The Picket Pin is a pattern from the old west that gets its name from ground squirrels that were nicknamed “picket pins” by cowboys as they resembled the short stakes used to tie off horses. The original fly, developed by Jack Boeme, was tied with tail and body hair from these western ground squirrels. More modern recipes utilize fox squirrel and grey squirrel.
I tied some Picket Pins to try out in the smaller streams in Yellowstone and later realized they were a great pattern for brook trout around home. It’s a wet fly that you can drift or strip just under the surface. You can swing it towards root wads and brushy areas and strip it back just in time to avoid trouble. It often draws a chase from aggressive brookies. It’s white squirrel tail wing provides a good contrast to the body and allows you to focus on the fly and watch for fish. The only trick is to stay calm enough for them to take the fly before you strike.
Hook: 2XL Nymph hook size 10 or 12
Thread: Black
Tail: Fox squirrel tail fibers
Rib: Small copper wire
Body: Peacock herl
Hackle: Brown
Head: More peacock herl
After wrapping the body, add and palmer the hackle back towards the tail and secure by wrapping the wire forward woolly bugger style. A good example of this is covered by Tim Flagler’s tightlinevideo on YouTube
In some of my recent articles I have made reference to taking some fly tying classes at a fly shop in the Twin Cities when I was first getting started. It was at one of those classes that the instructor sparked my interest that has since grown into my love for Yellowstone National Park.On my many trips to Yellowstone I have always based out of Gardiner, Montana. During these trips, I spent a lot of time hanging out at Parks’ Fly Shop, where I first got to know and to fish with Walter Wiese. At that time, Walter was the head guide at Parks’. Walter now operates Yellowstone Country Fly Fishing out of Livingston.From those early trips, it was obvious that I could learn a lot from Walter’s books, website, and also his YouTube fly tying videos.
Several years ago, Walter did a video of a nymph he calls the “Gussied Lightning Bug”. For some reason or another, this was a fly that looked to me like it would catch a lot of fish.After watching the video, I headed right to my vise and started to tie up a half dozen or so. The next time I went fishing, I tied one on and guess what? It caught fish, so I headed back to my vise to tie more. That was when I started to make some very minor changes to the fly and actually simplified the tying process. That is how my Gussied-Up Lightning Bug was created. (Have you noticed how creative I am when I name a fly pattern?)This fly is now a mainstay in my fly box. I fish it throughout the season either under an indicator or as a dropper below a hopper. The fly has a very slender profile so it sinks pretty quickly.Until recently I always tied this fly with micro tubing for the rib. I found that the micro tubing was kind of slippery on the tinsel body, so I have now switched up and started to use wire for the ribbing because it makes the fly a little easier to tie. I have also added a silver-bodied variation that has fished well when the water is a little off-color.
You should put some of these flies in your fly box. I think you just might like them as much as I do! As always, please let me know if you have any questions / comments / suggestions.Hook: Size 14 Scud Hook Bead: 2.8 mm Tungsten in Gold Thread: 14/0 Red Tail: Brown Improved Micro Zelon Abdomen: Red Holographic Tinsel size Medium Legs: Red Midge Tinsel Thorax: Super-bright Dubbing in PeacockPaul Johnson Paulwaconia@gmail.com
I have been fortunate to, along with two boon companions, spend the second week of July fishing Montana’s Gallatin and Madison Rivers. It was on these trips that I first encountered the nearly mythical Salmon Fly hatch. This event is a spectacle with huge creatures from the Carboniferous Era everywhere along, above, and, most importantly for an angler, on the water.
This year, however, we three amigos will make our trip to Montana in the third week of July and the salmon flies will likely be a memory by then. Hatch charts for the area say that a slightly smaller stonefly, the golden stone, follows the salmon fly hatch. I’d come to admire Cheech Pierce’s Chubby Chernobyl Salmon fly and thought that I might tie a similar fly in golden stone colors on a smaller hook.
That’s the origin story. Despite its Montana roots, I think the fly, or a very similar one, might have its uses here in the Midwest. A size 10 version tied a bit sparser and in perhaps more muted colors could make an excellent hopper imitation hereabouts. With its robust foam body and buoyant wing material, it’s sure to make a great top fly in any hopper/dropper combo. You can follow a link to a video that shows you how I tie the fly. In the video I explain the origin of the name and offer prejudiced opinions about our sport. I hope you enjoy it.
Eradicator is a foam caddis pattern that is part of a dry dropper rig and will float beadhead nymphs. It also serves as a strike indicator. This fly’s name pokes a little fun at pattern names that go to the extreme in describing how successful an angler might be when using such a fly. Names like Irresistible, Warden’s Worry, Mickey Finn, Slumpbuster, Shop Vac, Ray Charles, come to mind.
