The Ant Fly

The Basic Ant
Installment #101
Jan 3, 2020

One of the simplest wet flies to tie, yet one of the top producers from the beginning to the end of trout season is the hard bodied ant.

Ingredients to tie this fly are about as basic as you can ask:

1. A hook,
2. One hackle feather
Length of barbules that of the hook gap, or slightly longer, and color should match the body of the fly.
3. Silk or nylon thread
6/0 or 8/0, from which the body is constructed.
4. Cement

The Pattern Steps
First, mount your hook in the vise and then put down your thread.
Just sit there and picture a natural ant if you will, with the bulgy body segments, and the slender waist....

1. Now, start the tying thread at the bend of the hook and wind it toward the eye of the hook – but stop a little more than half way between the eye and the bend of the hook.

2. Make repeated turns of the thread, back and forth over this rear portion of the hook, until the thread has built up a bulbous knob... this represents the back segment, the “gaster,” or abdomen of the ant.

3. Next, wrap three turns of thread forward as a foundation, just where the abdomen ended, and attach the hackle feather there in the middle of the hook.

4. Wind three or four turns of this hackle – no more - as you would in tying a dry fly. 
This hackle will represent the legs and the thorax, or middle segment, of the ant body. 

5. Tie off the hackle, remove the waste, and continue forward with the thread to the eye of the hook.

6. Again, make repeated winds of the thread, this time back and forth in front of the hackle, on the forward half of the hook.
Like at the rear, you are using the thread to build up a bulbous knob... this represents the forward segment, or head of the ant.

That's it!
You now have a fly which will be broken up into a bulbous rear section, some hackle, then another bulbous front section.

7. Give the two bulbous sections about three coats of cement, being careful to keep the cement off of the hackle. Head cement is traditional, modern UV epoxy resins will also do just fine.

NOTES

- While the ant can be cast across stream, or across and downstream with excellent results, it is generally cast upstream and allowed to drift back naturally as one would fish a nymph.

- Color can be either black or cinnamon, hook sizes relatively small: sizes 10-20.

- Size 14 can be considered the workhorse of the assortment, and ants generally tend to favor the smaller side of things.

- Use a small diameter tippet, a 7x or 8X, and make it long and limber.

- In study surveys taken from trout stomachs, ants were found to be a dominant forage source, and at times the primary one. During the times of year when ants are active, you can count on them.

What more can you ask of a fly? It's simple to tie and the trout love it.

— Ed Shenk, 1962 Excerpted and updated from an original article

PS Ants don't sink immediately when they hit the water. They float a good while, legs going wildly, buoyed up by the surface film. I don't know that I've ever seen an ant sink, now that you mention it. 
But Mr. Shenk isn't talking about floating ants here.
Eventually, some ants must sink, as all things do, and it may be just an imprinted genetic receptor for fish to see the ant shape, and know to grab it. I don't really know.
But I won't argue with Ed, or the fish.

That leads to the mention that trout aren't the only fish that will eat an ant, or take a slow sinking ant fly. Panfish eat what Nature provides, too, just as trout do.
And they know an ant when they see one.

Since this sort of ant fly mimics what we might call the, "wandering, unlucky ant" - the one that falls in the water by accident - it stands to reason that it must fall or get knocked in, from SOMEWHERE.
That "somewhere" would be overhanging shrub and tree branches, vertical grassy banks, attached docks, etc.
So cast these flies within 4 feet of these likely spots and see what happens. You'll find that panfish, as well as trout, will also take this free lunch.

Thanks for reading and Tight Lines

David
Palmetto Fly n Fish