Wet flies, soft hackles, flymphs and fuzzy nymphs

[rckrego]

Reading two great books right now: Nemes, The Soft Hackle Fly and Tiny Soft-Hackles, and Hughes, Wet Flies. Really getting me geared up to work these "traditional" flies throughout the water column. Anybody else have any suggestions? Going after Hidy's book and Schwiebert's book on nymphs next. I love the motion of the soft hackles. they're awesome. During the bwo's a couple weeks ago I had succes with BWO wets too. These flies just seem so versatile.

[Nymphmeister]

New book just came out, "Tying & Fishing Soft-Hackled Nymphs". Only browsed it for a few minutes, but I was impressed- nice pix, lots of patterns (both old & new), and plenty of info on various techniques, tackle, history, etc. I liked it, gonna add it to my collection. Dave Hughes book "Wet Flies" might just be the best in my opinion. Hidy's stuff is good if you can find it, I love reading stuff written by originators- if I remember correctly he was buds with Leisenring, and I think they collaborated together on the book on flymphs. Got that one in my collection somewhere too. Wets/flymphs/soft-hackles are underutilized by most modern fly fishers- at moments, you cannot beat them.

[rckrego]

Hidy was actually Leisenring's student and published the book on Flymphs from Leisenring's notes postuhumously I think. Lesenring planned a book on his techniques but died before he could write it, and did not take notes on his techniques liek he did on his patterns. Thus all we have is the Leisenring lift. Hidy has said that Leisenring had just oodles of little tricks for fishing wets in different types of water to induce strikes. Too bad.

[Nymphmeister]

I recently bought a bunch of Whiting/Hebert hen necks, gonna tie up a bunch of flymphs & wets, I'm excited. I've had success with soft hackles in the past, but I need to play around with them more and get really dialed in. One underutilized technique is to dead drift a soft hackle or flymph in a nymph rig with split shot and an indicator. You can also smoke trout by running a soft hackle as a trailer about a foot behind a Caddis dry (like an Elk Hair) during an emergence or egg laying flight- use the Caddis as the "strike indicator". Usually the trout, esp. the bigger ones, will take the wet pattern.

I remember an October day on the Farmington when the small #14 Iso's were hatching- they almost look like a big Olive. The bigger trout were snubbing my efforts to catch them, I couldn't catch anything over 13". I noticed some small black Caddis crawling on the rocks, so I thought what the hell, and I tied a small black soft hackle as a trailer. Game over, I caught all the bigger fish that wouldn't look at my Iso, and they all took the soft hackle. The fish of the day was a fat, holdover 18" brown- this was 15 years ago, when fish like that were few and far between.

[rckrego]

Torrey, check out the herl and starling. Looks deadly. I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of Leisenring and Hidy, but its out of circulation and very expensive. Hughes' book has a couple nice patterns in it. I especially like the looks of Rosborough's muskrat nymph.

[Nymphmeister]

Yeah, I've heard good things about the Starling & Herl (or is it Herl & Starling? I'm so confused...). I know a veteran Housy angler who has fished all over the place, and he is a true expert angler by anyones definition, with over 1,000+ 20" or larger trout caught in the Housy in his lifetime (he's in his 50's now), and his favorite nymph is the Casual Dress- similar to a Muskrat, but even buggier & fishier looking. I think he ties it from about a #2 or 4 all the way down to a #18 or so. I think one night in Push 'Em Up, at the Housy, his buddy told be he nailed a 26" brown in the dark on that fly in a #6. Nice!

[rckrego]

Its starling and herl. It just looks like absolutely deadly. Between Nemes, Hidy/Leisenring and Rosborough, there are so many just amazing looking flies. I'd love to start putting the step-by-step instructions for the flies in their books up on the site. Maybe we can work on it together.

I was fishing during the BWO hatch a couple weeks ago with traditional 14 and 16 olive wets. The fish were going bonkers. I was fishing them as the dropper fly with about 18 inches of tippet off the first fly, longline nymphing. Tried to get the fly up in the column a bit with an 18 unweighted regular PT as the first fly. The combo was nice. I'm thinking now, with the hendricksons moving about, that a hendrickson nymph with a hendrickson wet in the same fashion would be excellent. I think with the wet I'm going to take Hughes' advice and use hen hackle for the wing rather than the usual mallard. The softer wing seems like it will be more natural than the traditional wing.

I'm hoping when this rain halts and we get some solid hatches that I can switch to using a proper wet fly rig, but at the time they're working great nymphing.

When are we gonna get you down this way? I wanna give the wild browns on the bushkill a run with the wets.

[Soft-hackle]

Hi,
Let me add a little, here. Leisenring wrote the original book The Art of Tying the Wet Fly. He was persuaded into doing this by Vern Hidy, who was his student and friend. The original version was published in 1941. Thirty years later, Hidy added the section on flymphs and how to fish them. The book was reissued as The Art of Tying the Wet Fly and Fishing the Flymph. Hidy actually made up the word "flymph" to represent the emerging fly. It remains one of the definitive works with regards to wet flies, both winged and wingless.

Mr. Hidy wrote a great little book published as the Sports Illustrated Book of Wet-Fly Fishing. I consider it a great addition to the Leisenring book as it goes into more details regarding tying and fishing wets. It is out of print, but can be found online for a reasonable price. Hidy also wrote a great chapter on "flymphs" for a book called Masters Of The Nymph, which was edited By Len Wright, Jr. & J. Michael Migel. It's also a good read.

One interesting note: Dave Hughes' book on wet flies shows wrapping the hackle through the thorax on flymphs. This was not an attribute used by Leisenring. His wingless wets were hackled as a collar, like most are. This attribute was added later by Hidy, and can be quite an affective addition to these flies. See below:





Mr. Hidy also liked TUE hooks for flymphs.

I hope this helps you find some great reading on these great flies.
Mark

[Davyfly]

For those of you who have a great interest in both the history and evolution of soft hackles, l would suggest that you obtain some of the books written and published in the 1800s.

One of the best all round publications out there is The Art of the Wet fly, by Roger Fogg 1979, UK publication.
A second great book is a Dictionary of trout flies, by Courtney Williams.

Some of the materials used for the original flies are not available here in the US, but there are alternatives that are just as good.

On the other hand we have materials to day that were not available back in the 1800s
I bet they would have used them if they were.

Davy

[Nymphmeister]

I love books and have an ever-expanding library. I find myself gravitation to older, out of print books in recent years. They seem to have an entirely different "feel" to them, and aren't the same 'ol, same 'ol rehash that so many modern books & magazine articles are. I guess that sometimes you cannot beat the original.

Soft-Hackle-
I have all the books you mentioned and they are good reads. I'm still waiting for Davyfly's book on wet flies to be published, I think it's gonna be the pentultimate book- if I know Davy, it will be ultra thorough and cover history, have tons of patterns with a mix of all different presentational tactics & various rigging methods.

Davy-
Do you have an approximate date on your book yet? Last I knew, you said you were waiting for Dave Whitlock to finish the artwork for it and that you were already done with the manuscript. And BTW, is fishing still red hot down your way?