In Praise of Messy Flies

This beautiful rainbow trout fell for a pattern that had been mashed against a rock to make it look more beaten-up. Photo: Chester Allen

I’ve been an angler and fly tier for decades, and I’ve always been proud of tying a clean, pretty fly. Yet, I suspect trout might like messy flies better—flies that look as though they hit the truck windshield on the drive home from the river.

This isn’t a new notion. One of the best fly-fishing books ever is Kelly Galloup’s Spinners & Cripples, in which the author ties and fishes patterns with bent bodies, collapsed wings, and other imperfections. Galloup shows trout flies that look like real prey from a real river.

The next time you’re fishing a mayfly or caddis emergence—or a mayfly spinner fall—get out your bug net and seine a few actual bugs from the water. Most of the flies won’t look like your pristine, carefully tied flies. They are tiny little wrecks, with mutilated wings, bodies halfway out of the nymphal shuck, or other problems. Galloup believes that trout target flies that are crippled or imperfect, and I think he’s right.

Most of the natural bugs you see on the water look messier than the patterns in your fly box. Photo: Chester Allen

On the River

On a recent late June evening, while fishing on Oregon’s Lower Deschutes River, I opened my caddis box and saw that most of my favorite flies have sparkling, glowing Zelon tails, which imitate a caddisfly that is partially stuck in the pupal skin. Without thinking about it, I’ve filled my boxes with flies that imitate crippled bugs.

These patterns include Iris Caddis and X-Caddis, which were both invented at the Blue Ribbon Flies shop in West Yellowstone, Montana—a hotbed of innovative fly tying. I’m also a fan of the Spent Partridge Caddis, an old but still very effective pattern from Mike Lawson’s of Henry’s Fork Anglers. This bug doesn’t have a Zelon tail, but its wings spread out on the the surface like a pancaked caddisfly. I don’t know if the trout think it’s a spent egg-layer or a newly hatched caddis that couldn’t get off the water. I don’t think they care.

I still tie Spent Partridge Caddis with a Hungarian partridge feather for the flat, spread-out caddis wing, but I also tie them with CDC feathers, which are puffy and easier to see at dusk.

On that June night on the Deschutes, I ran into a younger angler whom I see on the water from time to time. He was hooked up to a very nice trout, and I stopped to watch the release. This guy doesn’t have decades of conventional thinking crammed into his head.

“I got this one on an Elk-Hair Caddis — after I trimmed the hackle on the bottom and squashed the fly onto a rock,” he said.

The fly was indeed a mess—a beautiful mess, with hackle fibers and elk hair flared out in every direction. It was still clearly a caddis, but probably the kind of caddis that trout love to eat.

Later that evening, after the sun had vanished behind the canyon rim and the water had turned a velvety black, I put down my rod and shined my flashlight low on the surface, much like car headlights on a night highway. The light revealed hundreds of caddisflies mired in the surface film. Some were flapping their wings, and some had given up and were sprawled out like squashed bugs on a windshield.

The only bugs that looked like perfectly tied flies were flying around in the air, where the trout couldn’t reach them.

Galloups Cripple features a bent shank and a wing that lies to the side. Photo courtesy Galloup’s Slide Inn

Messy Mayflies

A few evenings later, I was on Frustration Flats on Oregon’s Metolius River. Rust-colored pale morning dun spinners soared and dipped in buggy lust above my head. Other rusty spinners were already on the water, and some very nice redside rainbow trout were already rising.

The scene looked easy—trout steadily dimpling—but it was not. These flatwater trout get attention from very good fly anglers almost every day of the year, and they are educated, cynical fish. My fly was a size 16 Foam Hackle Spinner, another great pattern from Blue Ribbon flies, but mine featured Fulling Mill’s Ultra Dry fibers instead of rooster hackle for the wings.

An hour later, it was almost dark, and I still hadn’t hooked a fish. I knew I was fishing the right pattern—spinners were perched on my waders and arms—but the trout were ignoring the fly. Then I thought about Cripples & Spinners. I brought in the fly, cut off one of the wings and made another cast.

A fish came up and ate the single-winged fly.

Later, while driving home, I wondered why I have to keep learning that messy flies—ugly ones that look like rejects from a beginning fly tiers—are often the solution. That was something to think while bugs splattered the windshield.

Treated with desiccant, John Kreft’s Riverkeeper Soft Hackle Cripple floats in the surface film like a real cripple. Photo: Chester Allen

Notes on Flies

It’s easy to make any fly look messy: just mash it on a rock. That said, it’s more fun to tie flies that just drip with messy.

Some of the flies in this article, such as the Foam Spinner, don’t look that messy. Spinners are sparse flies that don’t have a lot of fuzziness about them. But tying spinners in a non-symmetrical way, such as with tails on one side or one wing much shorter than the other, makes them naturally messy.

Kelly Galloup, who owns Galloup’s Slide Inn fly shop right on the Madison River, ties some of his spinner flies on curved hooks to imitate the many natural spinners that end up curved on the water. II think I’m going to start bending some bare curved hooks this year for tying, but I’ll still buy the Galloup’s Cripple.

Another pattern I love is John Kreft’s Riverkeeper Soft Hackle Cripple. (John is my neighbor in Sisters, Oregon, and I see him and his wife, Karen, on the Metolius River all the time.) If you dust this fly with desiccant, it turns into a perfect, messy example of a mayfly dun or spinner sprawled out in the surface film. My biggest dry-fly brown trout sipped down one of John’s Soft-Hackle Cripples during a PMD spinner fall on the Madison River. These Soft Hackles can imitate emergers, spinners, or crippled adults of both caddis and mayflies!

Chester Allen is a lifelong fly angler, journalist and author, was the outdoor columnist for The Olympian newspaper in Olympia, Washington. Allen splits his time between Portland, Oregon and Hood River, Oregon, with plenty of trips to Puget Sound and Yellowstone National Park.