The Reverse-Hackled Dry Fly Is a Fixture in the UK; Will it Ever Stick Around in the USA?

The reverse-hackled dry fly is a fixture on the other side of the pond, but not here...

“Every beginner invents the reverse-tied fly and then drops it.”
– C.F. Walker

Lee Wulff, no beginner, certainly felt that he’d invented the reverse-hackled dry fly when he wrote “Shift Your Dry Flies Into Reverse” for the 1979 Edition of Sports Afield Fishing Secrets [Ed: Sully probably still owns a copy of this issue]. One of fly fishing’s true innovators listed three merits of the design:

• The weight of the hook is concentrated near the bend. Turn the fly around, put the load where the flotation is and you have a fly that’s better balanced for floating.
• The bend of the hook, at the tail of a conventional dry fly, has a very distinctive shape. Just as the vertical silhouette of a man becomes a danger signal to a deer, the hanging bend camouflaged, and typical of all dry flies, can be readily recognized and will turn a smart trout away. Hiding the bend of the hook in the hackles makes that solid, unmoving circle of metal a lot harder to distinguish. It makes the backward dry fly look a lot more like a natural insect.
• The tail can be split, half going on either side of the eye of the hook, which makes an even more natural tail for most insects than a single tail unit.

The three decades since that article have seen a lot of changes occur in the art of fly tying.

The split tails Lee advocated then are now common on many traditionally hackled and no-hackle patterns, and we’ve become fixated on imitating emergers and adults with infirmities; insects that sit in the film rather than ride on top of the meniscus.

And sadly, unless their dry fly is holding up a beadhead, many of today’s production oriented anglers see the dry fly as an anachronism. Many people are born body counters. Some would-be heroes won’t take to the water without at least a scale or tape measure – a camera crew is even better.

But there is a strong contingent of fly fishermen that quietly thrive on figuring out various hatches, difficult fish and complicated situations. Reverse-tied flies can provide a very useful angle in that endlessly intriguing pursuit.

For Special Occasions

The reverse-tied fly is, in fact, one of those rare designs that can be tried with hope when “nothing else works”.
–Datus Proper

Rear-hackle designs aren’t mainstays. They are something to pull out of the box during blanket hatches- especially when the trout are lazily grabbing duns like bored guests casually picking at cocktail shrimp.

Generally, there are two objections to the rear-hackle design. One of them is valid.

First and foremost – they offend our sensibilities. When Lee Wulff himself originated the eponymous Royal he crafted everyone’s ideal dry fly. You’ll never see a reversed-hackle fly etched on a shot glass.

With a straight face some people will tell you that the design inhibits hook sets. These are people who are immune to empirical evidence.

Transatlantic Olives

My experience with reverse ties has been as imitations of Blue-winged Olives (BWOs). Our beloved BWOs, the bugs we usually call “Baetis”, are actually comprised of several mayfly genera including Baetis (those pesky entomologists are always reshuffling classifications).

The genus Dipthor is the current taxonomic residence of what we used to know as Baetis parvus and B. hageni. I’ve read that the tiny, much-reviled Pseudocloen are now lumped into the Baetis genus. If so we’re pseudos for still calling them “Pseudos.”

Great Britain’s insect biota is much narrower than ours. Their paucity of species combined with centuries of chronicled angling has led to conformity of nomenclature we’ll never see in America.

Say some plummy fellow tells you that he recently fished Blue Winged Olives on the Test. Provided you understood him correctly, he definitely encountered a hatch of Ephemerella ignita, an insect much closer to our Pale Morning Duns than our Baetis.

British Baetis (and Centroptilum) species are collectively known as Olives. The three flies described below are all reverse-hackle renditions of flies the Brits have developed to imitate Olives. They have interesting pedigrees and have all proven to fish well in the American West.

Greenwell’s Glory

Any fly pattern that has retained popularity for over 150 years has something special going for it.

150 years later, the Greenwell's glory still catches trout

The Greenwell’s Glory was first devised and fished in May 1854 by Canon William Greenwell. Back in the day the good Canon fished a wet version but a Greenwell’s Glory has long been THE favored dry imitation for the Olives on the other side of the pond.

The pattern is so strongly entrenched there that the hackles we call Badger are known as Greenwell’s in England. Our Furnace hackles? Dark Greenwell’s!

Like so many really effective patterns the Greenwell’s Glory is supremely simple.

The working thread also forms the body of the fly and is noteworthy. The traditional thread is Pearsall’s “Gossamer” silk (126 denier, about 6/0). The color is Primrose, a pale yellow.

The thread traditionally was rubbed with cobbler’s wax to turn it an olivine hue. In practice the application of floatant or even exposure to water darkens the thread satisfactorily.

Silk changes color when waxed (enchantingly I might add)

As classy and effective as the traditional silk thread is, don’t feel you’re wedded to it. UTC Ultra Thread in Watery Olive makes a wonderful substitute and is available as fine as 70 denier.

