Hackle

The Lunn’s Hackle Caperer was first used on 17th May 1917. John Waller Hills recalls, how a Club member caught with it eight trout, of which no fewer than five were found rising on Black Lake, and were landed one after the other. And he only fished part of the day. Hills’ describes the Caperer as:

a wonderfully useful fly, and kills in every weather, no water being too low, or sun too hot, or sky too bright.

William intended this fly as an imitation of what F. M. Halford named as the Welshman’s Button, Sericostoma personatum, and not fly that is known today as the Caperer, Halesus radiatus. The natural is in abundance from the end of May or the beginning of June. Halford remarks that:

usually in the forenoon, there suddenly appear great numbers of this fly, which seems to be in continual motion on the surface as if struggling upon the stream.