Spider or soft hackle?

[mcswny]

I apologize if this is a stupid question, but can someone tell me the difference between a spider and a soft hackle? For the life of me I can’t find it online? Is it like an England vs America naming convention or is there something more specific?

I appreciate you humoring me.

 

[Zak]

I'm not sure, but I think of "North Country Spiders" as a northern England/ Scotland thing. The spiders have little if any body and are mainly hackle, often starling.

By contrast, soft hackle flies (to me) just means there's a soft hackle added at the head of the fly. So a hare's ear soft hackle is a HE nymph with a partridge or other game bird hackle.

I guess I'm saying that all spiders are soft hackles, but not all soft hackles are spiders.

T.E. Pritt – currentseams.com

Posts about T.E. Pritt written by Steve Culton

currentseams.com

 

[Zak]

Pritt, legend has it, often fished a Black Spider which was starling twisted on black or brown silk and palmered up a tiny hook. Just a wisp of a fly, but a killing one!

 

[Zak]

 

[Zak]

And then there's this fly, which I tied after knocking a humongous spider off my float tube and watching it get crushed by a trout.

 

[Tom Butler]

Good question. In practical application, I see a spider style fly as having a longer hackle (like to the hook bend or longer), tied in and wound to be perpendicular to the hook shank, whereas a soft hackle is shorter (point or barb length) and is more swept back along the body. Spiders usually have a slimmer, simple body, no wing, and commonly lack a tail.

 

[Norm Frechette]

from the interweb. looks like theyre both the same, just a different name

What are spiders?​

Spiders, or North Country spiders as they're also known, are a kind of sparsely tied wet fly pattern popular with river anglers in the more northerly parts of England. In the US, this style of wet fly is known as a soft hackle, so you'll often see these names used interchangeably.

After being developed by the fly fishers of the Yorkshire Dales and other areas, they've been used in the UK for over a hundred years and still catch fish really well - some patterns are said to have been used for over 400 years, making them among the oldest of all fly patterns.

What do spider fly patterns represent?​

Contrary to what their name implies, North Country spiders aren't supposed to imitate actual spiders. Instead, they're a suggestive fly pattern which gives off the basic shape of a nymph when they're wet. They're one of the many flies that works by looking a lot like a lot of creatures, but not really like anything specific.

 

[Brian Miller]

Seven North Country Spiders For A Season – The Sliding Stream

theslidingstream.net

 

[mcswny]

I'm not sure, but I think of "North Country Spiders" as a northern England/ Scotland thing. The spiders have little if any body and are mainly hackle, often starling.

By contrast, soft hackle flies (to me) just means there's a soft hackle added at the head of the fly. So a hare's ear soft hackle is a HE nymph with a partridge or other game bird hackle.

I guess I'm saying that all spiders are soft hackles, but not all soft hackles are spiders.

T.E. Pritt – currentseams.com

Posts about T.E. Pritt written by Steve Culton

currentseams.com

This was also my assumption. People would just use the term "spider" or "soft hackle" with such confidence I wanted to know if I was missing something. I guess Im not

Thanks for all your replies everyone!

 

[Tim Cottage]

I'm not sure, but I think of "North Country Spiders" as a northern England/ Scotland thing. The spiders have little if any body and are mainly hackle, often starling.

By contrast, soft hackle flies (to me) just means there's a soft hackle added at the head of the fly. So a hare's ear soft hackle is a HE nymph with a partridge or other game bird hackle.

I guess I'm saying that all spiders are soft hackles, but not all soft hackles are spiders.

T.E. Pritt – currentseams.com

Posts about T.E. Pritt written by Steve Culton

currentseams.com

I think you've nailed it.
One of the earliest yet known references to "Spiders" as a descriptive term to describe a dressing style comes from George Cole Bainbridge's book, The Fly-Fisher's Guide, published in 1816. Probably the best over arching term for all these regional flies is simply North Country Flies as it encompasses hundreds of different patterns, techniques materials and regional names.

 

[FinLuver]

Oliver Edwards has a great video on North Country Spiders…

 

[Chucker]

According to an old tweed ghillie I was friends with about 30 years ago, calling them “spiders” is a thing that is only done by posh Englishmen. They were just flies. If you referred to a snipe and purple, everyone knew what you were talking about. If you called it a snipe and purple spider, then you would be charged twice as much for everything and expected to leave a big tip…

 

[Dave Boyle]

Aye it’s often the bird type and then color re the above, waterhen bloa, snipe and yellow, etc. No spider other than black spider was what I knew as a kid in Scotland or using spider as a generic term for all wet flies with soft hackles and generally wingless too.

Dave

 

[Tom Butler]

Ya know, sometimes I'm just slow. A spider is just a spider, arthropod. I was just doing dishes, and I hit the big one in the sink with some water, a dark ball little legs going every which way in the current. Just like the softhackles I fish. Colored thread, small ball of dubbing, partridge hackle. Spiders are available all year for the most part. I encounter them in the brush, and come to think of it crawling across a cobbled bar a lot. Lots of big spiders around the same time of year that mudder daddy fishes so well. I'll put on my captain obvious hat now.