The rest of the fly is straightforward. Golden pheasant tippets form the tail, ribbing is fine gold wire and, naturally, Greenwell’s hackle.

Body segmentation is an effective addition to any BWO imitation. Wire or thread ribbing, biot bodies, stripped quill, overlapping different-colored stripped hackle stems, or even tricks with thread can all achieve segmentation.

Beacon Beige

Here in the States the default BWO pattern is a Parachute Adams and it is a great choice (the Beacon Beige is basically the British cousin of our Adams).

The Beacon-Beige, in all its reversed-hackle glory.

Tied with mixed brown and grizzly hackle and tail and a peacock quill body, yellow thread is occasionally specified. And yes, – it is a simple matter to turn this one around.

My favorite bodies on the reversed Beacon Beige are the dun-dyed porcupine quills sold as “Quills II”.

The only downside of this proven pattern is spotting it on the water. After a particular squinty day on the Missouri I tied some with a fluorescent orange CDC puff behind the hackles and I almost always put a flag on them now.

This is also a particularly good fly on which to use your TMC 900BL or other black hooks.

Leckford Professor (Cow’s Arse)

Unlike the earlier two flies the Leckford Professor has always been tied reversed and tailless. Ernest Mott was a river keeper (like Frank Sawer, who devised the Pheasant Tail nymph). Like the PT nymph, Mott’s Leckford Professor doesn’t look too much like a natural insect to our eyes but the trout emphatically disagree.

The Leckford-Professor (Cow's Arse to the vulgar among you)

One notable author wrote that it was the only fly he ever needed on the English chalk streams.

The key features of the fly are a longer white hackle behind a gape-sized brown hackle. Some descriptions of this pattern feature a hare’s ear body with a gold tinsel rib. The pattern I copied from a magazine article had a pale gray dubbed body with fine silver wire rib and I’ve never seen the need to deviate. Roll ‘em as you see fit. I even glommed on to a white Whiting neck to tie just two killing patterns: The Leckford Professor and tiny Renegades.

Ignore these odd-looking pattern to your detriment; they offer a different twist on the standard dry, and may float better in the process.

[Ed: For a different twist on the reverse hackle (reverse parachutes), see this entry in the excellent Fly Fishing in South Wales blog]

I have a pair of his prototypes and find them invaluable for tying tiny flies; they allow me to snip thread without hacking away all the stuff I don’t want to cut.

In my eyes, they’re a highly refined version of the sewing scissors AK Best championed, and well worth the cost.

To read his product intro post, click here (Be aware it’s heavily laced with Swedish Mind Control techniques, so you simply won’t be able to say “no.”)

To simply order the things, click here. (Or clink on the ad in the sidebar to the right of my content.)

The Underground has to admit it: he’s come up with an interesting product, especially considering he was voted “Most Likely to Know Where Jimmy Hoffa’s Buried” by his high school class…

See you at the Gears of Commerce, Tom Chandler.

From the Wall Street Journal: Grasshopper Infestation Could Ravage Crops – WSJ.com

Farmers and ranchers across the West are bracing for a grasshopper infestation that could devastate millions of acres of crops and land used for grazing.

Over the coming weeks, federal officials say, grasshoppers will likely hatch in bigger numbers than any year since 1985. Hungry swarms caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage that year when they devoured corn, barley, alfalfa, beets—even fence posts and the paint off the sides of barns.

Start tying those hopper patterns – with any luck, you’re going to need them.

Me? I’m buying foam, and planning a trip to Montana…

See you in the foam aisle, Tom Chandler.

I’m firmly in the latter camp, but that’s likely a reflection of laziness; I do sloppy “buggy” well. Still, even the rampant impressionists want their flies to look like something edible, which is why Michelle Mahood’s photography site will probably see a lot of fly tying visitors soon.

A small sample of the bug photos available at Mahood's site (click image to go there)

It’s practically a photographic encyclopedia of Northern California trout food, so next time an annoying, Type A fly tyer chastises you for too-heavily speckled Callibaetis wings (yes, this did happen), you can bitch slap him using Ms. Mahood’s excellent photographs.

The Underground’s Favorite Photo? Probably the blood curdling assault on a fly fisherman by a giant crustacean. Keep you up nights.

See you staring at the monitor, Tom Chandler.

In fact, there’s nothing I like better on a small stream than a dry fly that won’t drown after a few small brookies frisk the thing around the riffles, which explains my recent fascination with the Unsinkable Dry Flies book – and the interest in foam fly company “River Road Creations” profiled in the Missoulian newspaper (Question of the Day: is Tomsu in fact an Undergrounder?):

The ultra-realistic hopper imposter is the creation of Tony Tomsu. And with the help of tools available from his Stevensville company, River Road Creations Inc., you can reproduce this fly pattern – called Tomsu’s Supreme Hopper – and a host of other innovative foam flies ranging from tiny size 20 trico mayflies to mega-sized creatures designed to dupe bass and saltwater denizens.

