Dry soft hackle

[dillon]

I got the idea for this pattern at a local fly tying expo. It's a regular partridge wing soft hack wound over a few turns of dry fly hackle. It's meant to fish dry. Possibly representing a stillborne. I've tied a few but have not fished the fly yet. Im planning to test it out this summer on some tailwaters i fish every year in Id/Mt. I always like to try on new pattern to show those hard to please fish. Anybody ever fish dry soft hackles?

 

[Rip Tide]

I tie mine as a traditional soft hackle but on light wire dry fly hooks. They float right in the film like a cripple or still-born... deadly
I got the idea from an old magazine article by Gary Borger. Probably a late '80s Fly Fisherman
I've always called them "damp flies" but he had a different name for them... Silver would know

 

[spm]

I got the idea for this pattern at a local fly tying expo. It's a regular partridge wing soft hack wound over a few turns of dry fly hackle. It's meant to fish dry. Possibly representing a stillborne. I've tied a few but have not fished the fly yet. Im planning to test it out this summer on some tailwaters i fish every year in Id/Mt. I always like to try on new pattern to show those hard to please fish. Anybody ever fish dry soft hackles?

That's a neat looking fly, dillon. Do you dress it like a dry or fish it as is? Dubbed body and head?

Thanks,
steve

 

[sparsegraystubble]

When I lived in Southeast Idaho, I used a variation of that on a spring creek where the fish were often selective to crippled PMDs. It had a trailing shuck of Darlon and a low angle poly wing tied in front of turns of thorax hackle. Sometimes tied with blue dun saddle hackle and sometimes with a mix of hackle and webby dun or grizzly hen hackle. The hackle was clipped in a V on the bottom so the abdomen sat flush in the surface film.

I fished it dry (or damp) a lot, but would also fish out a cast after drag set in and fish it on a wet fly swing. Worked pretty well on many day. Used the same fly by clipping part of the wing and the trailing shuck for Little Yellow Stone hatches on the Henry’s Fork.

And I think that pattern derived from an old Gary Borger article as well.

Don

 

[dillon]

That's a neat looking fly, dillon. Do you dress it like a dry or fish it as is? Dubbed body and head?

Thanks,
steve

Thanks, I have not fished this pattern yet, but I would probably apply a silicone floatant and fish it dry. The body is dubbed and the head just thread and came out scruffy. Almost didnt post it because of that.
I think i might clip the dry hackle before adding the soft hackle next time. I need to work on this pattern a bit...

 

[scotty macfly]

I think it looks fantastic.

And no, I have never fished or seen a pattern like this, but I think I will be fishing some soon.

 

[sweetandsalt]

Jim Leisenring popularly fished "Flymphs". Very much like Dillon's suggestively emergent dry/soft hackle.

 

[ivory arrow]

I heard a tip of rubbing dry fly gel on a spider fly with a body dubbed with superfine.

Haven’t tried it yet, but I have been meaning too


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[falcon53]

Hatching flies such as PMDs and Sulphurs have a high percentage of cripples. More robust or larger species not so much. Subsequently these type of patterns are a very good option especially when the fish get picky. Soft hackles and Flymphs have been around forever. I tie my soft hackles using partridge or hen neck sometimes as small as size 22 for olives (20s and 22s not easy!)!There is a soft hackle pattern that utilizes CDC for hackle called a "puff daddy" that is popular on Tenn. tailwaters. In addition there is a high percentage of spinner cripples. Look on the water during a spinner fall and you will see all types of bent and contorted spinners in the flotsam. Two good books are Spinners and Cripples by Kelly Galloup and Wet Flies by Dave Hughes.

 

[planettrout]

This book, that came out in November 2016, is unique - in that it lists soft hackle recipes to match Mayflies, Midges, Caddis and Stoneflies in their different stages of development:

Amazon.com: Fly-Fishing Soft-Hackles: Nymphs, Emergers, and Dry Flies eBook: Allen McGee, David Hall: Kindle Store

Allen McGee has taken soft hackle patterns to an entirely different level of imitation...I used several of his patterns up on the Firehole River, in YNP, this past September...


PT/TB

 

[sweetandsalt]

Naturally, game bird such as partridge hackle has been employed by fly tiers...forever. Likely codified by Border County anglers in northern England sand southern Scotland in the 19th century with flies like partridge and olive, they early on became popular on our side of the pond and where what was most commonly fished by anglers traveling up from New York City to the famed waters of the Beaverkill and Willowemoc in the 1800's. This change a lot when Theodore Gordon, frustrated by lack of imitative flies for the abundant floating mayflies he experienced on his home Neversink as well as the Beomoc, developed a correspondence with famed chalkstream expert, Frederick Halford in London. Halford's remarkable upright winged mayfly imitations transformed Gordon and American anglers perspectives on trout flies. Note that Gordon's famous Quill Gordon was, unlike today, tied in various sizes and suggestive colors for all Catskill mayflies not just Epeorus pleuralis. Further understand that the dry fly hackle Gordon, Steenrod and the rest had available was nothing like the stiff "genetic" hackle available post Harry Darby and common place today. I digress. Wet flies took a different direction here as men like Ray Bergman favored colorful married wings with soft hackled beards. But during the Match the Hatch revolution, sparse soft ahckles reemnrged to suggest mayfly emergers. Mike Lawson's popular and effective Green Drake Emerger is basically a winged and ribbed soft hackle. I prefer barred partridge hackle to popular Zelon type synthetics for shucks and legs on half and half type Quigley style flies.

