Pink Beauty from Carrie Stevens
Next up on our streamer authorities is Carrie G. Stevens from Maine whose streamers are one of the best recognised today. Carrie begun tying flies 1924 and became well known next year when she came second in the Field & Stream magazines annual contest after catching a record trout with her own fly.
She soon found herself tying flies professionally and created many patterns throughout her career. She was self-taught and her flies differed from others at the time. Most were tied on long hooks and had wings of various hackle feathers, a belly of bucktail, shoulders of various feathers and cheeks from Jungle cock. She “signed” many of her flies with a red band in the middle of a black head. Carrie had a background in millinery that affected her tying methods. Most notably she formed the wings in advance by glueing the feathers together and tied them on as a unit.
The Pink Beauty is not one her best known patterns but I wanted to tie something different to the usual Gray Ghost and Golden Witch that I love. The pattern is from Paul Schmookler’s book Forgotten Flies that notes the source for this pattern to be in Austin Hogans correspondence with Carrie Stevens. There is also a photo of original Pink Beauty tied by Carrie Stevens but the pattern differs from this one and is similar to the Pink Beauty listed in Hilyard’s book about Stevens.
I wanted to tie it pretty close to the one that Marcelo Morales has tied for Forgotten Flies but when I reached the shoulder are I realised that with the smaller hook that I was tying on I couldn’t use Bronze Mallard for the shoulder so I used Teal. Here’s the pattern as per Schmookler.
Body: Silver tinsel.
Throat: White Bucktail past bend and Pink hackle fibers.
Wing: Four to five strands of Peacock hero over which are four bright “carnation” Pink saddle hackles.
Shoulder: Brown barred Teal feather (Bronze Mallard).
Cheeks: Jungle cock.
Head: Black with red centre band.
