I find it interesting how a chance encounter can have
a major effect on the way you do things. I was in San
Francisco for a training class and started talking to
another student at lunch. I don’t know how the conversation
about fly-fishing got started, but this fellow started
telling about meeting Jack Horner at the San Francisco
Fly-Casting Ponds. Jack was sharing his knowledge in an
area of the ponds known as Horner’s Corner. He tied a fly
called the Horner Deer Hair and he certainly pulled out
a plum when he stuck his thumb into his bag of fur and
feathers to tie it.
The fellow said Jack was very specific about using
six evenly spaced turns of thread to tie the abdomen.
I wish I could ask Jack about his fly and why exactly
six turns of thread, but unfortunately he is no longer
with us. My memory of Jack lives through a chance
encounter with someone he so graciously shared his
knowledge with.
Jack also created the Humpy.
The story goes that a Horner Deer Hair became worn
and the thread forming the six body segments was broken
as was the deer hair forming the lower part of the body.
The broken hair swung back into a tail and the upper body
hair puffed up into the now familiar hump.
I like to call the revised version the “California Nugget”
because when the sun is low in the Western sky the fly glows
like a golden nugget and I never fail to strike it rich on
California’s “Mother Lode” trout streams. ~ Harrison
Originally published May 3, 1999 on Fly Anglers Online by Ernie Harrison.