Crackle Backs - What's your favorite body material/color?

[jd1983 0]

Fishing the trout parks in Missouri this year introduced me to the crackle back. I have been buying them whenever I went and realized they are terribly simple and there is no reason I can't tie them myself. The most productive ones I have purchased have been green with grizzly hackle. I don't have green tinsel right now so I put together a few with some opal tinsel I have for the x-caddis and it got me to thinking. What are your favorite body materials and colors for crackle backs?

[xrayts 0]

I like a light olive underbody with grizzly hackle. That said, I don't use them much because I feel like everyone in Missouri and Arkansas has a box full.

[Guest]

I like a light olive underbody with grizzly hackle. That said, I don't use them much because I feel like everyone in Missouri and Arkansas has a box full

That's my favorite color also. I like to fish them on a sinking line and strip them like a streamer.

Supposedly, Ed Story at Feather Craft in St. Louis invented the fly and he used turkey rounds for the body. I generally use dubbing or uni-thread.

 

Dave

[vicrider 0]

I tie a lot of cracklebacks and vary both underbody and hackle. The basic is still the yellow floss, herl over top, and grizzly hackle, not wound too tight so as to hide the body and herl. I also like to put a tail on them if they are going to primarily fished dry.

 

Dave, seems like you're using them same as wooly bugger without the maribou tail. Are you using these in larger sizes than we normally tie for dries? The basic concept of floss and herl top hat just might make a darn nice bugger tie.

[Guest]

I tie a lot of cracklebacks and vary both underbody and hackle. The basic is still the yellow floss, herl over top, and grizzly hackle, not wound too tight so as to hide the body and herl. I also like to put a tail on them if they are going to primarily fished dry.

 

Dave, seems like you're using them same as wooly bugger without the maribou tail. Are you using these in larger sizes than we normally tie for dries? The basic concept of floss and herl top hat just might make a darn nice bugger tie.

Yea, I fish it pretty much like a wooly. I don't put a tail on. Generally tie them in size 12 to 16. Same size for dries.

 

Dave

[Crackleback 0]

I'd almost feel silly not responding to this topic. I carry 3 versions. Yellow dubbing with grizzly hackle or olive dubbing with grizzly hackle, both in 12's and 14's. I also like UV black ice dub with furnace hackle tied with red thread. I carry this one all the way down to a #20. It works good as a generic small terrestrial.

 

-Mike

[JSzymczyk 0]

They're Woolly Worms for crying out loud, the predecessor to the Bugger, and the style, palmered hackle over whatever body material anyone can dream up is known as far back as the beginning as a "Hackle Fly". Long before I was a kid learning about the sport, there was a popular version in my local area (NW Pennsylvania) which was a yellow dubbed or chenille body, with 2 or three peacock herls as a back, with grizzly hackle over everything. That fly and a black-bodied version were and still are always productive in those waters, and just about any other waters too.

[vicrider 0]

They're Woolly Worms for crying out loud, the predecessor to the Bugger, and the style, palmered hackle over whatever body material anyone can dream up is known as far back as the beginning as a "Hackle Fly". Long before I was a kid learning about the sport, there was a popular version in my local area (NW Pennsylvania) which was a yellow dubbed or chenille body, with 2 or three peacock herls as a back, with grizzly hackle over everything. That fly and a black-bodied version were and still are always productive in those waters, and just about any other waters too.

You are basically right on that, but when you talk in fly tying circles about the Crackleback everyone knows you mean the fly I hi-lited in your text. True that the woolly worm has given up much ground to the bugger, but it is still productive, as shown in Dave's posts. I used to go with a Doc who paid the bill to fish a private stocked pond in IL. The standard bait there was the Woolly Worm with a red tag tail, either on fly rods as we used or spinning with a clear float. Worked then and would work now.

[JSzymczyk 0]

Never heard that fly called a crackleback, and I know for sure all the old timers around there did not call it that. This would have been in the late 70s. My Dad worked part time in a store where the owner, he was OLD at that time, had been tying flies since the 30s. He never called them anything but a Woolly Worm, and said that yellow/peacock/grizz had been around forever. I remember him telling me, "No right or wrong way to fish it, just get it in the water!" In fact I had never heard the term until I was looking at the feathercraft website several years ago and read all the BS about it on there, and looked for how to tie it, and found a Woolly Worm. Add to that, they want to charge you a buck-fifty for a sheet of paper telling you how to tie this miracle fly...

[jd1983 0]

Hey now, it's completely different than a wooly worm. The hackle is tied so it points towards the eye of the hook .