The Glanrhos style of Wet Fly.

   The Glanrhos style of winging wet flies, in which the wing is formed as a single wing by the tip of the hackle that is used for the legs of the fly, first tied and made known by the late Mr. Graham Clarke.

The Glanrhos type of winging gives a very lightly dressed fly, and a very killing one, too.

The wing is formed by the tip of the hackle used for the legs, so is somewhat in its application to those flies that have wings and legs of something the same colour.

The body of the fly is prepared as usual, then prepare a hackle for wings and legs by stroking down the fibres of it, leaving sufficient at the tip of the hackle to form the wing of the fly, and just enough fibres below the tip to form the legs of the fly, stripping all other fibres off. Fig. 54

Tie in the tip of the hackle for the wing and fix it upright as in Fig. 55.

Wind remainder of hackle close up to and supporting the wing, and finish off. Completed fly as this. Fig 73.

For the down-winged type of Glanrhos wet flies, form the body of the fly, tie in wing flat on the back, as in Fig. 56, wind the remaining portion of the hackle for legs over the turns of tying silk that tie in the wing.

Finish off. Fig. 74.  

The above instructions and figures are from Roger Woolley’s

‘Modern Trout Fly’Dressing’

    On pages 32 and 98 of Sylvester Nemes ‘Soft-hackled Fly Imitations’ he gives a different way of tying the Glanrhos flies and gives an account of fishing them, using Pale Morning duns and Mahogany duns. There are pictures and patterns of

a B. W. O. and a Mahogany Dun tied Glanrhos style.  

As Woolley’s book was published in 1932, the ‘late’ Mr. Graham Clarke must have lived at least from the turn of the century until the end of the ‘twenties’. I have tried a trace on the ‘net’ but, apart from noting  that Graham Clarke is an extremely common name, I could find nothing.

Picture of Glanrhos on Wye

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