In praise of the Imperial

One of my heroes in the world of fly-fishing is the late Oliver Kite. You may remember him for his book on nymph fishing; but far better is the collection of articles he wrote for Shooting Times published posthumously as 'Fisherman's Diary'. This very rare book is now a collector's item. Kite also made a TV series called 'Kite's Country' that was shown only in Wessex, but a few surviving programmes have been put together in two wonderful videos.
Kite was a great dry-fly fisherman, and his name will be for ever linked to his Imperial, a simple hackled pattern. To tie it, take a size 14-18 hook and, using purple silk, tie in a heron herl body ribbed fine gold wire, and give the fly a tail and hackle of honey-dun cock (if you can get it, otherwise a honey, light ginger or sandy-dun)


Hook: Dry fly, sizes 14-18.
Thread: Purple.
Tail: Honey (light ginger or sandy) dun cock.
Body: Heron herl ribbed with fine wire.
Hackle: Honey (light ginger or sandy) dun cock.

Before I became a fan of no-hackle and parachute dries, Kite's Imperial was on my leader for at least 50 days every year and it caught me a lot of trout. It came to the fore again in May 2000. I was making a series of videos and we were filming on the Derbyshire Wye. I spotted a nice fish that was eating duns and presented to it my favourite CdC. The silly trout ignored it. Then I offered it a Para-dun. The ignorant fish ignored that too. Then I cast the Imperial on to the water. The imbecile of a fish, that had not read about how poor hackled dries are compared with no-hackle and parachutes, took at once! It's there, on the video, the daft fish!

Malcolm Greenhalgh

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