That's a nice fly Byron.
Pott and Grant made a big deal out of hair hackles. Grant anyway. He argued soft hackles were great back East, but no good in the West, were you needed stiffer woven hair hackles for bigger, faster rocky mountain rivers. Everybody still loves George's flies, but few of us subscribe to the soft hackles are no good concept. And woven hackles are too hard to deal with. You've got a good solution there.
Here's a question that keeps popping up in my mind. You said you lived in Hawaii, no? Kauai? I know it's at least theoretically possible to find bonefish on an unnamed beach up north there. But what about small reef fish all over? Have you tried fly fishing the edges of the coral reefs? I wet a line when I was there and caught all manner of small, bizarre looking fish. But I admit I used a spinning rod with a #16 hook and frozen squid. But I caught a few of those odd fish too, when I was up north chasing bonefish with a flyrod. I caught six inch flat bottom fish on a Gotcha, in a sand pocket between the coral heads, and a two foot needle fish and many other weirdly shaped critters.
All the local fishermen I saw were frustrated and unsuccessful for the most part. But they were using huge hooks heavy weight and giant chunks of squid, rather than tiny ones. The bigger fish are all fished out close to land, I guess. But those small reef fish sure aren't. They were fun to catch (and to release).
I'll bet you could catch those small reefers on your Black Mite.
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