My father was a firm believer in the effectiveness of the spinner-and-fly combo, but we used double-bladed Indiana spinners. Back in the shire, all we used were fly rods for everything trout from eggs to worms to grasshoppers to small spoons and, gasp, flies. When things were particularly slow, Dad would pull out the old spinner and fly routine and catch fish.

The fly had to be a ringed-eye model and frequently was my father's own pattern: pheasant wing, yellow body with silver rib, red tail and brown hackle.

While it's undoubtedly a bugger to cast, (we kind of lobbed stuff on our fly rods with level lines rather than cast, and I haven't fished these in decades) you've gotta wonder how effective such a combination might be now. Hmm....

Keith