Hickey's Hornet

I found this bug in a Northwest Fly Fishing magazine as I was cleaning the reading material out of the john. I dig when guys tweak well-known flies and make em' their own. I 'spose this one is a variation of a prince nymph. It's a super easy and fast tie. As I said yesterday I have WAY too many blank hooks, about 8 50 ct. boxes of Dai-riki's in different sizes and styles, about 20 25 packs of Daiichi hooks- my favorite brand, and 5 25 ct packs of Tiemco. Then there is the giant hook holder that holds all the big stuff and salmon hooks.

Probably a size #12 nymph hook with an oversized gold bead. One thing I learned from Tim in Montana was bead color. He tells me that late in the season when fish have been beat to death and seen every type of bug imaginable that the bead can spook fish. I will tie a dozen of these with black beads later tonight.

I wanted this bug to be pretty heavy but I didn't have anything but real fine gold rib. So I spun the wire together to double it up and get a little more weight and flash. Here we have the biot tail, olive 8/0 thread, and a pretty much overkill bunch of dubbing. I found some dubbing in my desk that looked, moved and felt like a Brilo pad; really stiff, heavy, and able to hold its shape, plus it had a dull, almost pale greenish olive color. I mixed it up with equal parts of olive flashabou dubbing and olive super bright dubbing...so much for spooky fish!

I added a piece of pearlescent strip for the wings after dubbing the body.

After dubbing the body and clipping the wings back to about the bend of the hook I used peacock dubbing for a collar and tied off. An easy bug, would work great as weight bug in a two fly rig as an attractor above a more hatch specific bug.




These are probably my favorite flies that Tim has come up with, the PT Cruzer. My mom was up Montana visiting gramma a couple weeks ago and I had her stop and get me some bugs to copy. I called Matt at Frontier Anglers and had him set aside all the material, recipe and instructions for tying these. They are a little involved but, man, are they sexy. He sells them in all kinds of colors from natural to yellow sally to attractor pink. I'll be tying mine in #18 or #20 on Tiemco 2457 or 2488H's.

I am also about ready for a new vise. When I moved to UT back in 1988 a guy my mom worked with taught me to tie commercially...how to tie a bunch of bugs quickly without wasting time looking for scissors, etc. doing stuff assembly line style. He told me, "you ain't a fly tier until you've tied a thousand yellow humpies..." I will never be a tier, I guess because I don't use them much and hate to tie them. He taught me on a georgeous Regal vise. I had been using the vise that came in my kit. Then I moved up to the Griffin Superior 3ARP and have used that since, and it has been a perfect tool, especially for big stuff, with those big beefy jaws. I wanted to try the rotary but didn't wanna blow the dough so I bought a Griffin Odyssey Spyder vise. I had done without rotary for 15 years and still don't think I need it. I used my bro-in-law's Dyna King Barracuda but find I don't like the room for my sausage sized fingers behind the hook and don't really need rotary for tiny bugs. So I have narrowed it down to two vises; the HMH standard (not the Spartan) and the Dyna King Supreme. I am leaning towards the Supreme so if any of you have positives or negatives I'd like to hear any. Back to tying.