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By Mark Hume, with Photography by Nick Didlick It might have been called the Three Martini Fly, except that by the time the third martini was actually mixed and consumed, the fly had already been invented and named, if tied somewhat carelessly. It’s now officially called Claire’s Clothes, after a little girl who casts a pretty good line and whose favorite color is red. Nick Didlick invented the fly sitting in the bar at the Pitt River Lodge, which is actually where he gets a lot of his fly tying inspiration. Kelsey’s Hope, a deadly coho fly, wasn’t invented at the bar, but it was perfected there, and is now being copied by commercial tiers. With Kelsey’s Hope now a standard pattern in British Columbia fly boxes, Nick set out to see if he could top himself. “I wanted something bright, something with lots of movement, to attract bull trout, coho and rainbow,” he said, dreaming of a grand slam on the river, with one fly.
As it turned out the fly soon proved itself, taking rainbows, bull trout and Dolly Varden over the next few days. Drifting it on a sink tip, down and across, the trout would take it just at the start of the swing. Several fish in a row were hooked just in the tip of their mouths, suggesting they like to come up behind this pattern and nip it, perhaps mistaking it for drifting salmon eggs. But the coho shunned it. The truth is, the coho were sulking, and weren’t taking much of anything offered by fly fishermen that week, so maybe it is too soon to write it off as a salmon fly. But as a trout attractor, Claire’s Clothes definitely pulls up rainbows from the bottom of deep, fast runs. And Dolly Varden will chase it into the shallows to grab it. On cold fall days, before a hatch starts to bring the trout up, try this pattern on a fast sinking line. Rainbows love it, and with a few more martinis at the bar, perhaps Nick will fine tune it, and turn it into a coho attractor too. |
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