Blue Dun Flymph 

Hook:   Mustad 3906, 3906B or Tiemco 100, depending on whether
you want it to sink relatively deep, shallow, or float in film
Thread: 8/0 Yellow
Tail:   Dun Hen Hackle
Body:   Dubbed Muskrat
Hackle: Dun Hen

The best set of instructions are in Dave Hughes' book "Wet Flies".

1. Tie in the hackle at the head, convex side facing you, hackle extending beyond eye of hook.
2. Wrap back to point halfway between the point and the barb of the hook.
3. Tie in the tail, placing one wrap of thread beneath the tail to cock it upward (that wrap of thread is for style as much as anything and is optional).
4. Dub body, tappered thicker toward the front.
5. Bring thread back 1/3 of body length.
6. Use a bodkin to pick out some of the dubbing (Be careful, the thread is right there so don't cut it). 7. Palmer hackle back to where the thread is.
8. Use three wraps of thread to tie off hackle at the 1/3 point.
9. Run thread through hackle, being careful not to tie down any of the hackle.
10. Whip finish.

Tying Notes:

There are at least two things odd about the way this fly is tied. One is the hackling method. Dave Hughes advocates this way because it makes a buggier looking fly (the fly's legs and moving parts come from the front third of the insect, not just a thick collar right up front), has more movement, and is more durable. The second is the thread/dubbing combination. If you remember the commercial "Yellow and blue make green" then you will probably figure out that yellow and dun make olive. This means that the dubbing should be sparse so that the thread can show through when wet. Since your dubbing will not be exactly the same thickness along the entire length of thread used (mine isn't) you will produce a body with varying shades of olive and grey, just like the body on a real BWO. Also, due to hook sizes being what they are, it seems like a #14 3906 is similar in length to a #16 3906B which is similar in length to a #18 Tiemco 100. So if you know the correct size for one style hook, take that hook to your fly shop and compare before buying the other styles.

Experiment with how you tie in the hackle. I like it with the convex side toward me, Dave Hughes likes the concave side. What you want is for the hackle fibers to slant back after you've wrapped it and for the thread to cross the hackle stem (as opposed to running in parallel with the hackle stem) when you wrap the trhead forward after tying off the hackle at the 1/3 point. It requires a little thought, but once you figure it out for your own tying style, it's quick, easy and durable.

Also, Mr Hughes says to use a dubbing loop to form the body. While this does produce a nice spiky body on larger sized flies, on small flies like theseit seems the body is too spiky, making the body far too large to imitate a small insect. Experiment. Finally, using dubbing with Antron mixed in (like Haretron) will make the body so bright that the thread will not show through. For these cases, use the color of dubbing that matches the insect you want to imitate (i.e. thread color is not a factor in the body color).

Fishing Notes:

Now I know that some of you will be disappointed when you receive my fly in the fly swap. "It's just a wet fly", a few will say. In defense of my choice (and perhaps because I love Ray Ovington's book "Tactics on Trout"), I'm going to take you fishing to show you why I sent you that wet fly.

Today we're going the fish the Ice Box Hole in Cheesman Canyon (South Platte River, Colorado). It's always crowded, but we called in sick this Wednesday to try to minimize that somewhat. When you called in, your boss realized that no one would play hooky on such a crappy day (overcast, may even a little rain) so he said to "get some rest".

Yeah, right.

It's nowhere near as crowded as we thought it would be and we actually get the spot we wanted - right up at the head where the chop will help us. The slick water down below can be really tough. These fish have Ph.Ds, as they say, so you question using a wet fly. After all, they're certainly out of style. And this is a highly technical piece of water with fish that have seen it all.

The fish haven't started rising yet, but there are a few fish working twenty feet downstream in front of the boulders just off the shore. While we are discussing the merits of wets, I've been letting line out, and have measured out a little more than what's needed the reach those boulders. My fly is thoroughly wet and, as you turn to get your water for a drink after our hike in, I do a quick pick up and a parachute cast well in front of one of the boulders. I follow the drift down and at the appropriate time snub the line. The result is a Leisenring Lift, and the splash of the fish's first jump almost has you choke on your water.

