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McFlyLures

Simple Ant dry fly

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1 hour ago, McFlyLures said:

I am going to disagree with you a little here on that silver.   Many flies, the body will hang below the water.  So therefore it will float usually at an angle from the wing to the front of the head.  Some hackle under water, half the body under water.  I’ve tested many flies in water, both from what I tie and flies I get from the fly shops.   With many flies that have wings like this, the wing actually does rest on the water surface and help it float.  

I would then ask what is the purpose of the palmered hackle?

It makes the ant pattern look less like a real ant so the purpose of the hackle is to float the fly.

Of course if the fly body is sunken, the wing can help prevent it from sinking completely for a while until it gets submerged as well. Obviously, the primary purpose of the wing is NOT to "add buoyancy to the fly." That is the point I was making.

BTW, for ant patterns, the best floating pattern I have found is the McMurray Ant.

https://www.flydreamers.com/en/fly-tying/mc-murray-ant-vl233

35684736126_46fbcbee06_o.jpg

The Transpar Ant is also a good pattern

35684738356_57785ab00b_o.jpg

35593321121_084966148d_o.jpg

34883027144_0a1dd4cdd8_o.jpg

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Silver, if the wing does not contribute to buoyancy then why do we use hollow elk hair on a typical elk hair caddis ?  Why not just use deer body hair ?  Just curious because many flies seem to take the wing material into consideration when looking for "high floaters" in fast currents.  I'm not saying you're incorrect but I need to do some experimentation on your thesis. 

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1 hour ago, robow7 said:

Silver, if the wing does not contribute to buoyancy then why do we use hollow elk hair on a typical elk hair caddis ?  Why not just use deer body hair ?  Just curious because many flies seem to take the wing material into consideration when looking for "high floaters" in fast currents.  I'm not saying you're incorrect but I need to do some experimentation on your thesis. 

If you use hollow elk or deer hair for a "typical elk hair caddis" then you are tying it wrong. In fact, Gary Lafontaine PURPOSELY did NOT include the EHC in his book "Caddisflies" because every commercial EHC and pattern guide used hollow elk or deer hair.

Did you know that Al Troth, the inventor of the EHC specified that NON hollow (solid) hair should be used for the wing on an elk hair caddis?

Caddis flies have FLAT wings folded over their bodies. Al Troth knew that and therefore he specified solid hair for his EHC so it would not flair.

I have written about this before. See: http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?showtopic=69829&st=0&p=522278

Here is an actual EHC tied by Al Troth. Note how the elk hair wing forms a tent shape around the fly body rather than flair up over the body.

35593315831_aeac76d16d_o.jpg

 

Compare the original EHC to those in instructional videos

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Rather than Elk or Deer hair, you can use woodchuck hair which is solid in the place of hollow elk. I will form a flatter wing as in the woodchuck caddis below. Eliminate the palmered hackle and you have a more realistic caddis pattern. Compare the wing profile on the fly below to the EHC above and you decide which profile look more like a real caddis.

woodchuck_caddis.jpg

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The woodchuck silhouette definitely wins hands down.   I've never thought of Troth's ehc as having the finest caddis silhouette but it catches fish.  Maybe another topic that might be discussed elsewhere.  Back to wings adding floatability, so you don't feel Lee Wulff's flies with that huge top wing keep it from sinking in fast water as he designed ?  

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3 hours ago, robow7 said:

The woodchuck silhouette definitely wins hands down.   I've never thought of Troth's ehc as having the finest caddis silhouette but it catches fish.  Maybe another topic that might be discussed elsewhere.  Back to wings adding floatability, so you don't feel Lee Wulff's flies with that huge top wing keep it from sinking in fast water as he designed ?  

Nope. I think it is the fact that the Royal Wulff is heavily hackled and uses a bunch of hair for the tail. Look at the fly below. The clump of tail hair at the back of the fly keeps the hook from sinking.

Ir you think the white wing is keeping it floating, explain it to me in scientific terms. You may be misinterpreting the palmered hackle as wing but they are not. The wings are the white calf fur which can be from from the body or tail. The fly below uses the body fibers.

 

royal_wulff.jpg

 

Now as to why the EHC catches fish, it does so for two reason. The first is that is is a good fly for riffles and faster water because of the palmered body hackle. The second reason is that is the caddis pattern that is most often fished by a huge margin over other adult caddis patterns. So naturally it is the caddis pattern that catches the most fish.

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Not to argue with you Silver, since I'm only conjecturing here ...  but if wing material floats a fly with the body below the surface tension, then it mimics a drowning insect.  Even if it sits below the surface itself, the wing material can still be considered "helping" the fly to float at the surface.

Might not make it a "dry" fly ... but it can make it a surface fly.

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All that dubbing will eventually make it sink,Silver was referring to surface tension.Hanging below or just under is where an ant would be anyway.They don't enter the water on purpose and should be fished as a downed insect same as a hopper.Flying ants do hatch but on land.I only fish warm water these days but love a surface bite.By the way nice fly!