Leisenring, as Dillon suggested, fished his Flymphs upstream to a riser and failing an eat, mended slack to dead drift the soft hackle parallel to him then allowing it to sink and, swinging below, performed the Liesenring Lift by raising his rod tip and swimming the fly to the surface...for all the world like an emerging caddis.

To dress soft hackles to suggest crippled duns or spinners, I recommend a liquid silicone penetrating preparation such as Muscilin Liquid Silicone...it floats hackled flies very well without clumping fibers as might gel or surely past consistency floatants.

 

[mcnerney]

Hatching flies such as PMDs and Sulphurs have a high percentage of cripples. More robust or larger species not so much. Subsequently these type of patterns are a very good option especially when the fish get picky. Soft hackles and Flymphs have been around forever. I tie my soft hackles using partridge or hen neck sometimes as small as size 22 for olives (20s and 22s not easy!)!There is a soft hackle pattern that utilizes CDC for hackle called a "puff daddy" that is popular on Tenn. tailwaters. In addition there is a high percentage of spinner cripples. Look on the water during a spinner fall and you will see all types of bent and contorted spinners in the flotsam. Two good books are Spinners and Cripples by Kelly Galloup and Wet Flies by Dave Hughes.

Dillon: Thanks for posting that pattern, I'll have to tie up a few and give them a try this summer.

Falcon: I found a CDC version of the Puff Daddy that looks pretty nice, I'm going to tie a few of those also. Looks like a killer BWO pattern.
Puff Daddy Blue-Winged Olive - YouTube

 

[hokiehunter07]

Alan from Small Stream Reflections does that all the time. His current post discusses that very thing. If you haven't already seen his stuff he's probably the best fly blogger out there especially if small streams and brookies are your thing.

 

[ddb]

I saw a video once by a Brit who tied a standard dry fly with a slightly longer soft hackle sparsely wrapped through the stiffer standard hackle, The fy floated but the soft hackle tips gave it more like like movement o the surface.

ddb

 

[Walter1023]

I got the idea for this pattern at a local fly tying expo. It's a regular partridge wing soft hack wound over a few turns of dry fly hackle. It's meant to fish dry. Possibly representing a stillborne. I've tied a few but have not fished the fly yet. Im planning to test it out this summer on some tailwaters i fish every year in Id/Mt. I always like to try on new pattern to show those hard to please fish. Anybody ever fish dry soft hackles?

I fish primarily dry but 80% of the dry flies I tie have no rooster hackle......i use CDC and Hen Hackle as well as partridge sometimes. I find them exceptionally awesome dead drifted on the surface....damp as I sometimes call them.
When I first read about Gary Borger's Wet Dry Fly.......i thought son of a gun......he took my idea. Problem is he had the idea more than a decade before me.....LOL

 

[sweetandsalt]

"When I first read about Gary Borger's Wet Dry Fly.......i thought son of a gun......he took my idea. Problem is he had the idea more than a decade before me.....LOL."

And James Leisenring who died in the early 1950's, pioneered fishing a soft hackle as a dry in the film before Borger new what a fly rod was. It is very hard, unlikely even, that anyone today comes up with a fly design or angling technique not influenced by astute anglers in the past. It is so important that we be keenly aware of the history and literature of this great sport.

 

[Rip Tide]

And James Leisenring who died in the early 1950's, pioneered fishing a soft hackle as a dry in the film before Borger new what a fly rod was. It is very hard, unlikely even, that anyone today comes up with a fly design or angling technique not influenced by astute anglers in the past. It is so important that we be keenly aware of the history and literature of this great sport.

Going back in history, there was no distinction between dry and wet flies.
They were what they were.
You cast your fly out .... it floated for a while.... and then it sank.

Many of my dry flies keep up that tradition to this day :behindsofa:

 

[dillon]

"When I first read about Gary Borger's Wet Dry Fly.......i thought son of a gun......he took my idea. Problem is he had the idea more than a decade before me.....LOL."

And James Leisenring who died in the early 1950's, pioneered fishing a soft hackle as a dry in the film before Borger new what a fly rod was. It is very hard, unlikely even, that anyone today comes up with a fly design or angling technique not influenced by astute anglers in the past. It is so important that we be keenly aware of the history and literature of this great sport.

I tied another one with the dry fly hackle trimmed bottom and top. I like the looks of it a bit better. This hackle is just to enhance float-ability.

I think most, if not all modern flies are a variation of older flies. I'm reading a book about the pioneers of steelhead fishing. Some of the flies they fished were nothing like the elegant modern versions of the same patterns. But they caught fish.

I'm sure this dry soft hackle will work with a dead drift presentation and can't wait to try it out. I might even give a few away, to my friends that are willing to give it a try.

I wonder how micro fibbett tails would work, or a poly one, or a klinkhammer hook...

 

[sweetandsalt]

I'm game to help "experiment" and I know they will work both with dry fly or trailing shuck tailing (emerger and spinner respectively)...as long as we give the Flymph its historic/cultural due.

 

[smokepoles]

I've tied and fished a few puff diddiy/daddy flies tied to mimic the PMD hatch on one of my home waters. I did OK, but rather prefer a sparkle comparadun. The comparadun is just easier for my old eyes to see and thus allows me to adjust mends to get fly where I want during its drift. To me, that is a big plus of dry fly fishing. On the other hand, the challenge with nymphs and wets is to anticipate underwater currents and its impact on fly drift.