J. A. Y. Thing ...

… as in Just Another Yellow Thing.

In the face of such professional looking SBSs, videos, and pix of beautifully tied flies, here’s a shout out for us hacks who are limited in what we can do at the tying desk. :wink:

Tie in a 2" piece of antron yarn at the bend, leaving a shank length or so extending for the shuck.

Advance thread to about 2/3 mark, twist antron strand with appropriate tool, and then wrap antron forward in touching turns.

Form loop wing with tag end of antron strand and post.

Tie in grizzly hackle and secure to post.


( Sorry for the blurry image - but remember I’m just an old guy with a hand held camera. And yes, Ed and Karen, that is the “left thumb” in the upper left corner of the pic. )

Wrap hackle down the post in four, five, six turns for parachute, then wrap the hackle around the shank in front of the post in three or four turns to behind the eye, in the 9DH fashion, and tie off. Cut out about half of the antron strand for a slimmer shuck and trim shuck to length.

And from the fishies point of view.

If you want the fly to ride realy low, trim the hackle on the underside of the shank.

Now, there is a secret to fishing this fly successfully.

Only fish it to nearsighted, colorblind, dumb, and starving fishies.

Like this one.

Hmmmmmm. Actually, he doesn’t look like he is starving. Must be one of the really dumb ones. :roll:

John

Great looking water, John, if only that ‘stupid’ fish wasn’t blocking the view… :lol:

Thanks for sharing all the pix.

Merry Christmas from your Friend in Low Places.

Hans W

As much as I really enjoy the works of art posted on this great site (and I really mean that), and I aspire to be able to tie with such skill, this looks like a Merry Christmas gift to me - simple, inexpensive, and catches fish - my kinda fly - I can picture a J.A.B., J.A.O., J.A.G. …
May I ask what size hook you used?
Thanks John. keep on hackin’ :slight_smile:

Size 16 standard dry fly hook, Jeff.

And a Happy and Prosperous New Year to you, and all the Bulletin Board Members.

John

Nice fly John. Merry Christmas!

Very slick, John. That’s a nice, quick, easy and effective tie. Thanks. What river are you fishing in the photos?

Thanks, Bruce and Byron.

The fly was first tied last summer as an experiment in simplicity, keying off a successful Mahogany Dun Emerger pattern to see how the pattern would do as an attractor. It actually fished quite well on my home water in Northern Idaho, but not as well as the MDE itself.

For some serious “water porn” follow the link. That’s the place, Bruce. Some serious “left thumb” porn, too. :wink:

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/showthread.php?45688-Lochsa

John

I don’t tie allot of dry flies myself, but this one I will need to try out. Reminds me allot the Al Campbell’s series of the “Too Simple” fly patterns. Very nicely done John, great job. I really enjoying all your SBS also.

Wishing all a safe & great holiday season and a wonderful new year.

Mike

I need to tie up a couple of those for my box. Nice work John! Thank you for sharing and Merry Christmas to you.

I’ll give that fly a left thumb’s up! :slight_smile:

Ed

very nice, and I’ll take all the dumb fish I can find.

Hmmmmmmm…if my 2 dogs were to Whiz on it, it would definitely be just another yellow thing !!! ROFLMAO :razz:

Good to get a critique from a professional fly tier.

John

… a JAY Thing in years. A couple days ago, I picked up a couple cards of antron, one light brown and one dark brown and wondered how they would do tied in the JAY Thing style. Tied up one of each in size 14 and fished both yesterday. The lighter brown Thing caught a hungry west slope cutt on the second cast and several takes later was broken off the 5X tippet by a really healthy, hungry and dumb big west slope. The dark brown Thing got a couple more cutts before it attached itself to some foliage that got in the way of my back cast. Thought the current bunch of BB followers might enjoy this one.

… being what they are. B - for brown; O - for olive; G - for green. Fished Things in all three colors over the past couple days. Each of the three accounted for bunches of nearsighted, colorblind, dumb and starving west slope cutts on a northern Idaho freestone creek - a couple dozen fishies in maybe a couple hours of fishing pretty much evenly split among the three Thing colors tied on size 14 dry fly hooks. Finished the second day with a fat, healthy, strong, fiesty 17" fish. Things being what they are. Remember …

Your original pics on this thread no longer show up. Maybe you could add some new ones? I’d love to see the flies… and the fish! :slight_smile:

Post photobucket, I tried a number of different approaches to posting photos - none consistently worked. In summary - size 14 dry fly hook, a 2" piece of antron, and dry fly hackle to size. S. is to shuck it, tie antron in at bend of hook leaving the tag end for the shuck. T. is to twist the antron into a slim, tightly wound bundle. W. is to wrap the antron bundle forward in touching turns to the loop wing position. L. is to make a loop wing with the antron bundle. P. is to post the loop wing prior to tying in the hackle. H. is to create a parachute in the 9DH fashion ( instead of tying parachute off in one of the traditional ways, wrap the hackle forward of the parachute post several turns and tie it off just behind the eye of the hook ). This simple fly, in mahogany dun colors, has continued to catch bunches of nearsighted, colorblind, dumb and starving west slope cutthroat trout on my Northern Idaho freestone creek home water, accounting for about twenty fishies in a couple hours on my last outing.

Didn’t get much action on the Just Another Mahogany dun yesterday. One place a bunch of rising fishies just wanted something else. BUT there was one very pleasant surprise the next place I fished it. A 13-14" hybrid west slope cutthroat / steelhead. In over 1200 days fishing this particular Idaho freestone creek, I’ve only caught 6 of these hybrids, and I think two of them were the same fish. Made up for those persnicky fish that wanted something else - more than made up for them, for sure !!

Wow! Steelhead x Cutty Hybrid!?!! VERY cool!Yeah, Photobucket’s new owner(s) really ruined that avenue.What’s worked really well for me since then, is Gifyu.com. Some sites work well with URL’s, some (like here) work best with a BBCode. Gifyu provides all the differenty styles of links… just figure out which one works for where you want to post it, copy-n-paste. :slight_smile:

How close did I come John?
https://flic.kr/p/2qohs3C