I think I probably first read about the Quigley Cripple in a Jack Dennis book, but I can’t really remember. These were the days when I spent a lot of time dreaming about fishing flat-water, dry fly Meccas like Silver Creek or the Missouri River or Bob Quigley’s Hat Creek and very little time realizing my dream. I was a teenager without a car and I probably spent more time tying flies than fishing with them in those days. So I suppose it was my dream of casting long tippets to large, rising trout that attracted me to Quigley’s masterpiece. I began tying them up in different shapes and colors. I generally stowed them away for a time when I might fish a hatch, a rare event in my life back then.
Much like my introduction to the fly, I cannot remember the exact moment during my six-year term as a university undergraduate that I realized that the Quigley Cripple was one of the finest trout-catching dry flies ever dreamt up. I spent most of my summer and fall evenings during those days searching for rising trout. I was useless as a nymph fisherman (I’m not that much better now) and the whole world of streamers had yet to make an impression in my brain. So I looked for risers. If they weren’t present, I may have fished an attractor and hoped to pound up a fish or two, but I was just as likely to simply bull upstream, to the next flat stretch or the next decent run. Once there I would scan the water, imagining rise forms out of current lines and foam, looking for a chance to cast a dry fly to a rising trout.
On those days when I managed to find rising fish, the Quigley Cripple was nearly always the first fly out of the box. One of the local rivers had a still mysterious mayfly hatch and/or spinner fall in the evenings. If I had to guess I would say they were PMDs (or the elusive PMEs), but I really don’t know. I only know that the Cripple was a solid bet to imitate that mystery bug. Over time I used the Cripple to match Flavs, Blue Wings, Mahogany Duns, March Browns, Callibaetis, and (probably my favorite) Green Drakes. I tied them in sizes 10 to 20 using the colors of all those beautiful bugs. The cripple never seemed to fail.
Over the years I have experimented with the materials, like a lot of other fly tyers, I think. I’ve played with the body and the thorax, but mostly I have tried different materials for the wing. The first Quigleys I saw used elk hair, and I still tie them that way sometimes. But I’ve tried them with zelon and CDC. Perhaps the best substitute for me has been poly yarn, which floats well and is easy to see.
No matter how I switch up the fly it always seems to work, so long as I keep the original shape, with the forward-leaning wing. I thought about that this week when I heard that Bob Quigley passed away. I never got hooked on his other creations (though I should probably go back and take another look at them). The cripple was enough for me. It is simply one of the finest flies ever tied, in my personal—admittedly meaningless—opinion.
Rest easy, Bob. I hope your casting to a riser on some Hat Creek in the sky.
Image from this post at Evolution of a Fly Fisher.
