My standard — when nothing is hatching or otherwise happening — is a Parachute Beetle Bug, which is basically a gaudy red Western Adams. It works and ties easy, but I have poked around foam flies a bit, thinking they’d float longer (little fish can drown a proper dry pretty quickly).

So when I stumbled on these bad boys at the Arizona Wanderings site, I was intrigued:

Ultimate Small Stream dry fly?

He calls these #12 flies the Arizona Mini-Hopper, and while I’m not sure about the hopper bit, they do ring my “buggy looking” chimes.

A downwing caddis-style fly with a foam back and rubber legs (which you can simply pull off for a more streamlined appearance), Ben was kind enough to send me a few to test, and the results have been favorable.

They float extremely well — even after being mauled by a steady stream of little fish — and they work, even on the flatter water.

I won’t pretend that small stream trout are the most selective on the planet, but I have plenty of experience with days where one fly handily outfished a couple others.

The Mini-Hopper has — so far — performed as well as anything else, and because it floats so nicely, may become my generic “go-to” fly (the one I fish when nothing obvious is happening on the water).

It doesn’t look hard to tie, and because it seems to fall into a niche where it’s handily imitating everything from a caddis to a terrestrial, you can see why it might find steady employment on the pointy end of a small stream addict’s leader.

Any ideas from the Undergrounders?

See you on a small stream, Tom Chandler.

The Upper Sacramento is typically running high (with temps in the mid-50s forecast this week, it’s going to run even higher), real spring weather can be more than a month away, and you can still deceive yourself into thinking you’ve got time to tie that hundred dozen flies you planned for the winter.

OK, I’ll be up front: I’m not going to make it to one hundred dozen. In fact, because I’m writing this instead of tying those, I’ll be lucky to make it to a couple dozen, which makes the following fact a good thing: I like simple flies.

Really simple flies.

The Annual Fly Freak Out

Not only am I forced to confront my essential laziness, it’s about this time of year that my love for simple flies is taken to absurd new heights; every late winter, I find myself idly toying with the idea of stripping my fly selection down to a mindlessly bare essential – like fishing a whole year with flies tied from nothing but grizzly hackle and Hare’s Ear dubbing.

That’s something I probably couldn’t get away with, but I bet I could get away tying and fishing nothing but soft hackles.

One fly, all year? Could a lazy/greedy fly fisherman survive one year on a steady diet of soft hackles?

You can effectively fish soft hackles as everything from tiny midge nymphs to mayfly emergers to caddis to small streamers, though most people don’t – a reality which suggests soft hackles need a better publicist.

It’s an interesting idea (and the materials would be wildly affordable), but it’s just something I threaten to do in front of my friends (“Just put the hackle pliers down and back away” Dave Roberts will say, “and nobody gets hurt.”).

I haven’t yet pulled the trigger, and probably never will.

After all, I’m lazy but I’m also greedy, and while I’ve successfully whittled my fly selection down to a handful of simple flies, I haven’t yet worked myself up to what would amount to a fly fishing stunt (though it would make interesting blog fodder).

Still how little could I sneak by with that wouldn’t amount to a stunt? Let’s see:

• Parachute dries (size & color to match the handful of mayfly hatches in this part of the world)
• Stimulators (from small caddis sizes to the big, deadly dark numbers)
• A small handful of soft hackle patterns (PTs to Hare’s Ears to biot bodies, they’re the force multiplier of the fly world)
• Woolly Buggers

Sure, there are big gaping holes in that list, but you’d be surprised what you could accomplish by stretching the definition of “soft hackle” even a little.

In fact, soft hackles could cover everything from midge pupae to stonefly nymphs with a detour into emerging caddis, PT nymphs, and emerging, in-the-film mayflies.

I think I could pull it off.

The flies in the minimalist ointment here are the patterns sent to me by well-meaning friends, apparently unaware I’m trying to kick a bad habit.

Dave Roberts keeps waving innovative March Brown patterns under my nose, and [name redacted] keeps contributing BWO patterns that seemingly never fail (the Roy Palm  soft hackle emerger rarely fails either, but it’s hard to see).

Then there’s my growing interest in streamers, and while I could get by with Woolly Buggers in two colors (black & silver/white), a plain brown package just arrived from Ian Rutter’s end of the country stuffed with what may be the perfect streamer, though more (and serious) testing on smallies, rainbows and big brown trouts is desperately needed (yes, I know where a few lurk).

In short, I may be simultaneously lazy and greedy, but when it comes to slimming down my fly selection, I’m also apparently weak (Hi, I’m Tom, and I’m powerless in the face of free flies).

