small Spinnerino. Thanks to its wings made with the “magic plume”, this fly appears, from the point of view of the fish, really similar to a dead ephemeral. For this reason we can induce a selective trout or grayling to take it when other imitation patterns are ineffective.

Tying instructions:

Step 1:

After fixing the hook into the vice jaws, I tie the red thread onto the hook shank. This thread I use for tying in, over the bend, some fibres stripped off from a Coq the Leon hackle and a fine stem of a natural red cock hackle.

Photos and fly by Luca Montanari

Step 2:

Then I wax a short stretch of the thread and distribute a pinch of red seal’s fur or polypropylene on it, using my fingers to form a compact dubbing.

Step 3:

In order to create the body, I wrap the seal’s fur dubbing around the three rear quarters of the hook shank. With open turns of the red hackle stem over the body, I make the ribbing of the fly.

Step 4:

I strip off some small tufts of the longest fibres from both sides of a pair of natural grey cul-de-canard feathers and then tie in them over the hook section interposed between the body and the hook eye .

Step 5:

U I spread the cul-de-canard fibres in two forelocks and, with crossed turns of the thread, I fix them so that they stay perpendicular to the hook sides. I make a clean cut to the tips of the two cul-de-canard tufts, reducing these wings nearly to the same length as the fly body.

Step 6:

I I create the fly head with some turns of the red thread, which is then finished with a whip-finish .

Step 7:

A light layer of clear varnish, uniformly distributed over the head, will prevent the thread to untie itself, increasing the resistance of the Spinnerino.

is one of the 88 flies described in

Luca’s recent book entitled “Flies – Mosche da pesca”.

To get more information about it click on http://www.edolimpia.it/lev_1/ libri/catalogo/5050202.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

Spinnerino

Fishing

Spinnerino

Tying instructions: