Alder

The Alder is among the oldest British fly patterns. Its origins may reach back to Dame Juliana Berners' 1496 "Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle", though the pattern described there cannot be securely equated with today's Alder. More often, the actual first tying is credited to the English writer Charles Kingsley, who fished it on the River Itchen in Hampshire in 1858; by 1892 it had spread to America too, through Mary Orvis Marbury's influential book "Favorite Flies and Their Histories". Originally tied as a wet fly to imitate the alder fly (Sialis lutaria), this is a dry variant that recreates its characteristically dark, winged appearance on the water's surface.

The Alder is classically fished during the alder fly hatch in early summer, mostly on calmer stretches of river and near overhanging bankside vegetation, where the beetles fall into the water. Its dark, strongly segmented silhouette is especially convincing to trout and grayling under overcast skies and at dusk.

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