Fly of the Week: Humpy

The Humpy is a good all around attractor pattern. It can be tied in any color. Some people tie it with a very slim body. Not me, I say if you want a slim bodied, high floater, use a Wulff. Humpys should be big and fat. They float like a cork. They work very well in the summer and fall as they imitate a number of terrestrials. They are also a good searching pattern when no hatch is evident. Generally, it is fished dead drift. But, sometimes I like to use the Humpy as an indicator when fishing small emergers or midges in rougher water and a dropper nymph.
The important thing to remember about this fly is that it is a pattern so you should tie it in a wide variety of sizes and colors. My advice go out to where you are fishing and simply copy color combinations that you see! Good Luck and tight lines.

Materials:

Thread: 8/0, to match body color
Hook: dry fly sizes 10 to 18
Tail: Moose.
Body: Thread.
Overbody and wing: Elk cow.
Hackle: Silver Saddle, furnace and grizzly.

Tying Instructions: Humpy

1. Start the thread halfway at the hook shank. This is important, as it is the reference point for the body. Wrap to the bend, tie in tail, wrap to halfway point. (*You can use 6/0, but I've found that 8/0, because of its smaller diameter, "bites" into the material better than 6/0.)

2. Take a bunch of Elk, remove all underfur, stack well, size (correct size is from tip of the tail to hook eye), and cut to length.

3. Tie the Elk to the hook, wrap towards the bend, keeping the Elk on top of the hook. Wrap until you've completely covered the thread wraps for the tail. Never mind the stubs at the tie-in point - they will disappear later on.

4. Wrap the underbody with thread. Pray that it doesn't break, which happened to me... Lift the Elk, give it a quarter turn, fold it over and tie down on top of the hook shank. This should be at the halfway point. After three thread wraps I lift the wing and put two wraps under the wing around the shank, then three wraps over the wing again. I finish with one wrap around the shank only.

5. Divide the wing, put thread wraps around the base of each wing, post the wings. Lay a thread foundation in front of the wing, making a smooth taper towards the eye. Without this thread foundation the hackle will be all over the place due to the big difference in diameter behind and in front of the wing.

6. Tie in the hackle(s), dull side facing forward. Don't tie the hackle down where the barbs start; leave a short length of bare stem, which will produce a cleaner start of the hackled collar. The ugly spot, where the thread broke, will be covered with the first wrap of the furnace hackle.

7. Palmer the hackles forward, starting with the hackle that was tied in last (here: the grizzly one). Tie off hackles and whip finish.

We need a little history to make sense of fly rod actions. The first so-called fly rods were wood, and pretty crude. Fly lines were braided horse hair, not very effective either. Eventually rods evolved to cane, then split cane into intricately designed casting tools. Works of art - then and now.Split bamboo soon became the ultimate fly rod and still today is used by traditionalists and collectors.
During World War II, many new products hit the market. Fiberglass was one of them. So was PVC. Dacron and Nylon came out of the war effort too. Lots of innovations that ended up in the fly fishing world.
Fiberglass fabric was wrapped on a wood rod. Epoxy finished and the fiberglass rod was on the market. When the inventors figured out how to do away with the wood center the first hollow rods were born.
Considering the choices available at the time, either split bamboo or steel, the fiberglass rods were designed to copy bamboo. Fake bamboo rods. With a similar action ... as close as possible. Cane fly rods have a soft to moderate action. Some fiberglass rods were very soft and often referred to as "noodley" and the longer the rod, the more noodley it became.
Follow through a couple more decades into the space age and we find the fly rod industry taking advantage of new technology again. This time it is graphite and boron. Almost any material can be formed into threads of some sort. Once it's thread, it can be woven into fabric ... just like fiberglass which appeared in drapes, patching material for cars and boats - and flyrods. Boron was tried and rejected because it was considerably heavier than graphite without additional strength.
Here comes the catch. Those companies who had been making fiberglass rods had everything set up to make those rods to imitate or at least be similar to bamboo. Now there is a new material. What will happen?
Most companies had their machinery, mandrills (steel forms the fabric is wrapped on to make the blanks,) and their reputations established. If you bought one of their rods you knew by reputation how the rod would feel.
Some companies replaced part of the threads in the fabric with graphite. That made the rods lighter, but only slightly changed the action.
New companies had the option to make the same slow or medium action rods already on the market - or to do something entirely different. That's where faster action rods started.
Fast rods that are lighter in your hand, use more of the tip to propel the line, and (if cast correctly) do the work for you. One of the major advantages in fast rods is the person casting it does less work. So you aren't as tired as quickly.
Fast rods are primarily designed with the butt and middle sections built to play the fish, the top one third to cast the line. That does make the tip section (which is tiny compared to rods just a few years ago) vulnerable to breakage if the rod is used incorrectly when playing or landing a fish.
Bottom line? What do you want to fish for? Under what conditions? What can you afford? If you are casting well enough to get the fly where you want it most of the time, you also probably have developed a style - a method that is comfortable for you.
From one who has been fishing for some years, a word of encouragement. There is no such thing as a bad graphite fly rod. All of us would have thought we had gone to heaven if we had been offered any of the rods on the market today 25 years ago. The fly rod industry has made giant leaps improving our sport.
Match the action of the rod, and the price, to what works for you. Final word of wisdom: Don't ever buy a rod you have not cast.

Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo

This will be the Boise Valley Fly Fishermen's 40th year since its conception and this will be our 7th annual expo. Our mission to promote the sport of fly-fishing through education and conservation activities is dependent upon a successful Expo.
Instruction in fly tying, casting, and fly fishing ethics has been our strength over the years. This year's event will feature several new programs as well as workshops in these areas.
This is a gathering that will allow Idaho and other regional fly tiers to show their talents to the fly-fishing public and exchange ideas, new and old.
Saturday evening, there will be a banquet with a program, dinner, raffle and auction. The Boise Valley Fly Fishermen will earmark funds raised at this event for various regional conservation undertakings.
We've nearly doubled the size Expo Hall,and have a large number of fly tiers who are listed on our tiers page. You'll see demos from high floating dry flies to deep sinking nymphs and tiers that will show you techniques that are guaranteed to make your fly tying and fishing more rewarding.