Heavy, Hot-Spot Soft Hackles

[Dave_W]

They're favorites of mine.

The recent "hot spot" fad on nymphs has had many of us experimenting with bright colored sections or beads with interesting results. I'm in the camp that thinks hot spots can, sometimes, elicit strikes.

Anyway, I'm lately on a hot spot soft hackle kick. I like to use a bright pink or green bead combined with some wire rib to give the fly some weight as well as the hot spot color effect. These flies work very well in a hopper-dropper rig or under a floating indicator that suspends the fly mid column. The heavy weight gets 'em down fast allowing you to plumb tight spots, especially in brookie streams with lots of rhododendrun (such as I usually frequent). They also make for a good point or anchor fly in tandem. My preference is to put the bead behind the hackle as can be seen below.

 

[nomad_archer]

I like those. Basically the bead becomes your thorax. Creative. I have just started fishing hot spot type flies or flies with a wild colored thorax and have had very surprising results so far.

 

[jifigz]

Nice ties Dave. I've been doing great lately highsticking soft hackles as one of my flies in a tandem rig. 90% of the time lately it's the soft hackle that's been eaten. My soft hackles always look different than what I see elsewhere. Maybe it's my hackle material or the way that I tie them. They sure do work, though.

 

[Tups]

These are very nice. Thanks for posting. Partridge hackle I presume. What is your tying sequence?

 

[Tups]

At 10 cents apiece I will take 6 dozen. I will send my mailing address.

 

[Dave_W]

Tups wrote:
These are very nice. Thanks for posting. Partridge hackle I presume. What is your tying sequence?

Yep, partidge.

I put the bead on first, tie the body in, then push the bead back against the body to make enough space to wind the hackle in front of the bead.

 

[Tups]

DaveW: Thanks for the reply. That makes a lot of sense. After pushing the bead back you would naturally build a small thread dam ahead of the bead when tying in the hackle stem prior to winding. That would help prevent the bead from pushing forward against the hackle.

 

[STONEMAN]

Tim Flagler has a nice trick of securing the bead with some flash in this video

http://www.orvis.com/news/fly-fishing/video-tie-holy-grail-caddis-emerger/

The holy grail pattern has been good to me btw.