Partridge & Orange Soft Hackle

A wet fly, tied #12–18, carried year round. It is tied against 5 named insects in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — April–November.

A wet fly of three materials on a wet-fly hook in sizes 12–18, tied with orange 8/0 thread: a thin body of orange silk or floss, a sparse thorax of hare's ear dubbing, and one and a half turns of grey or brown partridge at the head. It is the simplest pattern here and among the most effective, two hundred years old and still the best emerger there is. The fibres breathe and open as the fly comes around on the swing, which is how it is fished — across and down at the end of a drift, working in the surface film during a caddis or mayfly emergence. It is tied against the Little Black Caddis, Chimarra atterima, of April and May at 46 to 58 degrees, and the Spotted or Tan Caddis, Hydropsyche spp., from May to August at 55 to 70. It also serves for caddis generally and as a searching pattern when nothing is hatching. Carried all year for trout.

#12–18Hook size
wet flyType
AllSeason
5Hatches matched

What it looks like

A drawing, not a photograph, and not traced from one. Its proportions were read off 5 independent reference photographs of the pattern and written down as 7 measured characteristics — wing angle, tail length against the shank, how far a hackle fibre reaches — every one of which had to hold across more than one of them before it could be drawn. What survives across many photographs of a fly is the fly.

One turn of a webby feather and almost no body. Swung across the current the fibres open and close, and that motion is the entire pattern — it is why a dressing this thin has outlived everything tied since. Drawn at #16 — 7.0 mm of shank and 3.5 mm of gape on a Tiemco 100.

The bare hook at every size this pattern is tied in, all to the same scale. There is no industry standard behind a hook number, so these are Tiemco 100 measurements and another maker's 12 will differ a little.

What it imitates

Each of these is the same hatch record the app's own panel reads, so a pattern recommended on a river card in the app is recommended for one of the insects below.

It is also tagged for caddis generally, no hatch at all — a searching pattern.

Tying recipe

In tying order. This dressing is the standard one — these patterns have been in the publicrecord for decades — and materials substitute freely: the proportions and the silhouette are the pattern, not the brand of dubbing.

Hook	Wet-fly hook, sizes 12–18
Thread	Orange 8/0
Body	Orange silk or floss, thin
Thorax	Hare's ear dubbing, sparse
Hackle	Grey or brown partridge, one and a half turns

When to fish it

Swung across and down at the end of a drift, in the surface film during a caddis or mayfly emergence. Two hundred years old and still the best emerger there is.

Carried all year. The insects it matches are active april–november, in water from 45°F to 74°F.

Target species

Trout

Rivers it fishes well

Rivers with a page here that sit in the regions where the insects this pattern imitates are recorded. It is a claim about coverage, not a report of a fish caught.

Related patterns

Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.