Dry fly
Pheasant Tail Spinner
General dark spinner
Trout · GraylingSurface
A turn-of-the-century pattern and still the general answer to a dark spinner: honey-dun tail, cock pheasant tail body ribbed with fine gold wire, honey-dun hackle, with spent hackle-tip wings added when the fish want them.
Fish this when
Into a spinner fall of any of the darker upwings — claret, sepia, turkey brown, large brook — when the naturals are lying spent and flush in the film rather than riding on it.
Why it works
Pheasant tail fibres give the translucent red-brown of a spent body better than dubbing, and because it imitates a stage rather than a species it covers most of the dark spinners an angler meets in one fly.
Naturals it imitates
spent upwing spinner; claret spinner; sepia spinner; dark upwing spinner
Typical zone & fishable range
usually
Surface
Film
Subsurface
Deep
Setup sensitivity: medium
Quick facts
Tying difficulty
Beginner-friendly