The North Country Spiders

The wet fly patterns known as “North Country Spiders” came to prominence in England around 1885 with the publication of Yorkshire Trout Flies written by T. E. Pritt.  But some of the patterns had been around for a long while prior to the 19th century. Say, three to four centuries before! They rank among the first recorded patterns in British fly-fishing history and they remain popular in many parts of Europe and North America.

North Country spiders are elegant, simple, and effective. They actually have very little to do with arachnids. Their generic name stems from the hackles that are wound around the upper hook. The hackles are soft feathers taken from a grouse or partridge and wrapped once or twice around a thin, short body. The hackle may resemble the legs of spiders, but even more so, they represent the legs and wings of insects hatching just below the surface of water. On the one hand, the flies may imitate emerging bugs while, on the other, they could be mistaken for dead or dying adults.

The success of these patterns is largely due to the movement of hackle in each push or pull of water current. Soft hackle responds like the movement of natural body parts. The imitations are sparsely dressed. They are generally fished near the surface where the “legs” lie tightly at the body’s side, moving forward when the drift begins to slow.

I’m not sure what inspired me to suddenly tie some spiders, but I think it had to do with the Vernal Equinox. It was the first day of spring but the weather looked anything but spring-like. A driving snow kept me near the wood stove in the afternoon. Minutes passed and the snow gave way to a burst of golden sunlight and a dearth of wind. I went outside and walked with a very different weather. But the sun didn’t last long. Wind and snow returned, and I went back to the tying vise.

I wanted to produce something that was spare and simple, something to give me hope on the trout streams in the weeks to come. I needed something made by my own average hands, something with a link to a season that was all too slow in getting here.

I said, “North Country Spiders” and I thought of the various northern districts of England  giving slow birth to the fly patterns that survive today. There was music in the wrapping of silken threads around a wet fly hook. There was music in the search for an adequate hackle to wind in front of a dubbed thorax.

I thought of Brian Eno’s song called “Spider and I.” It’s an easy song to hum to. The lyrics are deceptively simple. Spider and I/ sit watching the sky/ on a world without sound,/ Knitting a web/ to catch one tiny fly/ for a world without sound./ We sleep in the morning./ We dream of a ship/ that sails away/ a thousand miles away….

If you check out the tune on You Tube music (type in “Brian Eno, Spider and I”), you might note comments like, “The best song about a spider ever written,” or “one of the most beautiful songs in the history of rock.” It’s hard for me to argue such sentiments. Written in 1977, amidst the welter of a very different punk rock universe, “Spider and I,” like other songs from Eno albums of the mid-1970s, proves that beautiful, expansive music can last for years to come.

I held the new spiders in my hand. They looked a bit ratty, overdressed, perhaps, but the hint of elegance was there. They held new connections for a fine spring day with trout. They were small flies, old ties to early chapters of fly fishing history in England …like a ship that sails away… (not quite) …a thousand miles away.