Thunder and Lightning
The Following is an excerpt from Flies For Atlantic Salmon & Steelhead which can be purchased from Amazon HERE
Who would not wish to cast a fly named Thunder and Lightning? Norse gods throw down cosmic energy that animates every turn of thread and every slip of feather, the fly a pagan talisman with supernatural powers. Generations of fly fishers have felt that way despite many changes in the dressing.
The “original”—if such a name can be accurately applied to most old salmon flies—is better known than most because James Wright originated it. Black Doctor, Black Ranger, Durham Ranger, Greenwell, Lion, Silver Doctor, Silver Gray, the latter two especially beautiful silver-bodied salmon flies, all bear witness to Wright’s remarkable eye for color and composition.
Most have stood the test of time because the dressing details were published in books soon after their introduction, and these became unimpeachable references that future generations confidently depended on to establish the dressing’s historical authenticity.
I should add that each authority felt compelled to do a little tinkering at the edges to make the fly something of their own. Nevertheless, Wright’s original, as sanctified Kelson, Pennell, Hardy and Hale:
Tag: Gold twist (round or oval tinsel) and yellow silk.
Tail: Golden pheasant crest (topping).
Butt: Black herl.
Body: Black silk ribbed with gold tinsel.
Hackle: Orange from first turn of tinsel.
Throat: Jay.
Wing: Mallard in strips with a topping.
Shoulder: Jungle cock.
Horns: Blue macaw.
Head: Black herl.
T. E. Pryce Tannatt in his classic work How to Dress Salmon Flies (1914) first detailed the progression of rainbow colors in a built-wing Thunder and Lightning, the look we’ve come to associate with this storied salmon dressing. From bottom to top, married sections of yellow, red and blue swan were married to bustard and golden pheasant tail and then topped with twin sections of brown mallard. Tannatt called for the body to be hackled with reddish brown cock neck hackle, but he retained the blue throat.
Bustard species are native to Europe, Britain and Africa. The reference is likely to the kori bustard of Europe. The turkey-sized long-legged bird with richly barred brown plumage across its back became popular with dressers of salmon flies. At the time, the species had been extirpated from Britain in 1831, but could still be found in remote parts of Europe, particularly in Spain.
This blue is like Silver Doctor Blue, but richer: an azure “blue macaw” blue. Those changes from two Thunder and Lightning blood lines were retained in the hair-wing steelhead fly, the body palmered with orange hackle over black floss and finished with a blue hackle throat. The “Irish” hair-wing fly is tied with very small but distinct bunches of the wing color; yellow, red and blue topped with natural brown bucktail.
The fly dressed in this manner and usually fished in sizes 6 and 8 has become so popular on Idaho’s Clearwater for the river’s large B-run steelhead that the Thunder and Lightning has become nearly synonymous with the river. I can’t recall such close pairing of fly and river on any other steelhead river.
Each fall the world’s masters of casting long distances with two-handed rods collect at Poppy’s Red Shed for the Spey-O-Rama. The small Thunder and Lightning hair-wings are launched 150 to 180 feet by using long-belly sink-tip lines and long, powerful rods in 17- to 18-foot lengths.
Pictured: Thunder and Lightning is an old Irish pattern. Left: married-wing version from How to Dress Salmon Flies by T. E. Pryce-Tannatt (1914) and right with jungle cock from The Salmon Fly by George M. Kelson (1895).
