Overview

Perdigon means shotgun pellet in Spanish, and one cast tells you why the name stuck. The style began in France in the late 1980s, when tyers chasing more weight started seating small metal balls behind the hook eye and coating the bodies in hard varnish, cutting friction so the fly knifed through the water instead of drifting down through it. It reached Spain in the early 2000s, where competition anglers refined it into the form used today. This dressing carries the name of Jose Carlos Rodriguez, one of the anglers who put the style on the map.

Everything about it serves sink rate. The tungsten bead and slim, varnished body give almost nothing for the water to push against, so the fly reaches the bottom of a fast run in the first metre of drift rather than the last. The Black body reads as almost any small dark nymph, and the Red accent works as a hot spot, the small point of colour that turns a follow into a take. It is a natural anchor on a Euro-nymph rig and equally at home as the point fly under an indicator. Tied here in sizes 16 and 18.Read More +