Fluorescent Chartreuse Mallard Spey

Chartreuse Mallard Spey Feathers

Chartreuse is the color you reach for when the river looks like chocolate milk and your buddy already went home. It glows in stained water, it lights up a green butt, and it gives a dark fly just enough trigger to get eaten.

Twelve jumbo fluorescent chartreuse mallard spey feathers per pack, hand-picked for steelhead and salmon tiers. Use full feathers as a wrapped collar on swing flies, strip them for wing accents, or pull fibers for a hot throat. The barring keeps it from looking like a highlighter with a hook in it.

Long, clean, and every one of them usable.

Recipe 1: Green Butt Skunk Spey

• Hook: Size 2 to 6 spey or up-eye salmon hook, black
• Thread: Black 8/0
• Tail: Red hackle fibers, short
• Butt: Fluorescent chartreuse chenille, two turns
• Body: Black floss or black dubbing
• Rib: Oval silver tinsel
• Hackle: Black schlappen palmered through the body
• Collar: Fluorescent Chartreuse Mallard Spey, two turns behind a black hackle
• Wing: White arctic fox or calf tail, short and sparse
• Head: Black

How to fish it: The Skunk is a summer-run classic, and the green butt has been fooling steelhead for decades. Fish it on a floating line or light tip in riffles and walking-speed runs. Cover water: two steps between casts, same angle, same swing. When the green butt is working, it works all day.

Recipe 2: Glacier Water Mini Intruder

• Hook: Trailer hook, size 2 to 4, on a wire or Dacron shank 35 to 45 mm
• Thread: Chartreuse 140 denier
• Eyes: Small lead or tungsten dumbbell
• Rear hackle: Chartreuse ostrich herl, wrapped, then a collar of Fluorescent Chartreuse Mallard Spey
• Body: Chartreuse Ice Dub
• Front hackle: Black schlappen, then two turns of Fluorescent Chartreuse Mallard Spey
• Flash: Four strands of pearl flash
• Head: Chartreuse thread

How to fish it: Built for glacial and stained rivers with 1 to 2 feet of visibility. Fish it on a Skagit head with a 10 to 12 foot T-11 or T-14 tip. Put it close to the bank and in soft inside seams. In dirty water fish hold tight and shallow, so swing slower than you think you need to.