Crawdad & Spawning Purple

[Dave McNeese]

Winter steelhead flies. Tied these last night of patterns that I developed 25 years ago. These are pretty easy flies to tie.

Crawdad (on the left)

silver tag
tail- GP crest dyed red
body- hot orange seal
rib- oval silver
hackle- large bronze mallard
throat- long orange hackle
wings- pinch of GP tippet, followed by 4 red GP crest feathers
fly size 4-1/0
( I use the reject bronze mallard for this hackle that won't cut it for spey wings)

Spawning Purple

silver tag
tail- long orange polar bear, length of shank
body- florescent orange floss, with hot orange seal, spun
hackle- 3 turns of orange, 3 turns of purple, 2 turns of lg. guinea
wings- purple neck hackle
fly size 8-2/0





DM

[Fishunter]

Where can I purchase GP crest dyed red?

[Dave McNeese]

Check your local flyshop, or a catalog should have them.
If you don't want to use GP dyed red, use red saddle hackle for both the tail and the wing.

McNeese

[Big K1]

Thanks Dave!

[davpot]

;) Beautiful flies as usual Dave. Interesting you should call the first fly a "crawdad'. Thats the first time Ive heard anyone make the link between spey/Dee flies and crawdads. Use Dees extensively for cutts, and have always held that that is just what they imitate. Great colors. Sorry we dont see those anymore w/o extensive looking or self dying! :beer2:

[Jerry Daschofsky]

Awesome Dave. Always love the spawning purple (like it in the spey version too).

That crawdad would do well. Actually, never thought about Dee's looking like crawdads. Good point.