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It was the summer of 2000 that I first became involved on English style Loch Style fly fishing and slowly I accumulated an arsenal of techniques and flies. The Mallard & Claret was the first for me in this series. Whilst it has been tweaked at the edges a little this Mallard & Claret pattern remains remarkably similar to the original fly pattern that has its origins in England some 500 odd years ago except for the introduction of a fuzzeled body rather than a hackled body and a soft wing instead of feather slip wings. In contemporary Australia whist still popular as a wet pattern for stream fishing it is also my favourite top dropper or "Bob" fly for lock style fishing.

I tie this fly in four distinct colours.

Materials for the mallard & claret

Materials for adams:

Materials for the brown/olive:

Materials for the blae & black:

A variation on my soft winged bob flies is to turn them into anchor flies for use as the point fly in a team of loch style flies. They are attractive to fish and because of the smaller size and additional weight they sink faster than most flies and keep my leader straight making it easier to keep in contact with my dropper flies. The weigh is a 2mm gold, copper or black tungsten bead (or brass bead and 8 wraps of .015mm lead on the front half of the hook shank).

From the following information you can work out the patterns for your own soft winged bob type flies tied to imitate our Australian mayflies

Baetis emergers

Tan #14 tan tail and body, brown wings and ginger beard.
Brown #14 brown / olive tail and body, brown wings and brown beard.
Pale watery #14 light olive / gray tail, gray / olive body, gray wings and light olive beard.
Blue winged olive #14 olive tail and body, bluish gray wings and gray and olive beard.
Grey #12 grizzly and brown hackle fibre tail, blue rabbit underfur body, grizzly hackle slip wings and grizzly and brown hackle fibre beard.
Black #16 all black.

Caenis emergers

Grey #16 dress as for an adams.
Brown #16 all brown.
Leptophlebiidae, oniscigastridae and kosciuszko emergers
Black spinner #12 charcoal to black.
Red spinner #12 burgundy to red.
Lambda dun #12 ginger tail, gray body, brown wing and ginger beard.
March brown #12 yellow wool tag, gold/brown rabbit fur body with yellow ribbing, brown pheasant hen wing and partridge hackle beard.
Twilight beauty #12 dark ginger tail, black body, grey / black wing and ginger beard.
Highland dun (Tasmania particularly) #12 dark brown / olive tail, body and wing with brown and olive hackle beard.
Green drake #12 all olive green.
Kosciuszko #12 all cream / beige.

Process for Blae and Black

A	Wind the thread in touching turns to the bend of the hook. Understanding hooks Tie in a length of fine copper wire. Tie in a tail of 6-8 Golden Pheasant tippets that is as long of the hook shank.

B	Dub on a cigar shaped body over the rear 2/3 of the hook shank. Dubbing options Wind the wire forward forming 4 or 5 equal segments. Using a piece of Velcro tease out the seals fur fibres to represent legs.

C	Directly in front of the body tie in hackle. Dry fly hackles

D	Take 3 of four turns of the hackle directly in front of the body. Wind the thread through the hackle locking it into place leaving the thread in front of the hackle. Trim the excess hackle.

E	Take bunch of hackle fibres and tie them onto the top of the fly as a soft wing about the same length as the hook that sits on top of the fly extending over the top of the fly at an angle of around thirty degrees. Build up a neat head, lock off and trim the thread and finally varnish the head.

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