Hank O Hair

[Lotech Joe 0]

I found this fly pattern one day on the internet and thought it looked like an easy tie and a good producer. I was right in both cases. I took it out to a small local lake and started catching Bluegills, one after another. It's tied on a Mustad #12 Egg hook with Dark Brown Uni 6/0 thread and a small hank of deer hair. What a great surprise it turned out to be.

 

 

[mikechell 0]

Looks like a very simple caddis pattern. That's one of those easy ties you could do stream side if needed. Cool.

[add147 0]

Nice looking little fly...I'll have to give it a try. I love to pan fish. BTW like your mountain background.

[Lotech Joe 0]

Nice looking little fly...I'll have to give it a try. I love to pan fish. BTW like your mountain background.

 

The mountain background is a picture of Mt. Rainier in Washington State. It's on one of my mouse pads.

[Philly 0]

Definitely, the top half of a caddis pattern, Elk Hair caddis or a CDC and Elk. It looks like a very small crayfish or other fresh water crustacean. I'll have to give it a try. Just have to remind myself I'm not tying a CDC and Elk and tie in the body first. I wonder if you varied the thread color would it still produce.

[NohackleHS 0]

If you use a dubbed body and tie the fly on a small midge hook (TMC 100, size 20 or 22), it becomes an effective downwing midge pattern. I started using this fly 30+ years ago on some of the Montana spring creeks and it was really productive. However, as time went on, people started using similar flies and its effectiveness diminished a little bit.

[FlaFly 0]

I don't know......... that looks pretty complicated :-) I still haven't gotten around to tying a teeny nymph.

[crazy4oldcars 0]

I have a few egg hooks I didn't know what I was going to do with. Guess I do now! Thanks, Joe.

 

Kirk

[SilverDoctor 0]

This pattern triggered some memories. I learned to fly fish in the early '80's, taught by Neal Taylor in southern California. Neal worked as a naturalist at Lake Cachuma and for many years taught fly fishing at UCLA Extension, where I took his course, "The Sport and Science of Fly Fishing." Neal was a wonderful teacher, but something of a minimalist when it came to flies, and I left the course with the impression (which may be wrong) that Neal had originated this pattern. Perhaps one or more of the other thousands of anglers Neal taught will comment on this.

[Adam Saarinen 0]

Hank o hair was the first dryfly paturn i tied, but then i learnt the cdc & elk, much better paturn & not hard to ty!

[vicrider 0]

LoTech, you must get away from ties like that. It's like using a spinning rod and worms to catch trout. Can you imagine if wrapping a couple of hunks of hair or feathers on a hook could catch fish? We'd be ruined as tyers. I could take that same pattern, put three quarter inch long pheasant tails on there, blend some light salmon ice dub in coffee grinder with elk guard hairs gathered from previous ties, then put a touch of CDC underwing under the deer hair. Top that off with a very small touch of flash behind eye after switching tying thread from red for the body to black for the head.

 

There, now we've done something we can be proud of and if took 25 minutes instead of 7 minutes it's all for the good of future tyers who follow in our footsteps.

[Stevester 0]

Vic, seriously, 7 minutes for the original pattern? If that takes more than 90 seconds from vicing the hook to popping it out you need to work on your skills. Now your "modified by" suggestions are a different matter and succinctly summarize what makes this a great hobby and a huge money sink hole.

 

Steve

[mikechell 0]

Stevester ... seriously? 90 seconds to tie a fly?

Oh, maybe the fly in the OP ... if that's what you mean, I am okay with that.

Anything more complicated and I'd have to see a video.

[utyer 0]

I first started fishing this pattern in 1970 or 71. Guy named Dave who worked in the Alamo Saloon showed it to me. We all just called it Dave's Caddis. I tied this one in 59 seconds. I'v had a little practice, since I have been tying them ever since, and still use them.

[Stevester 0]

Hey Mike, yeah I meant the original pattern in the picture. Now when you have reached the exalted status that some of have, otherwise known as having too much crap stuffed in the desk drawers, you can take an hour to tie as you do one part then decide that you need experiment with different colors of from the 328 bags of shiny dubbing material you have bought but never used. Not to mention the 25 colors and three different lengths of Estaz, the 10 colors and widths of bug skin, the 40 hanks of flashabou/polar flash/krystal flash, 9 colors of buck tail, etc. Get my drift? So what have I spent most of my time tying? Soft hackles with 2 or three total materials not counting the hook. I am thinking of writing a book, Zen of Fly Tying with the catch phrase 'from complication comes simplicity'.

 

Steve