Futsu Kebari x 2

Kurobe Headwaters and Cutcliffe Style Red Head.
In this video I take a look at "futsu" kebari - one classic Japanese and one tied in the style of Cutcliffe from England in the 1860's.

Futsu kebari are stiff hackled (rooster hackle) we flies. Futsu refers to the orientation of the hackle and sort of translates to "regular" which implies straight up and down...not swept back to the bend "jun" and not reversed or swept over the eye of the hook "sakasa".

One of the most famous Futsu kebari is the Kurobe Headwaters pattern which has a peacock herl body, brown or black hackle and a purple head.

A kebari like the Kurobe futsu is fished wet...in the surface film or sunk using plunges or forceful casts. The stiff hackle helps in manipulations or "luring" of the fly called sasoi in Japanese. The stiff hackle also helps "grip" the water to lift more line off the water in complex currents and therefore keep the fly in the target zone longer.

The second fly I tie looks a lot like a popular modern riff on the Kurobe which is a peacock body, ginger, cream or dun colored hackle and a red head. I tie this basic color mix using a method outlined and advocated by HC Cutcliffe in his book "The Art of Trout Fishing on Rapid Streams" first published in 1863. Cutcliffe was from the Devonshire area of England and fished wet flies tied with rooster hackle and no tail. His book implies a he is not the inventor of this concept so this tradition must have existed at that time. Did it get lost in the birth of the Dry fly movement? We do not know. We also don't know how the tradition came to England. It is, though, to me extremely interesting that the basic type of pattern coexisted in Japan and England and was fished using some very similar concepts in what was for each place "rapid" streams.

The original text of Cutcliffe's book is available for free on archive.net

Dr. Paul Gaskell's reprinting with explanations, pictures of the flies and tying techniques is available on Amazon.

I am not affiliated with any profit source here and have no interest in making money off the subject so find them on your own if you are interested.