Ray Bergman Undertaker

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Ray Bergman Undertaker.

I haven’t posted a Ray Bergman wet fly in awhile, so I pulled out his book entitled Trout (1940 – fourth printing) to find a fly to tie and highlight.

On page 254, Plate No. 9 I found the Undertaker.

As I’ve mentioned many times, I enjoy highlighting a Bergman wet fly because it forces me to sit down and tie these elegant flies. As you can see in the image, the Undertaker uses a married wing and tail.

I struggled tying the wings on this fly, but it finally came together.

I should probably heed my own advice and practice tying these wings. Practice makes perfect.

Bergman was well known for his wet flies, but his book also lists dry flies, streamers, nymphs, steel head and land locked salmon flies.

If you are a regular at RiverKeeper Flies, you recall Bergman’s book includes colored plates to illustrate the dry and wet flies with a description of each fly in the back. It was the first book to provide color fly illustrations.

Other Ray Bergman flies I’ve included as Throw Back Thursday Flies include: the Abbey, the Arthur Hoyt, the Babcock, the Blue Bottle, the Bostwick, the Bouncer, the Brown Turkey, the Chantry, the Dark Spinner, the Darling, the Irish Turkey, the Light Blow, the Mark Lain, the Montreal, the Montreal Yellow, the Mrs. Haase, the Olive Dun, the Rio Grande King, the Loyal Sock, the Pathfinder, the Peacock, the Prime Gnat, the Silver Stork, the Walla-Walla, the Whirling Dun, and the Wilson Ant.

The Undertaker

The hook is a TMC 3906B, size 10.

Enjoy…go fish!