See you at the vise (barely), Tom Chandler

fly fishing, fly tying, soft hackle, stimulators, nymphs

Found via the 37signals blog , this beauty would have to make an interesting source of fly tying material, even if its only real use is generating bragging rights.

“Sure, the Underground Midge Pupae is effective using everyday peacock, but the original–and most  effective–version requires albino peacock. Of course, you have some, right?”

[tags]fly tying, peacock, fly fishing[/tags]

That’s the hilarious contention of John McCoy (staff writer for the Charleston Gazette), and I wonder if his employer shouldn’t immediately administer a drug test – lest John suffer another drug-induced flashback.

I gaze at the piles of expensive fly tying materials, expensive hackles, machined HMH vise, chemically sharpened hooks and several-lifetimes-supply of hen necks cluttering my office and wonder what our friend John has been smoking.

My HMH vise. Ticket to savings, or expensive tool of obsession?

He recounts the high price of flies – and his amusing solution:

A relatively inexpensive answer to this problem is to learn to tie flies. Thirty years ago, when I started fly fishing, I couldn’t afford to buy rods and reels and flies too, so I learned to tie. I’ve done it ever since.

It’s difficult to estimate how much money I’ve saved, but I’ll try.

Let me try for you. I’d have to tie flies from now until people started making dinner reservations for their 2999 New Year’s Eve celebration to recoup the investment I’ve made in tools and materials.

And frankly, I’m an underachiever compared to the likes of Noted Pack Rat Dave Roberts, who recently built a whole new extension onto his house so he could warehouse his er…. “extensive” collection of materials.

(When the apocalypse comes and fly tying materials disappear from our nuclear-ravaged landscape, I’m heading right for Dave’s house.)

And there are plenty of people who consider him an underachiever.

So how about it? Is anyone saving money tying their own flies. Or are we spending scads of money for the privilege of getting them exactly the way we want ‘em…?

[tags]fly tying, hmh, flies, fly fishing[/tags]

By Sully, Underground Correspondent in charge of arcana.

EVERYONE has a few Pheasant Tail Nymphs in their box. Frank Sawer’s deceptively simple pattern has developed a worldwide following.

Precious few anglers, though, have even heard of the Sawer Killer Bug. As with the P.T., Sawer chronicled the development, tying and fishing of the Killer Bug in “Nymphs and the Trout”.

First published in 1958, this bountiful book explains how Sawer developed the simple cigar-shaped bug to catch grayling in the upper Avon.

In that role the Killer Bug has achieved almost cult-like status in the British Isles and Europe. In grayling-poor America, however, the fly hasn’t received the recognition it deserves.

The bug was tied to imitate the creature anglers call freshwater shrimp (ammarus pleus in England).

Simple Pattern. Killer Results?

In the profoundly minimalist manner that led Sawer to omit legs from his P.T. Nymph, he left off the antennae, shiny carapace, the multiple legs and leglike appendages (gnathopods and pleopods) that spell “shrimp” to human beings.

It’s like drawing a rabbit without adding the ears. What’s left is a copper wire foundation with wool wrapped over it. That’s it.

Sawer on the obvious, “Once again this is of very simple construction, so simple indeed that anyone looking at it could be forgiven for thinking it could deceive a fish.”

There almost has to be a hitch in something this elegant. There is.

The Killer Yarn

Sawer specified that the body material for the Killer Bug had to be a particular color of mending yarn, a mixture of wool and nylon; Chadwick’s 477. He had extensively experimented and nothing else fished as well.

Nowhere in “Nymphs and the Trout” is there a description of the color of this magical yarn. The tease is that the color of the bug changes completely when wet. According to Sawer, “… it is this that causes its attraction for so many kinds of fish.”

Thanks for raising our hopes, Frank. All a Chadwick-less angler has to do is ascertain the color that’s irresistible to shrimp-eating fish when wrapped around red copper wire and wetted.

Charles Ritz fished with Sawer and became a devote of the Killer Bug. In “A Fly Fisher’s Life” Ritz writes that the bug is tied with “grey wool,” but some subtleties might have been lost in translation from the French.

Other descriptions of the blend have described it as “fawn with a pinkish tinge” and “red, brown and grey.”

Where was the Borger Color System when we needed it?

Help Isn’t on the Way

In 1958 Chadwick’s 477 was, to quote Sawer, “not very easy to obtain”. Naturally Chadwick’s immediately ceased production of the stuff, knowing that flyfishermen as a breed are particularly susceptible to the allure of arcane materials.

From the first time I first read about the Killer Bug I knew that I had to get some Chadwick’s 477.

Sometime in the late 1970′s an obscure advertisement appeared in an early issue of Flyfisherman Magazine. A company identified only by initials located in Ogden, Utah was offering the original Sawer Killer Bug yarn for sale.

