SPIN BABY SPIN!

It seems every year I spend working in the Catskills, I try with great
commitment to not only concentrate on a certain fly pattern, but to find out how and why that pattern is successful. My recent query was ”Why is it when you skitter an elk hair caddis it outfishes a dead drift?” I have found that it’s because most caddis are constantly moving, hence simulating the natural works better. Last year it was the stimulator pattern. Not a lot of anglers fish a “stimmy.” Those who do usually trail a dropper beneath it. Not a cat like me. I use it mono, no dropper. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent watching the stoneflies under the Chilloway bridge on the Beaverkill, the river I guide on, dance and then rest, dance and rest. By making my stimmy mimic this natural action my clients and I took more fish than I can remember. Granted, it was a lot of work, but wildly effective. There is another fly that answers a riddle. The Spinner.

THE SEASON OF THE SPINNER

Before the season started my good friend and tying guru, Ken Tutalo (guide and owner of the Baxter House, Roscoe, N.Y.) said it best; “A trout will catch a small percent of emergers and even smaller amount of uprite duns, but instinctively knows it will catch 100% of the spinners.” Trout know spinners are dead or dying and are trapped in the surface tension of the water, so it’s a sure thing for them. The spinner season started earlier than I had ever seen or recorded in my log. Last year the Hendricksons arrived right on cue about the second week of April, but this year I put the spinners in the game early and the results were amazing. I noticed the rises to the natural spinners were beyond splashy to the point where I could see trout actually missing more duns than they caught. When I instructed my client to throw my spinner pattern in the middle of the mayhem they looked at me like I brought a baseball bat to a football game. But the spinner pattern worked incredibly! Rather than break the surface to eat my spinner it seemed that they came up slowly and deliberately inhaled it. I could swear a few even winked at me before they decended.

While fishing the Amawalk, one of my local Croton Watershed streams in Westchester County, we had a sulfur season I had not seen since I lived in Montana. It was snowing! Duns, spinners and emergers clouded the air to the point where you couldn’t even cast. No joke. But I will never forget what I observed. There were so many spinners that hatched the previous day that the only way to tell the “freshies” from the spent was the color; one was rusty and one was yellow. Both lie in the spent state but only the yellow would eventually pop its wings up and fly away fast. I thought only my prom date could get up and leave that quickly!

POLISH OFF THE RUST

It seems whenever I tell my clients to tie on a spinner they will pull out
that heavy antron wing,blood to brown colored body, and thick tailed
pattern. As a fly designer for Pacific Fly Group, I keep my designs like my
company name would indicate: Rob’s Realistic Flies. I don’t care how good antron is, nothing leaves a better impressionistic footprint for spent wings than a good hackle. It floats well, it’s bushy and with the vast array of colors it is dyed you can match the actual wing shade perfectly. For the body I try to match the color of the duns I see on the river. I believe that if a trout is keen enough to pick out the spinner it is keen enough to know that a true spinner lacks protein after losing its mouth parts and stomach once emerged. But a dun lying in the spent form is still rich in protein. Think of it like this; cook two hot dogs on the grill and take one off after it is plump and golden but leave the other on until it is crinkled and cooked to death. Which would you eat?

When it comes to tailing material, microfibbets are all I use . They are
the most natural. Their taper is better than any natural feather, they take
to floatant without matting up and can be barred with permanent marker.
The only problem I run into is their small diameter. For example, when
tying a green drake I use peccary or teal as an alternative. Also, there is
nothing more arduous than trying to split tails outrigger style, with the
small bump of dubbing or thread. Why is it that this technique never seems to work? When using microfibbets try heating a dubbing needle for a second and kink them outward. You ’re going to be surprised how well this works.

I CAN’T SEE THE DANG THING!

I think the reason we shy away from fishing spinners is that we can’t see them. Even when we see trout sipping spinners we are reluctant to use them. With today’s modern marvels of materials this is easily overcome with phosphate enhanced foam, antron, and reflective sheeting -- and I don’t mean for the wings. I mean for a wing case which doubles as a strike indicator.

Follow my tying steps for spinner success:

1: Start thread at ½ way on shank; lance 3 to 5 microfibbets down making your way towards the bend or where you want the fly to end.

2: Dub the body up to ¼ behind the eye of hook. Tie in a piece of foam, hock of chartreuse antron, or, flash-back scintills along with a quality hackle oversized by two sizes (i.e. for a size 14,use a size 10 hackle).

3: Add more dubbing to slightly behind the eye. Tightly wind hackle through the dubbing and tie off.

4: Moisten your fingers and coax the hackle to lie out to the sides or
parallel to the shank. Pull the wing case over towards the eye as to force
the hackleout the sides. Tie off and trim the hackle flush on the bottom.
At this point you can heat kink the tails or simply force the tails outward.

IT’S TOUGH TO FISH, BUT IT’S WORTH IT!

Yeah, even with a built in indicator, trying to track a spinner on 6x and a
nine foot leader sucks. But take it from a guide who watches everybody else’s flies for a living ­ adding a built in indicator keeps it in sight while
maintaining the essential REALISTIC footprint. This fly is “Real. Good.”