Royal Coachman

Royal Coachman
Artificial fly
Drawing of Royal Coachman, 1892
Type	Dry fly, wet fly, streamer
Imitates	Attractor
History
Creator	John Haily
Created	1878

The Royal Coachman is an artificial fly that has been tied as a wet fly, dry fly and streamer pattern. Today, the Royal Coachman and its variations are tied mostly as dry flies and fished floating on the water surface. It is a popular and widely used pattern for freshwater game fish, particularly trout and grayling. Large streamer versions are also used for winter steelhead and Atlantic salmon.

In Royal Coachman—The Lore and Legends of Fly-Fishing (1999) Paul Schullery describes the Royal Coachman:

No fly better represents this freewheeling era [late 19th century] in fly tying than the Royal Coachman, which among the general public may be the world's best-known fly. Its name has the right combination of romance and class to appeal even to people who don't fish, and the fly has such a commanding appearance that few fly fisherman can resist having some permutation of the pattern in their fly boxes, even if they never use it. Most of them don't know it, but the Royal Coachman is the first great American fly pattern...
— Paul Schullery, ^[1]

Origin

The Royal Coachman was first tied as a traditional winged wet fly and is a derivative of the Coachman wet fly. Mary Orvis Marbury in her Favorite Flies and Their Histories (1892) tells the story of its creation as follows:

The Royal Coachman was first made in 1878 by John Haily, a professional fly-dresser living in New York City. In writing of other matters, he inclosed [sic] a sample of this fly for us to see, saying: "A gentleman wanted me to tie some Coachmen for him to take up into the north woods, and to make them extra strong, so I have tied them with a little band of silk in the middle, to prevent the peacock bodies from fraying out. I have also added a tail of the barred feathers of the wood-duck, and I think it makes a very handsome fly." A few evenings later, a circle of us were together "disputing the fly question," one of the party claiming that numbers were "quite as suitable to designate the flies as so many nonsensical names." The others did not agree with him, but he said: "What can you do? Here is a fly intended to be a Coachman, yet it is not the true Coachman; it is quite unlike it, and what can you call it?" Mr. L. C. Orvis, brother of Mr. Charles Orvis, who was present, said: "Oh, that is easy enough; call it the Royal Coachman, it is so finely dressed!" And this name in time came to be known and used by all who are familiar with the fly.^[2]

The Royal Coachman pattern is one of the very few patterns that appeared in Marbury's work that is still being tied and fished today in some form or another.

Imitates

A #12 Royal Wulff dry fly, a Royal Coachman derivative

The Royal Coachman and its derivatives are considered attractor patterns, or as Dave Hughes in Trout Flies-The Tier's Reference (1999) calls them—searching patterns—as they do not resemble any specific insect or baitfish.^[3] Early in the 20th century, Theodore Gordon once was of the opinion that the Royal Coachman resembled some form of flying ant, while in the 1950s, Preston Jennings, a noted fly tier and angler thought the Royal Coachman resembled Isonychia mayflies.^[4]

Materials

The distinguishing features of any Royal Coachman or its derivatives are the peacock herl body partitioned with red silk or floss, a white wing and brown or red-brown hackle. Depending on whether the fly is tied as a dry fly, wet fly or streamer the white wing can be made with white duck quill, bucktail, calf tail, hen neck, hackle points or other white material. Tailing has varied over the years from the original wood duck flank to include golden pheasant tippet, brown or red hackle, moose, elk and deer hair.

Variations and sizes

There are many variations on the original Royal Coachman. Typically dry fly variations are tied on hook sizes 10-16, wet fly versions on hook sizes 8-14 and streamer versions on hook sizes 1 to 8. Commonly named variations include:^[5]

Royal Trude - a down hair wing dry fly
Royal Coachman Bucktail - a hair wing streamer pattern
Royal Coachman Streamer - a feather wing streamer pattern
Fanwing Royal Coachman - a dry fly
Royal Wulff - a hair wing dry fly
Royal Humpy - a hair bodied dry fly
Royal Sakasa Kebari - a reverse tied soft hackled tenkara wet fly

Royal Coachman Gallery

Royal Coachman Bucktail

Royal Humpy dry fly

External links

Notes

↑ Schullery, Paul (1999). Royal Coachman-The Lore and Legends of Fly-Fishing. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 116–117. ISBN 0-684-84246-7.
↑ Marbury, Mary Orvis (1892). Favorite Flies and Their Histories. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company. p. 97.
↑ Hughes, Dave (1999). Trout Flies-The Tier's Reference. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-8117-1601-7.
↑ Schullery, Paul (Spring 1982). "Royal Coachman". The American Fly Fisher. 9 (2): 15–17.
↑ Hughes, Dave (1999). Trout Flies-The Tier's Reference. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. pp. 47, 64, 131, 154. ISBN 978-0-8117-1601-7.

Angling and game fishing

Angling	Boat fishing Trolling Casting Spey casting Reach cast Surf fishing Rock fishing Bank fishing Kayak fishing Centerpin fishing Coarse fish Rough fish Bottom fishing Tackle Techniques Tournaments Traditional fishing boats Angling personalities Television series Confédération Internationale de la Pêche Sportive

Game fishing	Big-game fishing Land-based game fishing Salmon run International Game Fish Association

Sport fish	Bass Carp Fly target species Mahi-mahi Marlin Porgie (bream) Shad Smelt whiting Striped bass Swordfish Walleye

The catch	Bag limits Catch and release Ghille Ike jime Minimum landing size Panfish Priest (tool) Tag and release

Catch records	Europe UK

Fly fishing

Fly fishing	Fly fishing tackle Bamboo fly rod Fly rod building Fly Casting Analyzer Furled leader Spey casting Reach cast Tenkara fishing Float tube Trout bum Target fish Fly waters Bibliography of fly fishing

Artificial flies	Fly lure Fly tying Adams Amadou Clouser Deep Minnow Cul De Canard Dave's Hopper Diawl bach Egg sucking leech Elk Hair Caddis Flesh Fly Grey Ghost Streamer Hare's Ear Klinkhammer Muddler Minnow Parks' Salmonfly Partridge and Orange Pheasant Tail Nymph Royal Coachman Royal Wulff Sakasa Kebari Trolling tandem streamer fly Tube fly Woolly Worm Woolly Bugger

Organizations	American Museum of Fly Fishing Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum Federation of Fly Fishers Trout Unlimited

Literature	Blacker's Art of Fly Making A Book on Angling A Concise Treatise on the Art of Angling Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice Favorite Flies and Their Histories Floating Flies and How to Dress Them The Fly-fisher's Entomology Fly Fishing A History of Fly Fishing for Trout Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream Pseudonyms of notable angling authors The American Angler's Book The Salmon Fly The Way of a Trout with the Fly

Fisheries and fishing topic areas

Fisheries	Aquaculture Diversity of fish Fish diseases and parasites Fish farming Fisheries management Fisheries science Individual fishing quota Sustainable fishery Wild fisheries

Fishing	Artisanal fishing Fisherman Fishing vessel History of fishing

Industry	List of harvested aquatic animals by weight By country Commercial fishing Marketing Markets Processing Products Seafood

Recreation	Angling Big-game fishing Catch and release Fishing tournaments Fly fishing

Techniques	Fish trap Fishfinder Fishing net Gathering seafood by hand Handline fishing Spearfishing Trawling

Tackle	Artificial flies Bait Bite indicators Hook Line Lures Rod Sinker

Locations	Fish ponds Fishing banks Fishing villages Marine habitats

Glossary Index Outline Fishing portal Category

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/10/2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.