The whole setup sounded perfect. An obscure group situated in the middle of the desert would be the logical source for something this arcane and powerful.

I have no idea if anyone else acted on the ad. (Maybe selling discontinued darning wool isn’t a foolproof business plan.) Maybe the illuminati simply moved to a different dimension.

My letter requesting more yarn several years later was returned by the Post Office. After a couple of decades I’m now left with just a few turns of the precious two-strand darning wool.

Substitues? Not Likely

The color? Well, it’s easy to see how Charles Ritz could stop short with the word “grey.” It’s a thatched-roof cottage, gather around a bowl of steaming gruel kind of color. 477 apparently was developed for darning knickers torn on Highland gorse. It’s easy to see why Chadwick’s discontinued the stuff: no one has worn a garment this color since V-2′s stopped raining on London.

My artist wife calls the color “taupe”: a word like “holistic” that contains no substance.

If you are one of the dozens of anglers with access to “Fly-tyer’s Color Guide” by Al Caucci and Bob Nastasi look up 4y2r3b23w. How does gray, with subtle overtones of tan describes the color? That’s the base color to the dry yarn.

When wet it does display a pinkish overtone. To the point; when the yarn is presented to fish over a red copper base it fully merits the name “Killer.”

Who Eats This Stuff?

Scudding fish, sow bug eaters, fish grubbing pre-emergent caddis, heck, fasting fish are all susceptible to the fly. Quite a few years ago a short blurb appeared in Ed Story’s Feather-Craft newsletter. It promised Chadwick’s original 477. Naturally I bit.

When the stuff arrived it was a disappointment. It was much browner that the original yarn. Too “fawny”. But we tied Killer Bugs with it and they worked, too.

Sawer tied the fly in sizes 3 through 10 using the reverse- numbered Kendal nomenclature (comparable to our Redditch sizes 14 through eight) and fished the fly for everything from grayling to, and this is both astonishing and compelling, Atlantic salmon. Locally we stick with smaller sizes, 14 down to 18. The fly is especially effective in the fall.

A few years ago Paul Redfern, the crafty owner of FishOn Fly and Tackle in Butte managed to score a few inches of certified Chadwick’s 477 from an English tier. Sure enough the stuff from Utah was the real deal.

You got some you want to send to Sully?

[tags]fly fishing, fly tieing[/tags]

Of course, I’m not running from anything as much as running towards the BWO hatch, a subject which is generating a lot of e-mails and pictures.

It’s not a well-tied #22 dry, but it’s better than a fly I never got tied…

I’ll plow through it all and get the better bits up shortly. For now, the hell with my readers. I’m off to chase BWOs.

And if you have any doubts about why the Underground posts might be a little slow in coming this week, well…

[tags]bwo, blue winged olives, fly fishing, fly tying, dry fly[/tags]

The world’s simplest, most effective fly? (Hare’s Ear soft hackle)

Is it my subconscious taking a stand for minimalism? The emerging presentationist in me who thinks good casts belie the need for five boxes of flies?

Or just a lazy fly tier looking to dodge the shame of woefully understocked fly boxes?

I’m not the only crazy.

In the November/December issue of Fly Rod & Reel, John Gierach mentioned that his friend Mike Price fished most of a season with only Royal Coachmen and Gray-Hackle Peacock patterns.

Noble, but that was in the context of small, backcountry streams, where the named flies would probably work about as well as anything.

Still, when I mentioned this idea to my friends, some would just nod like they’d had the same idea themselves, but others just looked at me like I’d suggested dynamite as a reasonable alternative to the Adams.

I know what I was thinking with the “soft hackle” idea; it could be fished as a nymph, swung like a soft hackle, and even fished in the film like an emerger.

I didn’t know if adding a cdc loopwing behind the hackle to help it float better (and make it more visible) was cheating or not, but I probably would have made that agonizing moral decision after seeing if it worked.

I might have done it if I could have figured out what to do in pocket water, but at the time, I was pretty sure of a couple of things.

First, at the end of the year I’d probably be as good a soft hackle fishermen as I’d ever be.

And second, I liked my dry flies too much to give ‘em up.

Different Year. Same Madness.

The recent “Best fly tieing book” thread here on the Underground got me thinking about all the flies I had to tie for Fall, and the next thing, I’m off on a “one fly” jag.

This time, I had a better idea; instead of one pattern (a pointless exercise when you sweat it out over more than one body of water), I’d stick to one family of flies made from fly tieing’s equivalent of pine two-by-fours.

Hare’s Ear.

Between the hare’s ear nymph, hare’s ear soft hackle, hare’s ear parachute, some kind of hare’s ear x-caddis and a hare’s ear midge pupae, I’d pretty much have it covered.

