Treacle Parkin
Peacock herl, a wool tag and a natural red cock hackle — the Red Tag’s Yorkshire cousin, named after a treacle-and-oatmeal cake eaten late in the autumn, when the trout season is over and the grayling season is in full swing. Greenhalgh notes the tag should properly be orange, though it is more usually tied yellow. It imitates nothing at all and catches grayling everywhere, which is the whole argument for the peacock-herl school in one pattern.
Any mild autumn or winter day when grayling are showing, and as a searching fly when they are not. Also a perfectly good trout fly in a summer evening rise, whatever the books say about it being a grayling pattern.
A Red Tag with the tag changed, and it works for the same unexplained reason: peacock herl and a bright tag on a small hook is a combination grayling have never learned to refuse. The yellow shows a little better than red in flat winter light.