OK, you're supposed to be fishing, so no more heroics from the guide. After you rig up and step up to where I was, you see that pods of fish are now starting to work the faster water out from you. They still aren't rising yet, so you start to work the lower fish, saving the ones further up for when they start to rise. You use the Nemes Mended Swing Method, since this allows you to get the depth needed and still use motion to hide the fact the you don't have a perfect imitation of the nymph on your line.

You pick up a few, and then the rises start. Right in front of you. If only you had a dry fly - this one fly stuff is a real pain sometimes. Of course you could dress your fly and leader with floatant. If you do that, you suddenly have one of the best cripple/stillborn/emerger imitations possible. It's what Gary Borger calls "the Wet/Dry Fly", imitating a little of several stages, allowing the trout's hopeful mind to see what it wants to.

As you catch a few more fish, you notice that your fly floats lower and lower in the water till it finally starts to sink again. But that's OK, since it doesn't seem to slow down the catching any. You're not catching a fish ever cast (no one does here) but you're catching "enough". You seem to be keeping up nicely with the dry fly fisherman on the other side of the run (though you try not to keep track and compete), and you're not cussing as much about drag from all those weird little currents between you and the fish. And the wind doesn't seem to bother you as much, just cast and throw those little mends.

"What 'cha fishin', buddy?" Two guys are behind you leaning against the tree. "It's just a wet fly", you reply. They look a little puzzled, but say nothing.

A splash upstream of you catches your attention. There's a nice fish taking duns in the current tongue about fifteen feet up. It's one of those nasty little current braids where no matter what you do your fly will either drag or sink, if not both. But hey, a fish that big is worth a shot, so what the hell. You cast and sure enough, your fly is pulled under. As you strip in your line, suddenly it comes tight. He hit it! I though we had decided these fish were smart - the sunken upstream wet dates from Stewart in the 1850's!

It's a big enough fish to take you downstream fifty feet or so. As I net it for you, we decide that you got lucky on him; you didn't even see the take. And then we hear the splash and realize our luck has probably run out. Sure enough, our "buddies" from under the tree have moved up into where you were fishing. Their strike indicators will probably put those fish down in a minute or two.

Wet flies and etiquette - two things it seems the modern angler has forgotten.

Of well, maybe we shouldn't have camped there so long. Even though everybody else does it here, that doesn't mean we should. And after all, there are fish rising in the flat water below us. Yes, flatwater fish can be tough, but haven't you caught enough fish for one day? Maybe we can learn something down here.

Walking down the bank, we notice some fish working near shore - perfect for that Leisenring Lift. Out of four fish, we blow two big time (hey, you can't catch them all), lose one after setting too quickly and land the little one. Now we are at the tail, and there are two risers. Fish rising in the smooth tail of a pool are tough. The current speed increases the further down they are, so a drag free presentation is difficult at best. These fish have usually figured out that floating objects that drag are a no-no. However, the Hidy Subsurface Swing with a wet fly is a tactic designed for this very situation. Merely a cast above and past the fish, a little tug on the line to get the fly to break the surface tension, and your fly swings down and across, rising right in front of your target fish. Sort of a long distance induced take. And you pulled it off admirably. He's a little bigger than the ones you took from the run upstream. And it's quite nice of you to give me a shot at the other riser there - I was beginning to think I was your ghillie. Cast. Tug. Wait, my fly didn't sink! Oh, that's right, I still have my leader greased and my fly is tied on that light Tiemco hook. The little motorboat wake from my flymph is matched by a much bigger wake from the fish. And then another. And another. Great, I just spooked three fish with that cast! I guess we need to move.

But the question is where? We knew coming here that it would be crowded, and every place where there are a few risers has an angler or two casting to it. The only place where there seems to be an opening is the rough water upstream. So, upstream it is.

