Curly's Envy

[UC Steve]

P1060214 (640x480).jpg (180.95 KiB) Viewed 6472 times

Here’s one of the attractor-style hairwings I like for fishing the water on freestones. This type works well swung & can be effective on water where larger streamers won’t produce. Depending on color choices, the basic pattern lends itself to both creating fanciful lures, & in simulating the winged emergers or drowned adults of specific insects.

Curly’s Envy
Hook: #8-#12 TMC 200R
Thread: Yellow UNI 8/0
Tail: Golden pheasant crest feather
Butt: Yellow floss
Body: Green tinsel
Wing: Yellow calf tail topped with olive bucktail
Hackle: Olive grizzly hen

[letumgo]

Gorgeous fly Steve. You have a nice tying style. Classic yet modern.

[UC Steve]

...tying style. Classic yet modern.

Thanks for the kind words, Ray. Funny you said that. In a recent interview for California Fly Fisher, Bud Bynack pinned me as a "neo-classicist", & I thought: Wow. And all this time I've been thinking of myself as just a run-of-the-mill crazy guy, karmically exiled for questionable behavior, to live in the woods, fishing one river, locked in a time warp (circa 1973) with only two books, Art of the Wet Fly & the 1973 edition of Veniard's (which lists 20 hairwing wetfly patterns for trout, all attractors except for 1, the Cahill, a simulator type), stuck, eternally riffing on the same flies that worked good for me when I was 12.

Lucky for me the river begs a downstream approach.

~Steve

[DOUGSDEN]

Steve,
Awesome....just awesome! I like your reply to Ray about being in a time-warp and such! As Mark Romero would have said...."Crazy man, just plain crazy!" I sure miss him!
Again, great work Steve. Please keep them coming!
Dens Doug

[UC Steve]

Thanks for the kind words Doug. I would like to have known Mark Romero.

[crazy4oldcars]

I like this.
I recently bought the equivalent hook from GCO, so this is a timely addition to the board for me.
As usual, I will have to make a few minor substitutions due to availability, but I should still be able to capture the essence of the fly.
Thanks very much for posting this.

Kirk

[UC Steve]

Kirk, you're welcome. Dyed bucktail & calf tail, mylar tinsel & floss are all inexpensive & easily obtainable. You in Texas? I can see where a few of these in various color combinations might be killer on those White Bass streams down there.

[crazy4oldcars]

Southeast Texas, lol Nearest white and smallie water is a few hours away. Most of my fishing is Black Bass, crappie and various sunfish. Sunfish REALLY like shiny.
I ended up using yellow hen for the tail, "Peacock" flashback cut in strips for the tinsel, yellow bucktail and the brown part of the yellow bucktail for the hair wing, and olive badger for the hackle. Looks pretty close to me! LOL Now I just have to tie about a dozen more to get them to look like I did it on purpose.

Kirk

[swellcat]

Yellow is supposed to be the hot ticket for smallmouth in one of sothern Oklahoma's deep, clear walleye lakes that looks like it could've been imported from the Canadian Shield.

The undefined acronym, UC, continues to taunt, so I have to make a few guesses:

1. 1. Undisclosed Creek (Dick Cheney's favourite fishing hole)
   2. Upper Columbia
   3. Upper Chilliwack

_____

[UC Steve]

Kirk, you totally morphed that pattern. Way cool. I'd love to see a foto.

Okay, Swellcat, I will relent. My first thought was to go with #1, nevertheless, it is in fact the secretive #2. You are a digger.

~Your Compatriot