dry flies; dry hooks

[fishingnoob]

A thought came across my mind yesterday that I wanted to share on here to get everyones opinion. Kinda a newbie question but, dot you HAVE to use a dry hook to tie a dry fly?. I know that dry fly hooks are of course made for dry flies and are lighter, however I have some side 18 curved hooks that would work perfectly for some CDC caddis dries I would like to tie. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Tiogadog]

So long as the wire is not exceptionally heavy you should be fine. The abilities of modern fly floatants is usually enough to keep flies on top.

 

[RLeep2]

What goes into the fly you are planning to tie on a heavier hook can also matter in terms of how "floatable" it will be. A fly that is heavily hackled, especially if the hackle is palmered or a fly that has some foam in it will float much better on a heavier hook. I used to tie all my Stimulators, for example on a Mustad 3906B or the equivalent and had no problems keeping them topside as they were all heavily hackled or had a wrapped foam body or both.

 

[tctrout]

To take your question one step further, I have used curved nymph hooks to tie emergers on, and they've floated fine. The materials you use have a lot to do with keeping the hook afloat, thus choose wisely and test your fly to see if it performs accordingly.

TC

fishingnoob wrote:
A thought came across my mind yesterday that I wanted to share on here to get everyones opinion. Kinda a newbie question but, dot you HAVE to use a dry hook to tie a dry fly?. I know that dry fly hooks are of course made for dry flies and are lighter, however I have some side 18 curved hooks that would work perfectly for some CDC caddis dries I would like to tie. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[duckfoot]

tctrout wrote:
To take your question one step further, I have used curved nymph hooks to tie emergers on, and they've floated fine. The materials you use have a lot to do with keeping the hook afloat, thus choose wisely and test your fly to see if it performs accordingly.

I tie my dries with these curved nymph hooks, and they float just fine so long as the tail is nice and longer than I would with a traditional dry fly straight shank hook. I've found the fish don't mind the longer tail one bit.

 

[Van_Cleaver]

Some flies work better in the film anyway; a good example would be parachutes. I used to tie a lot of them using scud hooks for that reason, mostly in smaller sizes. They work well for BWO patterns for instance.