I've been reading Peter Hayes book
Fishing Outside the Box. It's interesting but a bit too centered on English chalk stream fishing for me. What about fishing streamers during a snow storm? Nymph fishing in March? Giant stonefly nymphs in dirty water? Grasshoppers in September? Small streamers on Spring Creek afternoons, after the hatch? There is a lot more to fly fishing (for trout) than a lifetime centered around Chalk Stream Duns. Still. It's a fun book.
Hayes faults Frederick Halford for being a fool who (in denial, he said) only wanted cast to fish taking "upright duns." Hayes stresses the importance of emergers, which constitute the great bulk of stomach contents, almost entirely excluding real "upright duns." Hayes has a lot of interesting ideas. But most of it boils down to nymphs and adults usually drifting downstream with head oriented upstream (the opposite of the way we usually fish) and the relative importance of emergers over upright duns. But Hayes somewhat defuses the implied importance of emergers by asserting most traditional dry flies quickly break the surface tension and become good emerger patterns anyway.
So. OK. Emergers are more important than upright duns but thinking outside the box tells us our traditional patterns are really emergers anyway. So what is the punchline point? I'm enjoying the book but I'm still trying to figure that out. Hayes has a few patterns at the end of the book including a PHD Dun (peter hayes dun) that amounts to novel twist on the parachute idea. I like it. I'll try it soon. But in the mean time it got me thinking about emergers.
I've posted photos of my Ducktail Mayflies before, which are essentially the following fly, except this one is meant to half sink, rather ride. So here I use beaver underfur and Crystal Flash for hackles instead of Zelon or Snow Shoe Rabbit's foot.
One clump of duck flank forms body and wing. A tuft of beaver under fur mixed with a few twists of Crystal Flash are fastened underneath, tied in the "Right Way," which means a figure 8 from the base of the tail up to the eye and then back again loosely bastes the legs in place on the bottom of the thorax. A dab of glue then holds the hackles permanently.
I tied one more (second image below) with a single twist of starling as a comparison. Winding a traditional hackle feather on a #20 scud hook is a heck of lot fussier and more difficult than basting a Right Hackle in place with a single figure 8 wrap. This was an instructive exercise for me. For small mayfly sized wet flies (or dries too for that matter) basting Right Hackles to the bottom of the thorax is a lot easier to master than winding traditional hackle feathers. Looks better too. To my eyes anyway.
Shucktail Emerger