The Murragh, Murrough Or Great Red Sedge

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This is a tying (if you can call it that) of the Irish Murrough sedge adapted for modern materials but using the folded wing method (something I will never master!).
The original as far as I can find out was tied with brown wool, gold tinsel, red game hackle and grouse breast feather wing.
As a dry fly, the materials let it down as it had to be heavily ginked to float.

The natural that the Murrough represents is the Great Red Sedge or Murragh (Eruciform, Phryganeidae, Phryganea striata )

Here is another tying for the Murrough.

Successful on slow running rivers and stillwaters when fished on or very near the surface. Large sizes (6 to 10) are great `wake' flies but smaller 12 to 16`s also do the business in most hatches. The dressing should be medium, not bushy but not overly sparse. Body grey mole, body hackle palmered dark red cock hackle, rib gold wire, tail red cock hackle, wing brown speckled hen tied roof shaped rather than upright.

As you can see, tyings can vary from all over the country with no-one agreeing on the proper tying but I had some assistance from Jimmy Tyrrell, a well known tyer and instructor and also, owner of the Irish Fishing and Game museum at Abbeyleix in Co. Laois, who's own tying follows a more traditional pattern using either fiery brown seals fur or claret seals fur, gold wire rib, red game palmered body hackle, varnished red grouse breast feather roof winging, red game thorax hackle and cock pheasant antennae.

My effort uses the folded wing technique which on hindsight may not have been the best choice for winging.

On with the tie.

Materials:-

Thread - Olive UTC 140 Denier
Hook - any medium long shank from size 10 to size 6
Rib - Hot Yellow UTC wire
Body - Fiery Brown Seals fur
Body Hackle - Ollve with Skunk strip in Black
Wing - Mottled Oak Turkey, folded
Hackle - as body hackle but with longer fibres
Antennae - Cock Pheasant Tail Fibres


As this is not a beginner fly, I have missed out the threading and wire attaching as this should be second nature when tying complex flies such as this.



Form a heavy dubbing rope as this is a substantial fly in reality and the thick body is needed to wing it properly



Run the dubbing up to behind the eye quite thickly



Catch in the body hackle after stripping away the flue from the base, the fibres should be equal to or just slightly larger than the hook gape but not overly so.



Palmer the hackle down the body in about 6 to 8 turns, the black centre gives a segmentation effect on this fly that is supplemented by the ribbing in reverse turns.



Run the ribbing wire in opposite turns after making two turns around the hackle end making sure that you do not trap too many of the hackle fibres by waggling it through the fibres on each turn up the body.



Take your scissors and lie them flat along the body without pressing in to it and cut off the top hackle fibres, if you do not do this then you can end up with a cocked wing.

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Part two

Now for the swearing part, take your Oak Turkey quill and match up a slip to the fly



Ease the selected slip out to right angles trying not to break the barbule lock of the fibres as I do here.



Cut your slip free from the quill holding on to the thinner end of it.



Turn it over so that the dull side is facing you



Fold one third from the good side to the dull side



Then fold the top third over this again to have two good sides on the wing slip



Reverse your hold on the slip so that you are now holding the thicker end with the tips free

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Part three

Cut across the slip where the fibres are complete to square it off



Present this folded slip to the body about 4mm back from the eye so that it sits on top of the seals fur, if you set it on the thread it will cock the wing up and you want to get a more or less level wing on the body



As you can see from the image above, the wing is disproportionate to the body so the image below shows the wing in a more suitable size



Trim the excess with a diagonal cut sloping towards the eye of the hook



If you look at the next image you will see that the wing has split to form a wing on either side, this is not correct but when the fly is on the water this is how it actually looks, you can heal the split by careful stroking and seal with varnish or floo gloo if required



Take the larger of the two hackles and tie in to the thread that is over the end of the wing



Make a minimum of 6 turns as you want to achieve a really bushy thorax area on the fly before tying in and trimming

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Party of four? Centre table



Next stage is to form the antennae from two fibres from a pheasant tail



Strip them off the stalk and rotate them between your fingers in order to get opposing curves - don't worry if it does not do this, there is a cure at the last step that helps



Present them to the head and loop a couple of slack turns of thread around them after ensuring that the thread is at the back of the head



Adjust the lengths and positioning of the antennae before tightening the thread loops and adding a couple more for security



Find the two stalk ends of the fibres and lift clear of the hackle before cutting flush with the head



Whip finish and apply varnish if the antennae are sitting cocked up, if they are not, slip a loop of thread under then before whip finishing and varnishing the head. You can adjust their position while the varnish gets to the tacky stage

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Could this be the end at last?!

Trim the wing to length and shape the rear and the fly is finished



Here is one that has the winging correct but has suffered from being boxed.



And here are some I made earlier waiting on wing shaping before getting posted off for a traditional fly tie



Here is one tied to Jimmy Tyrell's method using an orange hen feather stroked over with varnish. Just put a couple of small drops on your forefinger, bring your thumb to meet it and then apply to either side of the feather, stroking the fibres to shape and put aside to dry.