Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Bali Duck or Yanosh streamers


At left we see two streamers, the Bali Duck and the Jesse Wood Streamer.  They are both as per the patterns in Joe Bates' 1981 tome, Streamers and Bucktails.  I will describe the patterns momentarily.  Firstly though I wanted to pose a question:  What really is Yanosh, also known as Bali Duck? I don't mean, what do we substitute for it today, I mean, what was the real thing?
I did a web search and found references to cooking recipes and other non-related things, but not the answer to my question.
I began examining ducks to see if I could decipher from the pictures where the feathers would come from on the duck, and what the original Bali duck was.
There are several species of  duck where the drakes possess feathers resembling in some way the feathers I see in Bates;  Baikal teal, Falcated duck, Pintail, Gargany, and Oldsquaw in early summer plumage for examples.  Endeavouring to find the one most like the photos though was tough.  I don't know any one who owns any of the above mentioned ducks, and though I have several Pintail skins, these initially seemed to me the least like Yanosh/Bali of the lot.   I managed to get some winter Oldsquaw, and was disappointed, still havent managed Falcated, Baikal or Gargany.
After talking online with many people though, and locally to a few old-timers who remember this stuff as a kid, I re-examined my "hoard" of Pintail, compared it with better photos and decided it was close enough, and in fact was later informed by a couple of reliable sources that indeed Yanosh was Pintail.
So here I present two Yanosh streamers, the Jesse Woods and the Bali Duck.  Attributions are listed in the photo.  The patterns are as follows:
Bali Duck Streamer
Head: black
Tag: narrow flat gold tinsel extending well into the bend
Butt: two turns of black chenille
Tail: fifteen or twenty strands of golden pheasant tippet, tied rather long
Body: medium embossed silver tinsel.  Just behind the throat is a forward butt of about four turns of peacock herl
Ribbing: medium flat silver tinsel between the two butts
Throat: two turns of brown hackle, tied down.  The hackle should be very soft and sparse.
Wing: two Bali  Duck feathers (sometimes known as Yanosh) back to back with the bends exactly alike and extending out past the tail by a tails length.
Cheeks: Jungle cock
Originated by Arthur Bates of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, for fishing the St. Marys river at the outlet of Lake Superior, and named by Ray Bergman in 1948.  As the trout (known locally as "Soo" trout) are very large, this fly is usually dressed on a size 2 hook.
Jesse Wood Streamer
Head: black
Tail: A narrow section of red duck wing feather, tied rather long.
Body: medium embossed or oval silver tinsel.  In early versions the body was dressed with fine silver wire.
Throat: furnace hackle tied back and down.  It should be short and thinly dressed.
Wing: two Bali duck feathers extending just beyond the tail. The upper part of the feathers should be light brown, the lower jet black.
Cheeks: Jungle cock, fairly short.
Originated by Jesse Wood of Warwick, New York in 1926, and developed with help from Ray Bergman.  Originally Wood preferred it dressed as a tandem, but Bergman liked it better in singles.  Known in Canada as the Demon Streamer.
The feather described here for the wing sounds a lot more like Baikal teal then it does Pintail.  I have been thinking lately that perhaps Bali or Yanosh wasn't so much a particular duck, as maybe the body part of a group of ducks.  I don't know really, so I leave it as an unanswered question.  What was the real Bali originally, and how do I get some?  (of course!)

1 comment:

  1. My cousin recommended this blog and she was totally right keep up the fantastic work!


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