Don's Fly Tying - Nation's Silvertip Sedge


[Nation's Silvertip Sedge]

I have just returned from Arizona to find that my home province of BC is showing all the early spring signs of another great fly fishing season! A look at one of my fly boxes tied many years ago revealed several Bill Nation patterns that I have used with a reasonable degree of success when I lived in Kamloops. Bill Nation was born in England on June 29, 1881 but spent most of his life as a fishing guide in the Kamloops area, first on Shuswap's Little River and then he established a base at Echo Lodge on Paul Lake. In those early years, large Kamloops trout could be found in many Kamloops lakes and Bill Nation was well known for meeting client expectations! He would advertise at least 100 trout per week with up to 60 pounds of trout per day, all on the fly! Bill Nation past away in the fall of 1940 but he is still remembered for his many original fly patterns that he used when guiding his clients to those amazing catches.

I plan to again use some of Nation's fly patterns, which for the most part, are not exact replicas of naturals, perhaps because Bill did not have access to the fly tying materials that we have now. However, though many of his patterns are gaudy and bright, catch fish they did and continue to do so to this day! I think it is quite fitting to honour this early British Columbia fly fishing pioneer by reviewing several of his fly patterns in a series of web articles starting this month with Nation's Silvertip Sedge!


Materials

Instructions

Tie in the red goose strip tail then continue with a piece of flat silver tinsel and a second oval tinsel cinched at the hook bend. Wind the flat tinsel forward to about a third of the hook shank and complete the body to the hook eye with either dubbed green seal or green wool. Now wind the oval tinsel in 6 or 7 turns to the hook eye to form the rib. Next wrap about two turns of badger for the hackle at the hook eye followed by a mallard wing on top tied low against the fly body. Cement, tie off and you have completed Nation's silver tip sedge! Note, I have seen this pattern tied with both brown mallard flank and brown turkey as the wing material.



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