The fly box · No. 10 of 36
Rusty Spinner
Spent mayfly spinners lying flat in the film at dusk.
- Kind
- Dry
- Hook sizes
- 14–18
- Season
- Summer, autumn
- For
- Trout and grayling
- At the vice
- An easy tie
The dressing
| Hook | Standard dry fly, barbless or barb flattened, sizes 14–18 |
|---|---|
| Thread | Rust brown, 8/0 (70 denier) |
| Tail | Microfibbets or stiff pale dun hackle fibres, split wide |
| Body | Fine rusty-brown dubbing, slim and tapered |
| Rib | None |
| Hackle | None |
| Wing | White or pale grey poly yarn, tied spent at right angles to the shank |
| Also | Thorax of the same rusty dubbing, figure-of-eighted around the wing roots |
Tying it
- Run the thread to the bend and form a tiny ball of dubbing there.
- Tie in two or four tail fibres and press them against the ball so they split wide.
- Dub a slim abdomen over two thirds of the shank.
- Lay a sparse length of poly yarn across the shank and fix it with figure-of-eight turns.
- Dub over and around the wing roots to form a slightly fuller thorax.
- Whip finish and trim each wing to about the length of the body.
Fishing it
Summer and early autumn evenings, in the last hour of light, on the smooth water below riffles where spent flies collect. The rises are quiet rings, often with only a nose showing. Fish the spinner flush in the film on 6X (0.13 mm), with no floatant on the body and no drag whatever. Get close, cast short and keep the line tight enough to feel a take, because you will rarely see the fly itself.
Where it comes from
No single tier can claim it. The Rusty Spinner is a plain American style that became standard once synthetic yarn made flat, translucent wings easy to tie. Many olives finish their lives as red-brown spinners, falling spent on the water after egg-laying, and this one sparse dressing covers nearly all of them, the sherry spinner of the blue-winged olive included.