Anglers buggy over fly patterns

Fly tiers are realists and dreamers all in one.

They create fly-fishing patterns to simulate insects and fishes. Some dream up attractor patterns they hope will deceive fish and become as popular as the Royal Coachman, a pattern that’s been a staple for a hundred years.

A few patterns survive the test of time. Most are soon forgotten.

The Turck Tarantula, Serendipity and the X-Caddis are examples of attractor flies developed a few years ago but still commonly used by the region’s fly fishers when the fishing gets tough.

Two newer attractor patterns developed by Canadian fly fishers are likely to be in fly fishers’ fly boxes for several years. Then again they may be forgotten after a few seasons.

One, a distant relative of the Chernobl Ant, is so big and ugly that it will shock and even horrify a dedicated dry fly or nymph fly fisher.

The other vaguely resembles an ant, but it is tied on a hook so large that most fly fishers might wonder if such an ant exists in the Northwest.

Both patterns have been so effective at times that fly fishers and veteran guides keep supplies in their boxes. For some guides, they’re go-to patterns when fishing is tough because they want their clients to catch a few fish.

The original Chernobl Ant was developed by two Green River guides, Mark Forslund and Allan Woolley. The pattern became the most popular fly pattern along the Snake River in 1991 and is widely popular today, according to Jack Dennis of Jackson Hole, Wyo., author of several books on fly tying, including “Tying Flies With Jack Dennis and Friends.”

The only things the scores of offshoots of the original pattern have in common are that closed cell foam and rubber legs are the major materials used in tying the flies.

Patterns developed by British Columbia tiers hardly resemble the original Chernobl, which actually looks like an ant.

When he first tried the huge Canadian Chernobl while drifting down the St. Mary, John Kendal, senior guide for the St. Mary Angler Fly Shop in Kimberley, British Columbia, said he was amazed when the cutthroat grabbed the fly nearly every time it drifted in front of them.

The big, ugly fly often makes the clients happy when they start catching big trout.

But there’s a downside, he said while demonstrating the tying of the outlandish Chernobls at the West Kootenay Fly Club’s spring show in Castlegar. Many cutthroat, especially the big, older fish, gradually become wary of the outsized colorful fly and ignore it, he said.

Then again, some never seem to learn that the fly bites back.

Clay Findlay, an expert fly fisher from Spokane, put his Chernobl pattern in one of his fly boxes and forgot it until trout along the lower Clark Fork River developed lockjaw one day during the pre-runoff period. As a last resort, he tied his pattern on his tippet.

To trout, the colorful fly was manna from heaven. He caught three big fish on three successive casts and then one broke the tippet and swam off with his only Chernobl in its jaw.

He borrowed another pattern that very night and started making duplicates for the next time he headed out fishing.

The pattern has proved effective on Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene River and could be a good producer on the St. Joe. Some fly fishers believe it’s primarily a cutthroat pattern, although rainbows and brown trout will attack it.

British Columbia tiers use black, orange, brown, pink and other colors of closed cell foam to produce Chernobls. No one knows for sure what the trout believe the patterns represent. They speculate that the trout think it’s an adult stonefly, a big grasshopper, a colorful dragonfly or even a damselfly.

A teenage tier who lives in Kelowna, B.C., developed an ant pattern that has deceived trout and other species in Alaska and Canada. Unlike the Chernobl, the boy’s Cosmic Ant actually resembles and outsized ant.

It may never be as popular as the Chernobl because its components are somewhat difficult to apply to a hook. The fore and aft parts of the pattern are shaped black deer hair and the legs are goose biots. Most tiers are satisfied with easy-to-tie ant patterns.

A couple of years ago Bob Wickwire of Kelowna showed up at Whitetail Lake, a British Columbia lake popular with Canadian and American fly fishers, and met Tak Shimazu of Edmonton, Alberta. He anchored near Shimazu and started to hook big Gerard rainbows one after another.

That evening he gave several of big ant patterns to Shimazu. The next day Shimazu tied one on his tippet and promptly started catching the big rainbows. Later, he gave a few of the Cosmic Ants to John Newbury of Chewelah.

Last year about 40 fly fishers were on the lake the first day I fished with Newbury. The caddisflies were not hatching and the anglers were changing patterns one after another, hoping to find one that would interest the trout.

Shimazu, anchored about 200 yards from Newbury and I, tied one of the big ants on his tippet and almost immediately began hooking Gerards. Then Newbury cast one of the flies and a few minutes later hooked a five-pound trout. He gave me three or four of the ant patterns. A few minutes later I hooked a fish, then another.

By that time, other fly fishers were wondering what fly we were using. Newbury and Shimazu, unlike many fly fishers, aren’t secretive when it comes to sharing information on fly patterns, showed several fly fishers how to tie the Cosmic Ant that evening.

Newbury said he and Shimazu caught Gerards at Whitetail this spring, too. Both have tied enough Cosmic Ants to last several years. Shimazu has filled one box with at least 50 ant patterns.