ORANGE HEXEGENIA PATAGONICA
In Patagonia Argentina, where I fish, there's a big nice mayfly, a Hexagenia genus, which produces hatches during spring and summer. (September to March in Southern Hemisphere)
It lives mostly in big glacial euthropic lakes as Nahuel Huapi, Traful, etc. Without doubts is a relative to the Hexagenia limbata, which is very well known in US.
I saw it many times hatching during calm sunny mornings when I was fishing the lakes. It's a bug that can be imitated on regular dry fly hooks between #8-10. Its color is pale-orange or similar in color to a wheat seed.
It is a favorite meal for trout that feed along the endless coasts of those huge bodies of water. As those big lakes are home to really big trout that spawn in tributaries or big rivers that born from them, I use it to fish the rivers that connects them, with my imitations of the big Hexagenia. The results are the best! Fish has instinct and memories. In these cases I need a fly that imitates size, shape and color. But must be also an excellent floater fly to challenge the strong currents.
There is nothing better than to get a pattern with those characteristics, that is based on the famous Lee Wulff series. So I designed a fly with deer hair and changed the calf tail for the wings of poly yarn, which repels the water better and doesn't need floatant, and also has a very attractive brightness.
Materials:
- Hook: Standard dry fly #8-10
- Thread: Orange 6/0 pre-waxed
- Tail: Bucktail, clear brown
- Body: Antron dubbing, amber
- Rib: Cooper wire, extra fine
- Wing: Polypropylene floating yarn, orange gold or yellow
- Hackle: One long dry-fly rooster feather, clear brown
For the hackle, I like to use just one long rooster feather, extra size more like on "Spider style", not like on the standard dry fly size. The reason is because I prefer a very long fiber hackle, to trim and forming a flat base. This gives me a high profile floating bug imitation. I know that that this can be a mortal sin for the classic fly tiers. Sorry, I'm not religious about fly fishing.
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