Heritage Flies Caribou Spider and the RAB. Peter Brigg Caribou Spider – First clipped deer hair stream pattern and Wolf Spider imitation.
variants that will be described in a future part of this series. Mackereth’s original had a body of clipped caribou reindeer hair and the parachute was constructed by tying a stripped quill into a loop which was held upright by a gallows tool. The hackle was wound laterally around this quill loop, the feather tip was then threaded through the loop and the quill was pulled to tighten the loop around the feather, leaving the tip of the feather pointing forward. Later commercial versions saw the hackle feather wound around a post of red chenille which made it easier to follow on the water and a hackle fibre tail was added. It floats like a cork, is easy to follow in the most boisterous of currents and has proved successful for half a century.
Originally from Yorkshire in England, Mark Mackereth was a member of the Cape Piscatorial Society during the 1960/70s. Using his beloved Pezon & Miche split cane rod with silk lines he was largely instrumental in introducing the up-stream, dead-drift, dry-fly technique on the fast, shallow and clear Cape mountain streams. Prior to his arrival in South Africa, the universal technique on rivers was to fish a sinking line across and down or downstream with a slow retrieve. He will best be remembered for the pattern that he first tied in the 1960s – The Caribou Spider. It is not well-known today and has been overtaken by a number of Wolf Spider www.saflyfishingmag.co.za
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