Taking stock of 2013 in preparing the dry fly boxes for 2014 I note that flies which have a bent hook like the Klinkhamer, which dip the body into the water and ride in the film, or ones which have all the hackle above the hook as with parachutes and comparaduns, consistently outperformed full hackle ties for me. Outperformed meaning caught more fish... why? I believe it's due to the fish seeing the entire profile of the fly in the film of the water, not just some contorted rear part part of the fly.
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| Comparadun BWO (w/ Shuck) |
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| Caddistrophic (on Klinkhammer) |
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| Parachute BWO |
The problem was though, at least for the BWOs with these attributes, that they tended to get waterlogged too quickly or didn't have the hackle density to float the body well. So, I went searching for a new way and the latest issue of Fly Fisherman came just in time to introduce me to the Quigley "hackle stacker" technique... I find it now referred to also as the paraloop tie. The technique is like a parachute tie in that hackle is wound up a post but unlike it in that the hackle stack post is folded back down over the thorax and tied in horizontally!... making most of the dense hackle above the body and showing a full juicy thorax to fish below. I am working up these ties for the coming year in mayflies at least and while untested I am very hopeful they'll be better than both the other outperformer styles.
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| Paraloop PMD (w/ Shuck) |
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