This is a Peter Morse fly and a great variation on a Wooly Bugger that is making its mark in fresh water fly fishing. It’s dressed on a wide gape hook that creates an effective “keel” effect and sports a relatively long marabou tail and a dense collar which together create plenty of currents around the fly that really get the marabou moving. It is adaptable for a range of species and situations.
If you went back just a few years and you a asked an average fly fisher to name his for her favorite fly chances are it would be an unweighted, or lightly weighted probably with a few turns of lead wire, Fuzzy Wuzzy. The traditional Fuzzy Wuzzy has always been useful as a river and lake fly leading up to, through and just after the spawning season. This fly just extends the application of the standard Fuzzy Wuzzy an little further and the simple addition of the tungsten bead head makes it easier to get this fly down and bumping along the bottom where the fish are.
In my experience that are very few fish, that we as fly fishers target, that will not readily eat a prawn or a shrimp. This fly is designed to not only to provide representation of a prawn or shrimp that is readily taken by fish but a fly that can be fished like a soft plastic or a faster moving fleeing prawn or shrimp and on top of that a fly that is durable and swims hook point up so that it’s fairly snag resistant.
I was introduced to this fly at the 2012 World Fly Fishing Championships during the training sessions by our guide Marko Gradnik. This was his “go to” fly for all the river sectors of the competition and produced fish for all the Australian World team members.
Unfortunately for the midge it’s not only swallows that have them on their menu it’s also carnivorous damsel nymphs and then of course further up the food chain trout.
Many English flies have a spider version and Greenwells Glory is no exception. An interesting aspect of this fly is that the wing has been tied in beard style so as to camouflage the pint of the hook. The combination of the buggy shape, the movement of the soft hackle in the water often produce a hit. There is also the added benefit that they are so easy to tie. All river fly fishers should have a selection of English Spiders in their fly boxes.
Keep an eye for swallows dipping on the water feeding on midge. That’s a sure sign that there will also be damsel nymphs around and then of course further up the food chain there are likely to be trout feeding on both the midge and the damsel nymphs. This is the time to start thinking about fishing either damsel buggers or olive woolly buggers.
This is an incredible fly for delicate presentations to mayfly feeders … the waters of the Korka had mayfly hatching but I was having trouble in finding a fly that didn’t spook them. Remembering that browns were behaving in a similar way in the training session I mentioned above I swapped over to the plume and ultimately did pretty well for the session coming in 10th out of 28 competitors.
One of the first wet flies tied was the coachman and that consisted of just a black body and a a set of white hackle slip wings. Over time flies have evolved and one path the coachman took was the substitution of a “royal” body for the simple black body. Many versions have been tied since and this one works for me.
Both floating and wet beetles (including drowned terrestrials beetles and aquatic beetles) should be fished in the current with as little line drag as possible or with a very short twitching action. A nondescript well tied beetle pattern if presented in the right way when fish have beetles on their menu, more often than not, will be accepted by fish.
