Ed Mitchell Outdoors

An Anchor Fly on a Jig Hook

Euro-nymphing continues to grow in popularity and with that growth jig style fly hooks have become harder to fine. One popular hook maker sold out their entire year’s supply by early February! Why are jig hooks in demand? Riding hook point up, they snag less on the bottom.

A few post back, I tied flies on the Wapsi JHCN10 Czech Nymph Leaded Body hooks. For this post, I’m using an Umpqua Competition Series size 10 C400BL jig hook. It is a black nickel barbless hook – designed for use with beads, has heavy wire, and a wide gap. Recently I  was in Upcountry Sportfishing in New Hartford and got some Hanak Competition H400BL jig hooks.  Like the Umpqua hook, they’re also black nickel and barbless.  We’ll look at them later another time.

My bead is a Lucent red tungsten, size 3.8mm (5/32). Why red? It creates a hot spot to attract fish. My thread is plain old Danville flat wax in white. The first step is to make a mound of thread up by the eye. Just enough so you can jam the bead forward. Then reattach your thread, secure the bead in place and cover the hook shank in thread. You can put a drop of super glue behind the bead, but it is really not necessary. (The body will lock the bead forward.)

For the body I have 5″ inches of transparent, green vinyl ribbing. Lash it to the top of the hook shank back of the bead. Wind your thread over it to the rear and then wind back to the bead. Next wrap the vinyl forward to the bead, keeping each turn tight to the previous one. You can use a rotary vise or do it manually. Either way. Once you reach the bead, tie the vinyl down.

The white thread shows through the vinyl. It seems to enhance the green color. To finish the fly I formed a thorax behind the bead with some hare’s ear dubbing. Obviously this is an optional step. Totally the tier’s choice. Whip finish and head to the water.

The Hendricksons are Here!

Yes, the Hendricksons are on the Farmington River. In fact they started showing up in the Collinsville stretch about 10 days ago.  Then two cold days last week shut the hatch down. So weather has been a factor. It always is. And timing the hatch hasn’t been easy. Sometime it came off at 1:30 pm and ended by 3pm. Other days it didn’t start until 3pm? And get this. Oddly enough, on Monday myself and many others didn’t fish because of sustained 2o mph winds. Turned out that was the day of the most intense hatch so far. Go figure.

Male Hendrickson Dun on the Farmington River

Yesterday, in the first pool we tried, no signs of the hatch? Damn. Same thing happened to me on Tuesday. So took a gamble and went much farther upstream. Farther then we thought the hatch had likely progressed. Paid off. The duns came off about 2:40 pm in the head of the pool. Bingo I got my first trout of the year on a dry. Making it even more fun, I was using my Winston Retro Rod. Gotta love it.

Winston Retro Rod in Action

Caught a couple of fish, the biggest being a brown trout of near 15″. It slammed a Hendrickson ‘Comparadun” and put up quite a scrap on the “glass” 4wt.  Had my old Hardy princess singing a tune too. Unfortunately the hatch only last about 35 minutes. After that the action tapered right off. Oh well that’s fishing folks. As Mick Jagger said ” You can’t always get what you want.”  More Hendrickson hatch here. The Klinkhammer here.   And more hatch info. 

Winston Retro Rod with Trout

The “Eighty-Eight”, a Forgotten Fly

A while back, I was looking though Paul Schmookler’s massive tome Forgotten Flies. Wow, what a fascinating book. There I came across a picture of a streamer fly I first learned of while fishing a fairly remote spot in northern New England. With me at the time was a professional guide who knew the waters well. We were focused on landlock salmon, at the time. So naturally I asked him what he felt would be the best fly. He relied an “88”.

Eighty-Eight Streamer

An “88”? Damn, I told him I had no idea what that was! He smiled, opened his fly box and hand me a small, slim, flat wing streamer.  The body was made of red and green copper wire. The wing was a mallard flank feather. Not much else to it really, but it immediately proved its worth, catching several landlocks. Since then I always carry a couple “88”s

Schmookler’s book offers no details, instead referring readers to Dick Steward & Bob Leeman’s book Trolling Flies for Trout and Salmon. There you will find the following dressing. Thread– brown; Body – 2/3 red wire- 1/3 green wire; Wing– lemon wood duck flank tied flat on top; Collar -a few turns of soft grizzle hackle; Comment– Considered a casting fly for brook trout, often tied with red and green floss instead of wire.  

Red & Green Wire Body

Steward & Leeman make no mention of the fly’s origin or creator. Hoping to find out more, in the intervening years I asked quite a few anglers, including some professional fly tyers, if they had heard of the “88”. The answer has always been – a resounding “no”. In fact I have never being able to discover anything more about this forgotten fly. It is not in Eric Leiser’s Book of Fly Patterns nor is it in Colonel Bates big book Streamers and Bucktails. Know anything?  

Ready for the Wing

I tie it mainly on a size 8# Mustad 9575 streamer hook. A fine choice for most any streamer.  Yeah, I’m no exhibition tyer so I don’t always stick to the recipe. My thread choice is red to start, switching to black for the head.  Don’t have any red and green copper wire? There are a slew of other materials you could substitute. Under the wing I may add a few strands of  pearl flash and a small touch of white bucktail. (see above) But I never add the collar. Still at times I do get fancy – coat the wire with clear acrylic, spray the wing with fixative, maybe add decal eyes.  None of that is really necessary. I fish it as I was shown years ago – short strips with pauses. It works, believe me. A small sleek streamer can be deadly.