Crackleback Fly

[bobbyg]

tomato, tomatoe. who cares really? i have always thought of the crackleback as a dry fly that can be fished a variety of ways and the woolly worm as a nymph. have never fished the woolly worm as a dry and never intend to. i am sure you could fish it as a dry if you wanted. for that matter, how different is a woolly worm from a woolly bugger? i always tie my woolly worms with a red yarn tail. is a woolly worm without a tail a griffith's gnat?

Agree totally!! I suppose if you tied in a couple of turns of white hackle at the eye you would have a bivisible......a what??

[Panman]

WarrenP: Thanks for the input. I had just finished tying a dozen of them with various colored bodies when I read your comments. I had to smile as my creations were tied with the same amount of turns of hackle and the bodies were constructed from punch yarn. I jumped on that punch yarn some years back and have about 30 spools of different colors. While I still use dubbing now and then I much prefer punch for body material.Tim

[WarrenP]

Panman,

I use a yellow or green Punch Yarn for the body and a strip of black Punch Yarn across the back instead of Peacock and it works great. Like, you, I have many, many spools of different colored Punch Yarn. I have picked up most of mine at Yard Sales!

[EdD]

Agree totally!! I suppose if you tied in a couple of turns of white hackle at the eye you would have a bivisible......a what??

In crackleback form it might be a Crackleback And Forth...


Ed

[jszymczyk]

how different is a woolly worm from a woolly bugger? i always tie my woolly worms with a red yarn tail. is a woolly worm without a tail a griffith's gnat?

the origin of the name Woolly WORM might be lost in the past. Most folks agree that the Bugger was first credited to Russell Blessing, a fisherman from here in the Harrisburg area, as a suggestion of a Helgrammite (very common in the Susquehanna basin). The Worm was around for a long time before the Bugger, and it's the accepted convention to have a short red yarn tail on a Woolly Worm.

And no, a Woolly Worm without a tail is not a Griffith's Gnat, but a Griffith's Gnat IS a small Woolly Worm without a tail!

Not all birds are ducks, but all ducks are birds.

[mickmcco]

I started my fly fishing in St. Louis and bought my first tying stuff at Feather-Craft (and have been a customer ever since, through four moves to different states). I had the good fortune to have Ed and Bob Story teach me to tie the Crackleback as one of my first flies. I now tie it in over a half dozen body colors (usually using turkey rounds as the body), with and without beads, from sizes 8 to 18. I still use their recommended Dai-Riki 300 hook (a 1XL dry fly hook) for both bead and non-bead versions. It's an easy fly to teach and learn, and very versatile in how it can be fished and in how many different species it attracts. It's the prototypical simple attractor fly and is often used around here in one fly competitions. And it doesn't matter to me how you classify it -- it still catches lots of fish!

[vicrider]

I love threads like this. I used Wooly Worms over 50 years ago and now there are so many variations you cannot simply call it a Wooly Variant anymore. I think the term Crackleback does definte a particular pattern and when you make major alterations to it, it is no longer a Crackleback. When you deviate from a distinct tie then, IMO, you no longer are doing that tie. You have your own agenda and are just using the Crackleback as a basic concept versus a true tie. Before you start thinking...oh, another one of those dang purists...heck no. I also tie many variations of standard patterns. If I tie a Mickey Finn and layer white, red and white, it's not a Mickey Finn but a streamer tied in MF style. It does just provide good entertainment and lively conversation around the old wood stove when patterns are altered and argued, and it helps keep fresh styles in development.

A good example of the change of a pattern is using punch yarn for the Crackleback. I use dubbing because it creates a more buggy look IMO. I do use embroidery yarn to weave a lot of patterns of nymphs and flymphs but there are just too many places dubbing is necessary, whether rolled onto thread or in a dubbing loop. Recently finishing up a series of spey flies only a dubbing loop really work for them. I would happily use any of your Crackleback versions you've developed for your rivers, or let you have mine. If you want real Cracklebacks, I have them. If you want any of the many variants, I usually have row of those also.

Thinking about it, maybe I don't have "real" Cracklebacks since I usually use more than 4 turns, and usually go one size larger in hackle, i.e. 14 hackle on #16 hook.

[WarrenP]

Fly patterns are a lot like different body styles in cars.....Same beginning frame with a diferent body style and shape over it.

[mickmcco]

Ed Story designed the Crackleback as a sparsely hackled emerger and even suggested putting floatant on only the top half of the fly.

My favorite personal Crackleback story came several years after learning to tie it. One spring I was back visiting St. Louis on business and had been told by a friend of a place I could find fish in a collection pond on a nearby college campus. That evening, fish were rising under a small grove of trees. When I edged close enough to see what was going on, I saw that a small school of grass carp was feeding on some buds falling from those trees. Searching my meager travel fly box, the only fly that came close to "matching the hatch" was a size 14 beadhead Crackleback. In the next half hour, I landed three grass carp that averaged about 30" in length, then had the hook straighten on another fish. Alas, no more Cracklebacks in my box, nothing even close, so my evening was over. But what an evening it was.

Thanks, Ed!