Calzolari Grouse & Yellow

North Country flies are very typical wet flies from the tradition of northern England, also called spiders or soft hackles by Americans. Despite their simple construction, they are very effective flies and perfect to be used in a cast of one, two or three flies where permitted. You can fish them upstream on the film or you can try them on a dropper combined with a heavier nymph.

These North Country spiders are all tied in hand by Alberto Calzolari on Partridge Trout Spider Wide Gape hooks with pure Ephemera Pure Silk Thread or Ovale Pure Silk Floss, using wax as the Semperfli Prepared Wax or the Semperfli Cobblers Wax, high quality tinsels, and with a variety of soft feathers from different game birds. 

Alberto Calzolari is an internationally known fly tier, lecturer and columnist with a special passion for historical research on classic flies and fly tying materials. Many of his flies are in museums or private collections and many others are represented on magazines and books, among them The History of Fly Fishing by Andrew Herd, Fly Tiers of the World by Steve Thornton and Classic Salmon Fly Patterns by Michael Radencich. He is one of the team members who worked on the The Blacker Trilogy, on the book trilogy on the life, books and flies of the iconic mid 19th Century Irish fly tier William Blacker, together with Andrew Herd, Hermann Dietrich-Troeltsch and the editor Jon Ward-Allen. He tied most of the flies pictured in this unique work and all the flies for the De Luxe editions.