I had the opportunity to use this fly on the Henery?s Fork, Firehole and the Madison with great success!
My Guide on the Henery?s Fork was super impressed with it also, and he fishes 200 days a year and sees a crazy huge amount of flys in action.
This fly accounted for dozens of fish, was DEADLY on the Firehole.
Here is the thing, I lost the tiers info, and I wanted to thank him/her for the flys and relay the success of the fly.
I would really like to know who sent me these flys, and get the exact recipe.
Or, just SELL me 2dozen and I will give some away to all my fly fishing friends for Christmas.
When I get them I will post , my hope is that the original tier will post his original recipe.
Scott did a good job of identifying the materials a few posts up?and he is right, it?s not that challenging of a fly to tie. I just can?t get mine to look ?pretty?.
Maybe, one of the better tiers on this board will take a shot at it.
i replied to this before i went fishing this morning, but as usual my computor skills are lacking. sorry for the delay. the pattern is as follows
hook: lightning strike jf2
bead: copper, slotted tungsten
thread: uni- thread, camel under wire, fire orange collor
tail: natural pheasant tail.( started using brahma hen , march brown lately seems to hold up better.
abdomen: uni wire, 2 strands copper brown, 1 starnd copper, wrap all three wires at one time, use br wire for size 12 & 14 and small for 16 & 18
thorax: arizona synthetic dubbing , peacock
hackle: whitting brahma hen saddle, march brown, loop dubbed.
i tie the fly on with a loop knot to let the jig style hook do its thing.
fish it as a nymph or as a soft hackle
i came up with this pattern 5 or 6 years ago, and won best nymph and wet fly at the 2019 sowbug round up it has served me well, and hope it does the same for you. any questions give me a yell
thanks for the nice comments. ive been tying and fishing this pattern for 5 or 6 years and it has proven to be very effective . it helped me catch a couple dozen trout in 2 hours yesterday.
as for help in tying all I can do is tell you what I do. first thing is a rotary vice, I cant imagine trying to wrap the wire and keep it close together with no gaps without one. secondly I use three spools of wire at one time. each spool of wire is on its own bobbin. it helps in controlling the wire when wrapping the body. third, use a brown colored thread , I use camel thread when tying in the wire, no matter how hard I try I cannot keep the wraps of wire close enough together to eliminate any small gaps. if you use the brown or dark colored thread the gaps do not look so obvious. I found out real quick that the fire orange thread stood out like a sore thumb when it was used to tie in the wire. fourth tie in all 3 strands of wire at the same time at the end of the hook shank and wrap the thread forward and back forming a tapered under body. also when tying in the wire tie it in with the 2 copper brown wires side by side, and the copper wire closest to you. fifth, when wrapping the wire I usually pull the wire towards me forming a somewhat right angle between the hook shank and the bundle of wire, pull it tight , and then wrap the wire bundle around the hook shank.
as for the hackle length, I try to make the hackle just slightly longer than the distance from the tie in point to the outside bend in the hook. I use a pettijean tool to do this. to start I pick a feather from the skin, pull off the fuzz, stroke the feather to line up the hackle tips and insert the hackle tips into the tool. the width of the feather section should be about 1 1/2 times the hook gap, this should give you about 1 1/2 and 2 wraps of hackle, which seems to be about the right proportion to me , more and the hackle looks to dense and less not dense enough. you can experiment with how much to insert in the tool until you get the look you want. okay so when inserting the feather into the clip don’t stick it in to far because you will want to trim it back later. now that the feather section is secured in the clip, cut it free from the rest of the feather. now you have the clip with a section of the hackle in it. hold the clip with the feather in it up to the fly in your vise with the hackle tips just past the hook bend. look at the hackle tie in point and gauge where you will need to trim the butts off the feather to insert in your dubbing loop to get the proper hackle length.
one other tip that may help, since the hackle clip is clear, I took a fine point felt marker and drew lines on the hackle clip to show how far I need to insert the feather section to get the hackle length I want for a particular size hook.
hope some of this helps and that I didn’t confuse the issues.
one thing i forgot to mention is when buying the copper brown wire, if you buy 2 spools make sure they are the same shade. i have run into some variations in color, so make sure your getting 2 spools of the shade you want
your fly looks great really dont think the fish will not like it. i think that we as tiers get a little critical of how the flies look, when the fish dont care.
keep up the good work.
as a side line, my nephew has been catching a lot of fish on this pattern in new york and connecticut
