Rio Grande King

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Rio Grande King, another fly from the Ray Bergman collection.

Rio Grande King | www.johnkreft.com

I haven’t posted a Ray Bergman fly for awhile, so I thought it was high time I tied another classic wet fly pattern. For some reason, I just like the elegance and simplicity of a Bergman wet fly and it was time to practice setting quill wings again. I sat down to tie this fly last night after returning from the river. After looking at the final product, I need to devote a few days and tie more quill wing flies.

The Rio Grande King is a Ray Bergman wet fly I found in his book entitled Trout. It can be found on Plate No. 7, page 168. 

I’ve selected several wet flies for my Throw Back Thursday Fly segment from Ray Bergman’s book. 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.

Here are a few other Ray Bergman flies I’ve included as Throw Back Thursday Flies: the Arthur Hoyt, the Babcock, the Blue Bottle, the Bostwick, the Bouncer, the Chantry, the Darling, the Loyal Sock, the Mark Lain, the Mrs. Haase, the Silver Stork, the Walla-Walla, the Whirling Dun, and the Wilson Ant. (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.)

Rio Grande King

Tail:Yellow
Tip:Gold Tinsel
Body:Black Chenille
Hackle:Brown
Wing:White

Fly pattern as listed in Trout. This fly was tied on an older Mustad 3906 hook, size 10. 

Enjoy…go fish!

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