A #20 hare’s ear midge pupae. OK, maybe this one’s the simplest to tie…

Actually, I’d have it nowhere near covered, but – despite the insanity of the idea – you can probably also see the beauty of it. Five patterns in a half-dozen different sizes each (and maybe eight different materials) and you’d be out the door and fishing the river without a care.

Would the winter trout mistake a #20 hare’s ear parachute for a baetis? Would they think a #10 was a Green Drake?

Until now, nobody’s been insane enough to find out. And since I’m much better at writing about this kind of thing than doing it, it’ll probably remain a mystery.

Still, is anyone out there tempted by a one-fly season?

[tags]hares ear, soft hackle[/tags]

In the interest of speeding your winter tieing, the Underground’s asking for something never in short supply around here: an opinion. What is your favorite fly tieing book?

This isn’t a “one book on a desert island” kind of question. Instead, we want to hear about the book that altered the way you tied or fished – a book with a point of view or philosophy that worked its way into your fly fishing consciousness.

My pick? Trout Flies: The Tier’s Reference by Dave Hughes. His philosophy emphasizes “buggy” flies over exact imitation, and his approach to fly tieing is to strip away the window dressing, focusing on what actually catches fish.

This book introduced me to the Beetle Bug (Official Attractor Fly of the Trout Underground); unpretentious and clearly written, it’s not a pattern book (though there are plenty of those) but more a philosophy of fly fishing.

Tag. You’re it. Let’s hear it from the Undergrounders.

Clearly, it’s time someone in the outdoor media stood up and asked the question that others don’t have the guts to ask:

Are all Montana trout smoking crack?

One bad fly pattern could be an anomaly, but given the wholly unproductive “sure thing” patterns offered by other Montana-based Undergrounders, a larger picture begins to emerge.

And it’s an unpretty picture indeed – one of trout so stupid that they’ll eat October Caddis imitations other trout won’t touch. Or even hopper patterns more Dali-esque than duplicative.

Is this proof of excessive drug use among Montana’s trout?

It’s starting to look that way to this reporter.

I’m reminded of a local fly fisher’s quote upon his return from Montana; he was asked about the fishing, and replied “It was about what you’d expect from a place where they mostly fish flies made from foam.”

Revealing. And damming.

Foaming at the Mouth

Everything I’ve said so far could simply be the ramblings of a deranged fly fisher (not that there’s anything wrong with that – it works for most political pundits), but careful examination of the lyrics from Montana’s Official State Song offers incontrovertible proof:

Montana, Montana,
Glory of the West
Of all the states from coast to coast,
You’re easily the best, and your trout are as dumb as rocks.

It’s time to save the Montana trout. By getting them into rehab…

.

.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: It’s the expectation of any brilliant (nay, genius) journalist that breaking the big story could mean you’ll experience attacks by those desperate to preserve their dark, dark secrets. Fly Fishing in Yellowstone has launched the first, though his latest “can’t miss” pattern frankly tends to support my theory. (Either that, or Montana’s filled with a lot of fly fishing musicians.) Don’t miss the notes for what might be the funniest fly pattern of the year…

[tags]montana, October Caddis[/tags]

Because I’m going to reveal one of my Secret Fall Patterns.

Bees. Those buzzy, stingy things.

Fishing in the Fall? Dieing bees might be your best “hatch”…

Once the cold weather sets in, the bees start dieing. The male honeybee drones die off after being evicted from the hive and worker bees also succumb to the weather – as do a lot of wasps and and the like, the communities of which typically disband in the fall.

The die-off begins first on the high alpine lakes, and as the cold temperatures work their way downhill, the die-off follows.

I’ve hit the “bee hatch” several times, and fishing a bee pattern can be wild. The trout will gently nudge the fly to see if it’s alive, and if you’ve got the nerves to let it sit, they’ll suck it down.

That’s fun on a stick.

What about the River?

I only rarely fish bee patterns on the Upper Sac in the Fall (typically preferring the PED, BWO and caddis hatches), but the pattern has worked during the late spring and summer, and I’m batting 50% in the fall (OK, that’s writer obfuscation for “I’ve tried it twice and caught fish once”).

Still, last winter I saw dozens of dead bees in the bankside snow, and some of their friends must have ended up in the river.

It’s also worth noting that one of the original Ted Fay “Bomber” nymph patterns replicates a drowned bee, and that several big, big fish have been caught on the bug.

The moral?

Despite its “for kids only” reputation, it’s time to lay your hands on a few bees – a bug I’ve used to catch a lot of fish, especially once they start dieing in the fall. It’s a killer on the lakes, and can work on the river, though success on moving water seems less assured.

See you in the hive, Tom Chandler.

[tags]bees[/tags]