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11 hours ago, SilverCreek said:

I would then ask what is the purpose of the palmered hackle?

It makes the ant pattern look less like a real ant so the purpose of the hackle is to float the fly.

Of course if the fly body is sunken, the wing can help prevent it from sinking completely for a while until it gets submerged as well. Obviously, the primary purpose of the wing is NOT to "add buoyancy to the fly." That is the point I was making.

BTW, for ant patterns, the best floating pattern I have found is the McMurray Ant.

https://www.flydreamers.com/en/fly-tying/mc-murray-ant-vl233

35684736126_46fbcbee06_o.jpg

The Transpar Ant is also a good pattern

35684738356_57785ab00b_o.jpg

35593321121_084966148d_o.jpg

34883027144_0a1dd4cdd8_o.jpg

I believe the original Mc Murray ant used balsa instead of foam.I know i tied some long ago as well as balsa beetles .Sure was a process burning a hole to 2 little balsa beads then painting them.Was a great fly.So was the beetle.I love my foam it still looks like foam.

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1 hour ago, jcozzz said:

I believe the original Mc Murray ant used balsa instead of foam.I know i tied some long ago as well as balsa beetles .Sure was a process burning a hole to 2 little balsa beads then painting them.Was a great fly.So was the beetle.I love my foam it still looks like foam.


Ed Sutryn's McMurray ant did use balsa wood which was then painted. But foam cylinders threaded and then glued on mono are much faster and just as effective.

Most of you probably have never heard of a cork borer. They are used in chemical labs to make holes in cork or rubber stoppers for reagent flasks so that glass tubing can transfer volatile gases from one reagent container to another. My premed major was Chemistry.

But they can also be used to bore out cylinders from foam to form cylinders for ant bodies. You can get different types of foam from mats to even the soles of cheap foam sandals at a dollar store. That is how I use my cork borer set. I got mine on Ebay from India for about $12 many years ago. The top item in the photo below is a cork borer sharpener.

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If you buy a set which includes larger bores, you can cut out cylinders of foam for tying foam bodied bass or panfish plugs.

Or you can use the larger borers on thin sheets of foam to tie Harrison Steve's Disco Beetle pattern. You can tie them using loco foam for an attractor beetle pattern.

https://globalflyfisher.com/patterns-tie-better/the-locofoam-story

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Looking at the photo on the video link, I would leave off the wing. The only fly I tie with a wing is the elk hair caddis; deer hair instead of elk hair. It works.

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14 hours ago, SilverCreek said:

The top item in the photo below is a cork borer sharpener.

I came across one of these many years ago.  As a lover of hand tools and a believer that form follows function, for the life of me, I cold not figure out what it was.  It sat on my desk for 10 years as a puzzle with the offer of a free lunch and drinks to anyone that could enlighten me.   I did sort it out in the end by myself.  

Sinking ants are also very fishable mid summer.

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1 hour ago, WJG said:

Sinking ants are also very fishable mid summer.

Sunken terrestrials are one of my secret methods.

Rarely do fly fishers fish sunken terrestrials so when a fish sees a sunken (drowned) hopper, ant or jassid; they are likely to take it. The fly below is made with my UV resin over glass beads.

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As you can see, I like my UV resin ant flies,

34915031723_5f99144da1_o.jpg

 

You can also make some caddis pupa the same way,

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Here's food for thought:

"Terrestrial insects are not designed to float," said George Kesel, who owned Missoula's Four Rivers Fly Shop until it closed this spring. "When they hit the water, unless the surface film catches them, they go straight through. Whereas caddis and stoneflies and mayflies, they've all evolved to float......

And Kesel has another unique - at least to me - suggestion. He likes to fish grasshoppers, as well as ants and beetles, beneath the surface, like a nymph….

Cox has tried the same tactic.

"I've done that in the swirlies quite a bit, in the foam eddies, and it's pretty effective," Cox said. "When I move into food collection areas, it can be very good."

There are hopper patterns that are tied specifically to be fished beneath the surface, like the conehead drowned hopper. Kesel ties his own, but has suggestions for those who don't.

"Buy a grasshopper without a post, without any strike indicators to it," he said. "Make sure it's a low floater, coat it with something to make it sink and then fish it just like you would a nymph."

http://www.ravallirepublic.com/lifestyles/recreation/article_65f0d374-ca14-11e0-9650-001cc4c03286.html

"In truth, trout probably eat more sunken crickets and grasshoppers than they do floating ones..... Over the years I have had similar experiences on other rivers and have many times converted the fishless floating grasshopper and cricket patterns to deadly sinking patterns by letting them get soggy." See Pg 3 of the article below.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/fishing/trout-fishing/where-fish-trout/2012/07/use-grasshopper-and-cricket-patterns-catch-y?page=0%2C2

Gary Lafontaine wrote about sunken hoppers in The Dry Fly New Angles pg 289.

"That night I devised a submerged hopper pattern. We took fish all morning next day."

 

 

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