Tomsu and his wife Kathi formed their company as a “hobby business” 11 years ago after moving to the Bitterroot Valley from Texas.

River Road Creations is now the world’s largest manufacturer of foam fly-tying tools and supplier of specialty foam fly-tying materials. Its handmade products are distributed worldwide. As a bonus, the company’s Web site, www.riverroadcreations.com, is an excellent source of detailed instruction in tying a wide range of foam fly patterns, including a Bitterroot favorite – the skwala stonefly.

I never really understood a trout’s attraction for the Chernobyl Ant, but my inability to understand ceases to matter when a fish eats the fly. The same is true of yellow bass/panfish poppers (the Official Gurgling, Oversized Dry Fly of the Trout Underground), and we can’t help but notice the above-mentioned River Road Creations actually sells cutters to manufacture the killer flies.

Foam popper cutters? The Underground's heart beats faster.

Ohhh. The Undeground’s interested. More to come on materials diversity – especially as summer takes hold and the Smallies get rambunctious.

See you at the tying bench, Tom Chandler.

We’re basically really, really concerned about Singlebarbed’s obvious addiction to Earth, Wind & Fire-esque fly patterns (and craft stores) – especially now that he’s threatening to manufacture charm bracelets.

Donations to the “Save Singlebarbed” Fund (the money I don’t spend on beer will be invested in kidnapping and deprogramming Singlebarbed) should be sent to:

Save Singlebarbed from His Disco Nightmare
1234 Shad Lane
Yourekidding, CA 66666

See you with sunglasses on, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fly tying, fly fishing for shad, shad flies, fly tying materials

Bunyan bugs: Cool, but $45?? (click image to visit site)

We know they’re seriously cool and retro (they were featured in A River Runs Through It), but the price suggests these aren’t exactly your father’s Bunyan Bugs – they’re $45 each.

Any takers among the Undergrounders?

See you at the bank, Tom Chandler.

So when Oregon’s David Cowardin sent me a copy of his Unsinkable Dry Flies book for review, I – being essentially lazy – paid attention.

Will heat shrink tubing replace floatant?

Cowardin uses heat shrink tubing to construct his flies, sealing the tubes with a soldering iron (sample assembly instructions on his blog). Essentially, he’s creating flies that operate on the same principle as your float tube.

It’s an interesting concept; I initially shook my head, but quickly realized that foam is now a staple material among western tyers – why not heat shrink tubing?

It seems like it would be especially useful for big dries

Sadly, the book and handful of sample flies arrived in the middle of winter, so I still can’t speak to the effectiveness of the flies.

As for the method, I’m intriguided, but because I’m a lot better at a keyboard than a fly tying vise, I’m turning to the Underground’s Department of Fly Tying Geeks Wizards, which includes the heavy-metal rich Singlebarbed (who frightened us yet again with another militaristic fly tying materials post) and newly obsessed Atlantic Salmon Fly Tyer Dave Roberts (who actually could kill you if you got in his way).

We’ve got questions. They’ve got answers. More as we hear it.

The Big Idea

You’d automatically assume the technique would be more useful on larger patterns (like salmonflies, the season for which is fast approaching), though Cowardin has developed a full set of patterns, including BWO emergers. He admits flies smaller than size 18 are sometimes difficult to tie, but seems to have otherwise developed a fairly complete set of techniques.

He colors tubing with markers or even by coating them with an adhesive, which is then used to anchor dubbing or other colored “dust” materials.

A Heat Shrink Emerger?

Given my love of Quigley Cripples, Cowardin’s emerger/cripple pattern (see purple fly above) is an especially interesting idea (though I think the hackle’s tied a little on the heavy side), though each fly tyer will have to decide if heat shrink is a better “floatant” than closed cell foams.

Prior Art

Heat shrink tubing for no-sink flies?

A quick search of the Internet didn’t turn up much in the way of prior work (surprisingly), but then Cowardin’s own book didn’t come up on Google until the middle of page 2 (which means it’s time he invested in the Underground’s SEO program for unknown fly fishentrepreneurs).

In Hatches Magazine, we found an article about Euro tyer Ulf Hagstrom’s use of heath shrink tubing on his frighteningly realistic flies, though that’s limited to appendages like legs.

All in all, Cowardin’s self-published Unsinkable Dry Flies book offers some interesting glimpses into a fly tying technique that probably isn’t wholly new, but likely hasn’t been fully explored either.

You can read more about his technique (and order his book) on his blogger site. If you do, the Underground would love to hear your feedback.

See you at the bookstore, 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

To catch a glimpse of the workings of Singlebarbed’s tortured inner psyche a creative fly tyer at work, read the rest of his most excellent post here.

fly tying, fly fishing, singlebarbed

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