Deer Hair Sorta F-Flies

Deer Hair Sorta F-Flies

These are some flies that Lee Capitano of Jacksonville, FL posted on one of the facebook pages we frequent. Here's what Lee had to say about them:

"Tied on a 2x nymph hook. It's one of my go-to flies. I guess I should call it the 'Rule Breaker.' 
Once its wet, it sinks slowly. Then you treat it like a streamer and swim and twitch it along just below the surface. Everything in the pond will chase it. 
Think I'm crazy? Try it. 
Sometimes you need to fish it slow, and sometimes you gotta go fast. Once you dial it in - you will tie more.

It's deer hair hackle, and Shetland yarn, the same stuff you buy for Killer Bugs. I have lots of colors."

This fly struck a chord with me, which is why I present it here. The reason is simple - it's much the same as flies I've tied myself, and which I fished with equal success back when I had more time for fishing. 

My own version started out as I toyed around with the "F-Fly," maybe 4 or 5 years ago. The F-Fly by Marjan Fratnik is generally tied small, 12-16 and with a cul d'canard wing. At the time, I didn't really know what CDC was, nor did I have the proper sense of scale that goes with that famous European fly.
Basically, I just improvised wildly on the basic F-Fly idea....

1. a body
2. a wing
3. a head

Hook sizes were pretty much whatever I felt like. Flies like this tied on larger hooks will catch bass. I haven't gone past about #4, but those will take big panfish and bass. 

The bodies I applied from most anything I had around. Yarn, dubbing, wool, and my ultimate favorite, wire-wrapped peacock herl.

The wings came from hair brushed from my dog, bucktail and finally deer hair. 

The head is just thread wrapped and varnished. 

In the end they look something like this....

• Peacock herl counter-wrapped with my signature red wire.
• Natural deer hair tips.
• Big thread head

These are tough enough for panfish, and they don't come apart too soon. They're also fish catchers. 

For a brief period, these experiments inspired me to stop using feathers for soft hackle and I ended up adding deer hair to just about everything. 
Honestly, I was quite surprised at how the fish went for it.
It was at this time that I started using one of my now favorite phrases - "...deer hair is magic!"

In retrospect, I think I first broke down the, "hackle must be feathers," barrier after discovering the old Al Troth "Spiders"... which aren't spiders at all; not in any sense of the word.
They're actually dry flies, but they use a collar of flared deer hair in place of the usual dry-fly hackle. I was entranced by that idea for a little while, and it must have stuck. 
It was just a small leap of faith to replace a soft hackle with hair, and especially deer hair.

My friend Bart Lombardo has resurrected an old, obscure pattern along similar lines, the "James Woods Bucktail." It uses bucktail as a hair wing, circling a chenille body and behind a chenille head.
He ties it, now, in several different color combinations to mimic all sorts of fish food. Here's a link to his original tribute to that pattern:

The James Wood Bucktail

With the zillions of exotic, lurid, and complicated flies we might tie, well... ain't it amazing how the simplest combination of materials does the job as well?