Grey Duster

In this video I do my best to tie the well know Traditional Dry Fly pattern known as the Grey Duster. It is a pattern tied to represent anything small, grey or pale and unidentifiable or the Caenis fly which would also match that description. Unfortunately at some venues, especially heavily fished ones that are Catch and Release the fish become preoccupied with this small insects and make fishing for them very difficult. Even a size 14 one, like the example in this video can be 3 times he size of the natural insect, but unless you are amazing at tying flies on size 24 hooks its going to be a struggle, but this pattern is as good as it gets.

The original pattern is found on page 166 of one of my reference publications, Trout and Salmon 220 Favourite Flies and the text is as follows,

"An excellent Dry Fly, this is a effective pattern for Trout and Grayling. The smaller sizes are useful Midge and Caenis imitations; the medium sizes are a general Stonefly imitation and bigger sizes can represent a Moth."

"Hook: 10-14
Tail (Optional); Badger Hackle Fibres
Body: Blue Grey Rabbit Fur
Hackle: Badger Cock"

Personally I felt to imitate the Caenis flies you need to be tying on hook sizes 14 to 24 and I felt the Grizzle Cock Feathers were better than the Badger ones for the fly, so I went with those. As for the body, I wanted to keep it slim and light and decided to just go with a tying thread body, however another useful variation would be a segmented body made from Peacock Herl Quill fibres.