Walla-Walla

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Walla-Walla, another Ray Bergman wet fly.

The Walla-Walla can be found on Plate 9, page 254 of Ray Bergman’s book Trout (1938).

I’ve selected several wet flies for my Throw Back Thursday Fly segment from Ray Bergman’s book . An easy method of finding all of them is to click on the words “Ray Bergman Flies” under CATEGORIES in the right-hand column on this page. If you are a regular at RiverKeeper Flies, you recall Bergman’s book includes 15 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.

I like the elegance and simplicity of a Ray Bergman wet fly. I’m still learning to tie the quill wings of turkey or duck. One of the reasons to include the Ray Bergman flies for TBT is to force myself to tie them. I preach practice, practice, practice for becoming good at tying the flies I fish (like Sparkle Duns), so I thought I should listen to myself!

Tying these flies reinforces the need for quality materials. I’m not real pleased with the look of this wing. It was difficult to select a piece of duck quill from the only pair of cinnamon-colored feathers I had. Notice how feathered the ends of the right-hand feather is…not good for nice tips. You can really tell the difference from the feather on the left.

Here is the fly pattern recipe from the Full Description of Flies Shown in Color Plates in the final pages of Trout. The materials order is as listed in the book:

Tied on a Mustad 3906 #10 hook.

Enjoy…go fish!