We see recipes for this fly or that, calling out a variety of exotic materials, usually claiming that the ones most difficult to find are the most critically necessary to a wily fish’s eye. This is especially true for trout flies, given that so many other species appear triggered more by color and motion than by the differences between how an Australian Possum and a Fur Seal chose to evolve their fur.
It’s less common to come across synthetic materials said to be simultaneously magical and scarce. One that comes to mind is the so-called “Utah Killer Bug” yarn, Chadwick’s 477, around which has grown a kind of mythologic reverence since the day Frank Sawyer popularized the pattern. Despite the demand for it, this yarn can no longer be found (probably because Chadwick was into sweaters and not trout flies). And so the best substitute is said to be Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift Oyster 290, which anglers in the know claim MIGHT be ALMOST as good, translucency-wise and wet-color-wise, as the revered Chadwick’s.
Continue reading at jsflyfishing.com.
