I finally tied some of these up. I followed Kelly Galloup’s pattern from his video on youtube about it, with a few minor changes. I did a bead-head with lead wire for weight (he uses split shot), a dubbing noodle for the abdomen instead of a dubbing loop, and I used a brown olive thread instead of the burgundy thread that Kelly uses for nymphs (it’s his signature).
These are size 14. I tested them out on some Bluegills not far from home. I managed to catch several of them until I donated the fly to a Fir tree. Good thing I tied a bunch!
I just tied up a bunch (5 or 6) GRHE myself without the bead. Fishing last weekend and that was all they would take and I only had one and promptly lost it on a snag. Also made, no tying involved some squirmy worms.
Size 18 in Olive produced the best for me. I used the split thread technique of dubbing rather than a loop on my patterns, as size 16 was as big as I tied.
I stumbled upon this pattern when I was doing a YouTube search for baetis nymph patterns. I watched Kelly Galloups video of the baetis nymph, and the video of the GRHE started playing unexpectedly afterwards. I watched it and decided to try it out. Glad I did. The GRHE was hands down more productive than the baetis nymph.
Size 18-16 was all I used, in Natural, Olive, Black, and Chocolate. Over all Olive and natural were the best producers in the past 6 months. Black had it’s moments.
I have watched Kelly’s vid. and like his style. Only thing for me would be getting them to sink quickly enough.
Allen, your bead heads will work well for that. I’ve used some lead wire in the past under that thorax, sometimes enough to make it bulky-looking.
Since I’ve become happy with furled leaders I tie some nymphs less heavy that others but still so they’d get down. With furleds, I have had fun watching the end of the leader “twitch” as a signal w/o having to resort to another type of “indy”, which I really hate. This, I’ve found, works well for my spring creeks where I don’t have to fish plunge pools meaning the fly needn’t get deep “right NOW”!!
Still, she needs to be close to the bottom. But who am I to argue with Kelly G. I’d like to know how he sinks his nymphs tho.
This is a great pattern and like some here, I like smallish nymphs best. You guys have shown some nice ties.
He uses the “drop shot” method of nymphing. He has a video on YouTube demonstrating it. I use that method along with a couple other split shot methods to nymph with. I rarely use an indicator (bobber).
Nice looking flies. The drop shot setup works great. The GRHE with the herl wing case video changed the way I tie this nymph. His Improved Baetis has proven to be a nice addition to the box.
