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Trude

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We are going to give a go on the Trude. A fly credited as being the pattern that started a move to the creation of many hair-wing based flies - both Dry and Salmon.

The Trude is documented but the documentation does not all line up. What does line up is that the fly was first tied in the last years of the 1800s or like early 1900s. Carter H. Harrison is credited with its creation while visiting his friend A.S. Trude on his ranch in Idaho. As the story goes it was first tied as a gag...but Trude liked it and off it went to become a successful pattern.

Other tiers got a hold or one or became aware of it and the variations and inventions took off from there.

What that original exact pattern was and the sizes etc is possibly not known...but it is commonly accepted to be a red wool body, silver tinsel, squirrel tail wing and red/brown hackle. Some list it having a tail of the same color as the hackle and some specify grey squirrel yet others fox squirrel.

I am going with J. Edson Leonard's listing from "Flies" of 1950.

Body: Red wool
Wing: squirrel tail (he does not specify species)
Rib: Silver tinsel
Hackle: red/brown rooster

For the wing I am picking grey squirrel simply because the tips are white and perhaps that will help me see the fly.

https://www.flyanglersonline.com/oldsite/features/oldflies/part231.php

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