The fly looks like the long spindly legs of the crane fly when it struggles on the surface to shed the casing. The yellow was the best color that looked like the larvae casing.
Crane fly looks like a giant skitoe when it flies off.
Spinner 1, nice post and great info and pics. I think the cranefly is one of the most least understood as well as underfished hatch/emergence on most trout rivers. Good to see someone figure it out and have some great success.
Kelly.
P.S.: I too like the Barr patterns for matching these bugs subsurface.
I’ve seen lots adult crane flies but never a hatch with the trout feeding on them. No wonder trout love them----soft, totally unprotected, and vulnerable. With the wild wiggling and squirming, they might as well have a neon sign that’s flashing EAT, EAT, EAT. Great pictures as usual. Much Thanks, 8T
Here’s a cranefly pattern tied by a fellow named Randy from the Ketchum area at the East Idaho Fly Tying and Fishing Exposition a couple months ago. It is woven using only DMC embroidery floss for the color and horse mane hair for the rest of the woven body and the wing.
I believe this fly is a variation of the Mackay Special. A friend of ours, Greg Webster, who runs The Bent Rod in Challis ID, used to guide on the Big Lost River at Mackay, and tied this fly, or one very similar to it, for me a couple times in case I ever got to fish the cranefly hatch on that river.
The fly is skated during the cranefly hatch, and the bows in the Big Lost just smash them, from everything I have heard about fishing that hatch. Unfortunately, the hatch takes place on the Big Lost during the summer months when the flows are too high to wade, so I haven’t had the opportunity to use this fly.
Here’s a link to another version of the Mackay Special. The author of this article refers to fishing it wet as a cranefly larva, as well as on / near the surface.
We went during the same time frame of the hatch and a little
downstream where there was deeper water… The hatch started
one hour later due to a cloud cover.
I’ve fished the Big lost at Mackay used the the Mackay Special. It is indeed a very effective pattern on the Big lost. Fished wet or dry the rainbows love that fly.
I was fortunate to have a friend that bought a ranch containing a section of the Big Lost. Between dodging cattle, we have wonderful fishing.
The fly is tied using the Pott weave with horse mane hair hackles . The technique is shown below. Go to the end of the article and the knots in the woven hackle collar are identical to your friend’s pattern:
