HRO Flies - Brown Serendipity by Nymphmeister

[jovalle]

Continuing the series...the serendipity, one of my personal favorites to tie and fish. See the bottom few pictures which are my version. As I mentioned while tying, for some reason I have always added a turn or two of peacock herl underneath the dear hair, and I don't spin it...anway:



Step 1: Create a thread base for friction, 8/0 brown



Step 2: Tie in a strand of brown zelon about 1.5-2 hook eyes behind the eye, twist thoroughly gripping with hackle pliers and wrap back



Step 3: Wrap forward, keeping tight, touching wraps and adding segmentation - for watever reason I did a poor job with the zelon in this fly, see below for better examples.



Step 4: Tie in a clump of deer hair. Don't know what kind we used, but I prefer cheap coastal deer hair for these given how much you trim. Spin hair



Step 5: Give the deer hair some business - tight below, to the sides and in front



Step 6: Give it some more business.



If you are the Nymphmeister, it looks like this.


More patterns, all from Craig Matthews, and all work on the Housy in sizes 14-20.



Three-dollar bridge



Crystal serendipity, with enhancement.



Green serendipity.

[AaronJasper]

Jovalle,

I am very impressed by the tying sequences. That brown serendipity looks better than the ones from the store! Torrey was talking about posting the flies from the classes... great idea! Kudos!

[jhouseman]

Fantastic ties - even better photos on this thread. I've never tied/utilized the serendipity line. Any tips on fishing these little floating/nymph/midge patterns?

[nutman]

very nice ,reminds me of the klinckhammer, those flys float so nice and man do they catch trout !

[alanb_ct]

Some of mine, in a size 18. I find it tricky to get the hair to spin around such a small hook. These flies are especially good to me on the Housatonic in Sept - Oct., as they imitate the brown caddis larvae from that time. By the way, these flies are generally fished sub-surface on a nymph rig. The "crystal" variety in size 20 and 22 is a really nice midge pupa, fished the same way.

[alanb_ct]

A few other things:
(1) Do not use the whole thickness of Z-lon, about one-third the bunch is correct.
(2) To separate the Z-lon bunch, comb it straight first with a small comb.
(3) Before separating the bunch, tie a knot in one end.
(4) For the deer hair head, I like to use bleached coastal deer hair.
(5) This fly seems best when lightly or not weighted.

[jovalle]

Torrey reflected this as well when tying, but these seem to do best when fished to be kicked around in the water column. I have used them to success in a few ways. One, as a long dropper off a dry, particularly useful in smaller sizes 18-20-22 during a BWO hatch (though there are better patterns to do this in my opinion), two, as the top fly in a three fly rig where you are using your point fly as an anchor, e.g. a vladi worm on point, a PT (generic mayfly) or stonefly about 12-18 inches up, dropped off a blood not with about 12-18 inches of tippet, and then up another 12-18 inches to another blood knot with 6-12 inches of tag to the serendipity, and three, as the rear fly where you are tailing nymphs behind shot. All methods work, the key is you're imitating a caddis or midge ascending. Presumably the deer hair looks like a nymph breaking through its shuck, and it helps to trap air bubbles as it is kicked around the upper half of the water column.

[nutman]

if you look up the klinckhammer it is the next stage ,it would be a good indicator above this caddis pattern ,sorry i can post pics here just to much of a hassel ,the klinkhammer floats with the tail end of the hook in the sub suface ,the top is parachute and floats on the surface .The pattern reminded me of it because it has a similar shape

[Dr. BlueDun]

Sheesh---just when I get caught up, new patterns---I need to order a couple of pounds of hooks just to continuously play "catch up." JoValle thanks for the postings they are just great---you have another fan. 8)

[Nymphmeister]

Nice job on the pix Jovalle, clear & easy to see. Now I understand what you meant when you said you like Peacock underneath the wing- as a collar. I use either regular deer body hair for the head/wing, or Coastal Deer, they both seem to work fine. I'm sure you could prob substitute Elk too. I typically use regular, undyed, unbleached deer hair, except for the Crystal Sernedipity- on that one white or bleached is good.

Dejon-
If you haven't spent some time with these on the end of your line, you are missing out! It would be one of my top 12 nymphs if you made me pick. I'm guessing the trout take these as some sort of Caddis or Midge. Despite their appearance as looking like a surface or film pattern, they are normally fished down deep- not that you can't fish them up top. I've generally fished them in the past as the trailing (bottom) fly in a 2 fly rig with split shot & a strike indicator. The upper fly is usually a beadhead or some sort of weighted fly, and the shot is place above the upper fly.

I find I like this fly in #14-18, with a size 16 in brown my go-to, but I've seen them used from #12 down to #22. Red is another popular & effective color (prob works as a Midge imitation or just an attractor), and all different colors seem to be effective at moments. Olive is another good one, and the pearl bodied version can be deadly (it's called a Crystal Serendipity I think). Keep the body slim as Alain mentioned, usually you need far less body material than you think.

In a Euro rig (no split shot) with 2 flies I'd use it as the upper fly above a heavier anchor fly, and in a 3 fly set-up I'd put the anchor in the middle spot and run the Serendipity as the bottom or top fly.