FLYMPH FORUM

Inspired by Ray's pattern. Here's one that is working good for me this year.

October Flame

Hook: #8 TMC 200R or Dai-Riki 889 (Depending on location, naturals are #8-#10 – #8, where I fish – For big water holding large trout or sea-runs, I like a heavy wire steelhead hook, though a lighter hook might be more appropriate for trouting, skinnier water & smaller sizes.)

Thread: Rust-brown UNI 8/0

Rib: Fine copper wire

Body: Mix of 2/3 Umpqua orange sparkle dubbing & 1/3 Wapsi Superfine sulfur yellow dubbing, dubbed in a loop of the tying thread (Pumpkin orange on my home water, & that seems to be fairly common over the northern regions, though color will vary with location, pale orange to tan & yellow more common to the south into California. A wingless version of this pattern will fish for the pre-emergent pupae, but keep in mind that these are paler in coloration than the adults – a common mistake tiers make is representing the pupa with adult coloration – mixing in more of the sulfur yellow will give the lighter coloration.

Thorax: Flue taken from the base of an orange-dyed mallard flank feather – tie in around the center of the puff then fold back & arrange around the hook shank – the flue from one side of the feather tied in on top, & the other side tied in on the bottom usually does it, though it might take a bit more – this will extend over about half the body & when wet creates an enticing shroud

Antennae (Hind legs?): 2 mottled turkey tail fibers extending well behind the hook bend

Wing: Pine squirrel tail

Hackle: Furnace hen

I'm looking for info on ancient hairwing trout flies & not finding much. A lot on quill-winged wetflies, which seems to have been the most popular mode into the 1950's, yet very little on old hair-winged wetflies for trout. If anybody can help to inform the subject, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Steve

Steve,
This is a very nicely thought out pattern. I like the thorax addition and the attention to detail in the antennae.

I haven't seen a lot of traditional hairwing wet flies for trout. Of course there are a lot of hairwing streamers and not enough people fish these in small sizes IMO. I do tie few attractors for trout that are small versions of some of the classic hairwing steelhead patterns. Most of the small hairwing trout flies seemed to be traditionally dry patterns. I'm interested to see what you come up with.

Steve, this looks like another interesting combo. I can definitely see the steelhead potential here. Trout too. Great to hear it's been working for you and great to see a hair wing. It's unique to me and very cool. Looking forward to more reports.

Steve,
This one is a beauty! I like it alot! Really well done! Please tie more of your handiwork and post it here!
Pal Doug

"Well thought out" describes this to a T. Amazing.

Thanks for the encouraging words guys. If I can manage some half-way decent fotos, I'll try to post some more examples of the hairwing wetflies I'm tying.

Yes, UC redbands seem to prefer the winged version, & our fish count has gone up since we've started using them. I think there has been a lot of confusion regarding October caddis, & that reinforced by writers who insist that this insect crawls from the stream to complete emergence. And yes, that is one of its hatching strategies, particularly on streams possessing shallow bars with finer sediments. But these are an incredibly adaptable bug employing more than one strategy, depending on stream geology, for the most part, I suspect. October caddis are abundant in the UC & an important hatch here, & the imitations bring up some of the biggest trout of the year. The river here has very steep banks dropping off to deep water quickly. The river bottom is a rubble of skull-sized stones which offer the transitioning pupae safe shelter from the trout. The shoreline stones are inhabited by a bazillion hunting spiders waiting to engage any helpless bug emerging from the river. Crawling out of the water to transition would not be the best strategy here, & that evidenced by the fact that you find very few OC casings on the riverside stones. But you do see a lot of the big caddis emerging from the water, where they rise from the bottom fully winged. The winged emergers are strong swimmers & move quickly through the water column, which is probably why the winged pattern makes a good swinging fly, the swing & lift simulating the movement of the natural flymph.

Old Hat, we are on the same page regarding a catalog of ancient hairwing wets. I was surprised when a short walk through the archives of ancient trout flies didn’t turn up many hair-winged wetfly designs, paired quill & feather wings seeming to dominate the old trout flies, & hair, as a ‘wing’ or topping, mainly reserved for the construction of salmon & seatrout patterns. And that surprised me because I find a topping constructed of hair (fur) provides more lifelike action & obfuscation than quill. I suspect quill, initially, was seen as the obvious material for simulating the shape of mayfly wings – the Victorian tiers seeing things through literal eyes – the earliest designs drab & meant to be imitative. As the art progressed, & the idea that trout will try to eat things that look like nothing in life progressed, the basic design elements grew a fanciful branch reaching into the mode of attracter flies resembling nothing in life, becoming ‘reaction baits’ or ‘lures’. The multicolored, stacked quill wings of the old patterns represent the zenith of the tier’s art, yet those exquisite patterns have all but completely fallen from general usage, & I suspect the main reason for that is the time & mastery required to tie trout flies possessing the intricacy of classic Atlantic salmon flies. Yet, I think, we might have tossed the baby out with the bathwater in this, as the idea behind the artful colorations of the old flies still has solid merit in creating effective attractors. I’ve found hair toppings to be much more effective than quill, & it’s much easier to stack colors with hair than it is with quill. I might even go so far as to say the winged wetfly style faded from popularity, truncated due to the ambiguous effectiveness of paired quill wings. In my opinion, based on my own experience astream, the working elements of the productive hairwing style which persists in salmon/steelhead patterns, has only begun to be explored in trout flies. The hairwing wetfly field is wide open design territory.

October caddis are abundant in the UC . . .

Until now, I thought "UC" meant University of California.

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Steve - What a great post. Beautiful, well-thought-out pattern and interesting discussion. After I read thru the post, I headed off to my bookshelf, to find some references for you. I have several books, which are excellent references for hair wing flies.

I would recommending getting your hands on each of the following books:

1) "Steelhead Fly Fishing and Flies" by Trey Combs (published in 1976/Frank Amato Publications/ISBN 0-936608-03-X)
2) "STEELHEAD Fly Fishing" by Trey Combs (published in 1991/The Lyons Press/ISBN 1-55821-903-X)
3) "Streamers & Bucktails - The Big Fish Flies" by Joseph D. Bates, Jr (Alfred A. Knopf/Originally published in 1950. Later republished in 1966 & 1979/ISBN 0-394-41588-4)
4) "Fish Flies" by Terry Hellekson (published by Gibbs Smith Publisher/ISBN ISBN 1-58685-692-8)

Some of the references, in these books, go back to the 1880's. There is a lot of information about similar flies from the 1920's thru 1950's. Not quite ancient, but it's a start.

As I thumbed thru my references, I rediscovered an interesting section about Al Knudson's Wet Spider,(aka "Al's Spider" or simply "Wet Spider") circa 1940.

Have fun, and thank you for sharing. Very inspiring!

Ray, these are excellent references. Thanks. Man you have a good library! I have both the Trey Combs books, & Hellekson. Trey Combs is the real deal & my first recommendation to anybody interested in steelhead fishing. Yes, these books do offer beautiful examples of the style & plenty of inspiration for anybody interested in scaling it to trout flies. Still, with few exceptions, the western Trude designs for example (tied & fished both wet & dry), we're not finding a lot of hairwing wetflies designed specifically for trout fishing. Old Hat mentioned using downsized steelhead patterns for trout, & my own success with the style doesn't really surprise me, as the flies contain all the effective working elements of the soft-hackle style, & can be fished using the same methods, & they can be fished as streamers, the basic design offering great versatility, hence utility.

I'd love to see what the creative tiers lurking about this forum might come up with as trout designs.