The Brora is a river in northern Scotland. It is a short river that enters the North Sea from the west. The fly celebrating the river was brought to the attention of Colonel Joe Bates and listed in his 1970 book, Atlantic Salmon Flies and Fishing. He says that it was sent to him by Megan Boyd, the famed fly dresser who lives in Brora, and she believes it was a favorite pattern of Charles Ackroyd, who also lived in Brora, Sunderland. Bates correctly says it is a beautiful fly and "resembles the much simpler predominantly black patterns so successful on North American rivers, such as the Miramichi." He adds that "it resembles slightly" the Ackroyd patterns.

Miss Boyd kindly sent him the fly and the dressing, and on page 108 it is pictured. With its pink (lilac) butt and oval silver tinsel body veiled with toucan, it is quite bright, at least its stern is; forward, the fly is dark, black, with a floss body and "two" turns of black heron. This gives the Ackroyd touch. The tail is the usual golden pheasant crest, over "which are tied a few fibers of blue kingfisher half as long as the crest."

The winging is unusual and again Miss Boyd is precise: "two cinnamon turkey strips, outside of which are married strips of blue and white swan, outside of which are strips of pintail two-thirds as long as the inside strips." The fly pictured on page 108 comes as slight surprise, however. Knowing of its Ackroyd origin, one might expect it to be tied on a Dee iron, but the hook is the traditional ordinary salmon. It might be one-X long, but no longer. The cinnamon turkey appears to be white tipped and the blue in the wing is nearly obscured by the pintail, as is the white swan or goose. On the same page is an Ackroyd, also dressed by Miss Boyd on what seems to be the same style hook. A fine Jock Scott by her is on the same page, which proves that she deserves her high reputation. That hook, though larger, appears to be of the same relative short-shank length.

Okay. So when Colonel Bates did his 1987 book, The Art of the Atlantic Salmon Fly, shortly before his death, on Plate XXIV there is a Brora again – much larger in scale and easier to see. Miss Boyd tied this one, too. It is a little different, this time. The turkey is not cinnamon with a white tip, but a deep, dark cinnamon – a good, reddish brown feather was used. The wing is nicely tapered to fill the inside of the curve of the tail's crest. The kingfisher is less than one-third the crest's length, for what it's worth. The blue and white swan are of equal width, nicely pointed, and they perfectly split the turkey wing as sides, according to the original pattern. In other words, the wing is turkey, but it has sides or veilings of the two primary colors. Now, seventeen years later, the strips alongside the outer wing are . . . wood duck, not pintail. And the strips are pretty close to two-thirds the length of the married swan. The "heron" is piled deftly over itself, making for a full throat, and is not palmered the length of the black floss, as it was earlier. The hook is now a correct long shank.

Alec Jackson says that Miss Boyd does what is difficult easily, but what is less difficult not all so well. He also tells me that she was indebted to Stan Bogan for her supply of "summer duck" – what we call wood duck. That material is fairly easily obtained throughout North America today, but it was rare in Britain for most of this century, and flies were tied with teal or pintail alone, when dressings called for either summer duck or that feather married to teal. So it would seem that when she could get it, she used it. Otherwise, like all of us, she went without. The pattern might easily be amended today to encompass wood (or summer) duck.

What do these slight differences indicate, if anything? Miss Boyd is a practical fly tier, who makes her living cranking out flies professionally. Over time she may well tie the same fly slightly differently, depending upon a change in attitude or the availability of hooks and materials. A professional tier has to produce in volume, day after day, something we "amateur" tiers do not. Always the clock is ticking and the day's wage to be earned.

Eugene Sunday sent me a photo of his Brora a couple of years ago. It is tied on one of his fine handmade hooks-slender, graceful, long in the shank. It is, in fact, the type of iron that Ackroyd might have selected. Eugene's tinsel, however, is gold, a gold so deep it might well be termed copper. With the (true) toucan, and the dark lilac tag, the fly starts changing. His black heron is beautifully sparse and long; in comparison, it looks as if Miss Boyd substituted black spade hackle or schlappen. Again, availability may be the reason for change.

Where Eugene differs from both of Miss Boyd's versions is in the winging. Two married blue-white strips form the outer wing and reach clear to the tail, forming a long, slender shaft that just touches the crest of the tail. Since there is no topping over the wing in the dressing, the upper strip of cinnamon turkey serves as a topping, and his joins the tail perfectly. A fine wood duck strip about half the width of the wing and just short of half the wing's length runs down the side. With a short kingfisher feather above the tail, this version most closely conforms to what I think Ackroyd might have had in mind when he designed the fly for his river's fishing.

I have now tied Brora twice and am not happy with my work. I can picture it in my mind tied with a blind-eye long-shank hook I do not have, its cinnamon wings drooping, a full black heron hackle palmered luxuriously down its front half. But what do I do about that blue and white wing? Tie it low and flat, the way Bob Veverka might handle it, with the wood duck mere strips alongside? That might be the answer.

Whatever, it is a handsome fly and, as the Colonel said, suitable for the Miramichi and other salmon streams. It should catch summer-run steelhead, too, fished on a floating line in the surface film, on rivers such as the Wenatchee and Grande Ronde, in my home state of Washington. I intend to put Brora to the test, this fall.