Riffle King and Riffle Queen Wet Fly

The Riffle King and Riffle Queen are two original wet fly patterns I designed in July. I created them for my brother who went to Montana on a fishing trip. Like the Silver Drake, neither is a fancy wet fly but rather, they were created to be fished. I drew inspiration from the Holberton wet fly for the body design. That fly has peacock herl on the front half of the body.

I used peacock herl for the front ½ of the body and tinsel for the rear 1/2 on both of these patterns. Neither of them is complex or hard to tie. The Riffle King has an abdomen of silver tinsel and the Riffle Queen has gold tinsel on the rear ½ of the body. Both have design similarities and also some differences.

These flies and the Silver Drake were originally posted on the classicflytying forum. Sorry I have no macro photos but I was in a hurry to get these flies in the mail.

The recipes are:

Riffle King

Thread: Black Danville Flymaster 6/0

Hook: Standard wet fly hook, #6 t0 #10

Tag: None

Tail: Guinea fowl wing quill sections

Ribbing: None

Body: Rear ½ silver tinsel, front ½ peacock herl

Hackle: Brown partridge, wound as a collar

Wing: Dark brown

Head: Black

Riffle Queen

Thread: Black Danville Flymaster 6/0

Hook: Standard wet flt hook, sizes #6 – #10

Tip: None

Tail: Red hackle fibers

Ribbing: None

Body: Rear ½ gold tinsel, front ½ peacock herl

Hackle: Speckled brown hen (back), wound as a collar

Wing: Slate

Head: Black

Riffle King (left) and Riffle Queen on the right

Silver Drake Wet Fly

The Silver Drake is an original wet fly pattern that I designed in July. It is not a complicated pattern. My line of thinking was that some original wet flies ought to be simpler, basically plain flies as opposed to what were known as ‘fancy flies’ back in the old days. Also there is probably a tendency for fly tyers creativity to run toward more colorful flies. These photos are not the best and I apologize for not having a macro, but I hope you get the idea.

The recipe is:

Silver Drake – Don Bastian original wet fly

Tip:              None

Tail:             None

Ribbing:      Claret floss

Body:            Silver tinsel

Hackle:         Yellow

Wing:     Olive dyed gray mallard

 

The Silver Drake is on the right next to the Yellow Coachman