Found a box of old flies

akura

whilst out walking there was a house that had a skip in frount of it , there was rubbish all over the footpath including a little rusty box which i picked up and opened and found these fly's, i know nothing about fishing but was wondering if they have any age to them?

the box was really rusty so i dumped it and the pad the flies were conected to was falling apart

SeaFields

That's a nice find OP, I'm very envious. You look like you have a small collection of traditional salmon flies with some older style trout flies thrown in for good measure. It would be very hard to put an age on them but they are older type flies that have more or less dies out in recent years. They are also tied with traditional materials on traditional style forged hooks.

If you knew someone that was an avid fly angler, a lovely Christmas present would be to clean the hooks up a little and put the flies into a frame.

J. Ramone

Nice collection there. Patterns include Thunder and Lightning, Dunkeld, Butcher, Fiery Brown and Curry's shrimps. All were popular in their time before the shift to hairwing patterns. The Curry's shrimps give a clue as to age as they were first created in the late 30's. The other patterns are much older. I would guess this collection was tied in the 40's or 50's.

I've heard of traditional fly dressers undoing old flies to get the indian crow plumes. Not such a shame as throwing them in a skip anyway. Well done on the find.