The idea to trim thick, palmered Cul de Canard (CDC) to shape a juicy abdomen was inspired by Tom Sutcliffe’s DDD – simply pronounced as ‘Triple D’ (see previous post…). Tom made the ‘DDDs’ that he tied famous in South Africa – there are several forms (deerhair with hackle feathers, klipspringer hair with hackle feathers and then the classic ‘klipspringer-only’ version) in different colours and they all work well for local stillwater trout and for many fish species in our rivers (many yellowfish species, rainbow and brown trout); in fact most of his flies became famous because they work so damn well.
I thought about shaping CDC bodies like Tom trimmed the deerhair (or klipspringer hair) in his DDD while I was preparing for hunting brown trout in our larger, free-stone rivers – big Western Cape brown trout love eating big DDDs (keep an eye out for the next post on big dries for browns).
I applied this concept to the wolf spider imitation that I tie and a parachute Adams and both looked edible (yet to be tested on some trout, but I have no doubt they will love it):
A parachute Adams tied with a Triple CDC abdomen
Triple CDC Wolf Spider:
Step 1: Select a favoured dry fly hook in #14 (this is a Dohiku Dry 301 #14) and tie 3 x natural CDC feathers in at their tips above the bend of the hook with Gordon Griffiths Sheer 14/0 black thread;
Step 2: Tie the entire tip of a mallard feather in near the hook eye (this will form the post of the dry fly);
Step 3: Shape the mallard post;
Step 4: Palmer all three CDC feathers toward the post;
Step 5: Tie the CDC feathers neatly off at the base of the post;
Step 6: Trim the CDC feathers to shape a juicy, oval abdomen;
Step 7: Tie in two sets of golden pheasant tail fibres on each side, pointing backwards, to form the ‘hind’ legs of the spider;
Step 8: Tie in two sets of golden pheasant tail fibres on each side pointing forward to form the ‘front” legs of the spider pattern;
Step 9: Tie in a fairly wide brown hackle at the base of the post (shiny or top side facing away from you);
Step 10: Tie in a standard dry fly grizzly hackle at the base of the post (shiny or top side facing away from you);
Step 11: Add a drop of varnish to the base of the post and palmer the grizzly hackle around the base of the post – I try to palmer it as close to the hook shank as possible;
Step 12: Palmer the wider brown hackle underneath and slightly into the grizzly hackle to create a nice dense, low hackle profile, tie off and add a drop of varnish to the thread.
The completed Wolf Spider with a fat, CDC abdomen.