Obviously, nothing is going to rise here. But right up from this run is a riffle that's kicking out a lot of bugs, and you would think a few of them wouldn't make it. I sure couldn't swim in that stuff, so maybe there are some drowned duns for the fish to pick off. On with the shot and the strike indicators and a few drifts through the run.

You did well - a couple of hits and a nice brown for your efforts. Now let me try something. A tactic I like is throwing "bad" mends during the drift. Hell, I'll claim this one - I've been giving everyone else credit. The Snow Searching Lift (I chuckle as I type that - I'm sure its somewhere in the literature but I haven't seen it) is nymphing with a strike indicator, only you throw mends which cause the strike indicator to hop a few inches. A typical drift will have four to eight or ten of these mends. The mends cause a similar darting of your nymph - sort of like Sawyer's Induced Take Method, only since you are not casting to a specific fish you search the run by using several mends in each drift. Every three or four feet during the drift, the nymph makes a little twitch like it's alive. This is a tactic to use only after you've run a few dead drifts through the hole - the splashing of the strike indicator and mends will eventually scare the fish. Also you need some depth to the water you are fishing or else all the mends and whatnot will scare the fish on the first cast. I've missed three fish already - all that mending means you have a lot of slack line and the fish seem to know to hit right when you've lost control of it for a split second.

I've probably put those fish off with my antics, so let's try that eddy and then call it a day. Its a couple of feet deep, and even though we see an occasional rise to the crippled duns trapped on the top, we can see several fish holding nearer the bottom. So we start out with wet fly swings so that the fly stops on the current seam between the main current and the eddy. Sometimes a fish will hang there and shoot out to intercept something coming down that edge. We could have first made a parachute cast to get a drag free drift down that seam - maybe if we think of it next trip. Anyway, each cast is a little longer so it swings into the seam a little further downstream. We're hoping the motion will trigger a strike. Nothing. And we've worked all the way down the seam. OK, on this cast we will let it swing in at the downstream end of the eddy and then throw a mend so our flyline will lie on the backcurrent. This should pull our fly back around the eddy and it will be down a foot or two when it enters. Sure enough, a little tug and fish on. That's a nice fish to call it a day on.

"What 'cha fishin', buddy?" Turning, we see that its one of our "buddies" from the tree downstream. I'm sure we're both thinking the same thing - we could wring this guy's neck for what he did earlier. But we've had a great day and the idea of giving this guy a hole he couldn't catch a fish out of to save his soul is appealing. "Its just a wet fly", you reply as you reel up and we start up towards our packs.

Over beers at the Horse Creek Saloon (Yea, I'm buying. You outfished me. Again.) we come to the conclusion that we did far better than we deserved to, catching eight or ten apiece and probably LDRing a similar number. We had cloud cover all day (praise be!) which kept the hatch going, but even if the clouds had disappeared and the hatch had been halfhearted at best, I think you're convinced that we could have drummed up a few fish from the riffles and runs with our little wet - either with the wet fly techniques or using it as a nymph. We also agree that while there were a few times when that wet fly was the right fly, there were several other times when there were other flies which would have been more efficient or more fun. I'm sure that when the fish were rising we would have caught more on John Shannon's Baetis Emerger, and watching Keggan Luskey's Classic BWO dance down a current tongue and then suddenly disappear in a swirl would have been a visual thrill hard to beat. Yes, we've both heard that the best way to catch fish during a baetis hatch in Cheesman may be to nymph the heavy water with a San Juan Worm - but that wasn't in the spirit of the question, which was one fly for the BWOs. And even though the fish were only rising for about three hours, we had reasonable fishing from 10 AM to 5:30 PM. We were able to do a passable job of imitating nymphs, emergers, cripples, stilborns, duns and both shallow and deep drowned duns.

Not bad for just a wet fly.

Copyright 1996, Daniel E. Snow

Daniel E. Snow
SNOWDE@fafb.af.mil