How to Tie the Picket Pin

Producer: Tim Flagler

As tier and videographer Tim Flagler says, “The Picket Pin is one of those great older flies that no longer seems to get the attention it so richly deserves.”  Here he ties the pattern using classic materials and tools passed on to him from the family of his former college professor.

The Picket Pin was a pattern developed by Jack Boehme of Missoula, Montana in the early 1900s. Its name comes from the cowboys’ common label for ground squirrels, which looked to them like horse picket pins as they stood on their hind legs on the prairie.  Boehme’s recipe called for the use of squirrel tail for the wing.