While terrestrial patterns are designed to float I have a question. Does that apply to ants?
Tying little ants with thread bodies covered with UV coating give terrific, glossy bodies but they sink like a stone. Should I forget that process? Thanks.
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While terrestrial patterns are designed to float I have a question. Does that apply to ants?
Tying little ants with thread bodies covered with UV coating give terrific, glossy bodies but they sink like a stone. Should I forget that process? Thanks.
Ants will float for awhile and then sink. I think this is true of all terrestrials.
I tie both varieties.
If I wanted to catch more, and probably bigger fish, I'd sink them, but I fish terrestrials dry because I love watching the strike, which can be pretty spectacular (there's nothing like tossing hoppers tight to a cutbank and seeing the trout come after it).
I was fishing a little blue line in MT with my wife's cousin, catching what I thought were decent-sized cutts on such a small stream using foam hoppers and crickets; he proceeded to thread a live grasshopper on a hook, add a couple split-shot, toss the rig in at the head of a pool and dredge up a pair of westslopes twice as big as anything I'd ever seen in that water.
Regards,
Scott
Attachment 13428Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray Kunz
Most ant patterns float, but UV or epoxy covered ants are designed to sink and work great as drowned ants.
FAOL has an article in the Not Quite Entomology series called "The Essential Ant" that covers dry and wet ant patterns. It's hard to link, but try this:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/feat...nto/part25.php
Of course you can fish a sunken terrestrial pattern. Not a new idea at all, as Bruce noted. There are even sunken hopper patterns as well.
It just is not nearly as much fun.
I think sunken terrestrials are somewhat neglected. High floating terrestials are great fun, but sunken bugs will probably catch more fish. Besides the ants, don't forget the beetles, crickets, hoppers, and inch worms. You can also use dry and sunken terrestrials in combination -- a wet beetle or ant makes a excellent dropper behind a high floating hopper.
First trout I caught on a dry fly that I tied was an ant that sank. I was sitting on bank of the Rapidan River (VA) watching several brook trout while I ate my lunch. I guess they got use to me being there as when I "flipped" the ant fly, as I could hardly call it a roll cast, upstream I watched it drift toward the trout, sink, and then one trout swam up to it, opened its mouth, and took the fly. I set the hook and landed a nice 8" brookie. That was several years ago but is still fresh in my memory as if it had happened yesterday. I enjoy fishing dry flies most and seeing the strike but watching your wet fly taken is such a rare thing that the memories sticks with you.
Good luck,
John