This pattern is as much Ed’s as it is mine. He has provided lots of input to the design. While out fishing one day, Ed asked me if I had any caddis patterns that could float a tungsten bead nymph. I came up with a foam and deer hair wing pattern and over the past few years, we have tweaked it some. Last year I had the opportunity to sit next to Mike Alwin and watch him tie up several Skip Wet flies that utilize a green Krystal Flash rib. Right there I decided the Eradicator needed to have this feature. The most recent change is the use of hot pink yarn as an indicator. It is much more visible for our older eyes than the orange foam I used previously.
Hey! Eradicator rhymes with indicator. Weird!
Ingredients:
Hook – #14 Firehole 633 nymph hook (heavier hook so the fly lands upright)
Thread – Tan Danville 6/0
Body – Natural hares ear
Rib – Green Krystal Flash
Under Wing – Tan 2mm foam strip width of hook gap. Trim off rear corners.
Middle wing – Silver Congo Hair from Fly Tyers Dungeon (substitute EP trigger point?) – I trim this wing a little longer than the foam.
Over Wing – Deer hair – same length as the foam.
Indicator – Hot Pink Yarn
My favorite dry/dropper rig has been a #14 Eradicator dry with a #16 Shop Vac dropper. I like to tie 5x tippet off of a 4X leader and leave about 4” of 4X tag on my surgeon’s knot. The dry gets tied on the tag and the nymph on the 5X point. I use Shop Vacs tied with both tungsten and brass beads so I can choose my sink rates for various water depths. I use other beaded nymphs but the Shop Vac has been a real winner and is my go to nymph pattern.
If you want to know more about my inspiration for this fly name, you can check out this YouTube video from 1989. https://youtu.be/fbC5YQ_oJoA?si=rlCmgT3G7Mica1qA If you watch this video, I ask that you shout out the name every time you hook a fish with one.
If you’d like more information about tying this pattern just shoot me an email. My address is on this website under Contact Us
This is a specialty fly. I wish I could tell you it works all the time. It simply doesn’t, however………
In the months from March to May, when the mornings are overcast, the blue wing olive mayflies are hatching, the fish are tail slapping the surface and you know they are taking emergers, then this is the fly you want. Don’t give up on your dry fly fishing just yet. This pattern will entice many of them to take an emerger and then grab your fly in the surface film. Tied in many colors and sizes I have chosen an early season dark BWO pattern in size 16 on a sprout hook. Matching the size of the fly is more important than dialing in the perfect color.
Materials:
I use heavy or standard hooks size 16 to 20 with olive thread. The under body on larger flies can be thin sticky back foam for more buoyancy covered with dubbing, smaller flies use only olive dubbing. The tail is horse hair or natural turkey biot short fibers. The magic wing material comes from the foam sheets that line the inside of mail envelopes and are found in colors grey, white, and clear. A thicker foam works better in the riffles.
Tie a dubbing bump at the bend of the hook.
Splay the tail fibers over the bump, tie in and dub over the top. Add more dubbing to finish the body.
Cut a wing foam strip 1/8th inch by 2 inches and secure with a few figure 8’s, then cover with light dubbing.
Use one or more post turns to secure the open wing shape.
Dub a small black head and superglue the thread one inch to whip finish.
Cut the wings to shape.
This is my go-to fly pattern for BWO hatches. It outperforms all others.
Before I get to the flies, I wanted to talk about Ed Constantini and myself a little bit. Ed and I are fishing and tying buddies. We both learned to tie through classes we took in the mid-’80s at Bob Mitchell’s Fly shop. We weren’t in the same class but we had similar experiences. We both still have our copies of the fly pattern recipes that Bob handed out in class and we learned the same initial patterns from Bob and his friends. If there is such a thing as a tying or fishing style, I would say that Ed and I come from similar fishing roots, have similar and compatible styles, and we have lots of fun.
Jonathan Jacobs’ KU Stonefly
When I first met Ed I told him I had just started doing some work on this website and I remember him asking me what had happened to the collection of fly patterns that were on our website. The patterns Ed remembered were originally featured in our paper Rip Rap newsletters in the days when Scott Hanson was our editor. Back then Greg Meyer, the guy who originally built and managed this website, used to feature the patterns on a fly tyers corner website page. It turned out that with updates to the site design, the pattern collection went by the wayside. One day I was poking around and ran across a collection of images from the old fly pattern page. I gathered them up and emailed them to Ed so he could have them for his own reference. Of course, Ed took the time to put these images back together with their original fly recipes. I’m sure this was a considerable amount of work on his part going through the Rip-Rap files stored on our archive page. Ed’s PDF file of Secret Kiap Flies is now on the website here and if you’d like to see the original articles check out the Rip Rap archive and start looking at Scott’s March 2008 issue and work forward. It’s worth the time. This particular issue has a great article by Jonathan Jacobs covering several early season patterns In addition to Jonathan, subsequent tyers include Michael Alwin, Brian Smolinski, Scott Hanson, Greg Meyer, Ron Kuehn, Perry Palin, and Bob Torres.
Before I go I’d like to talk about volunteering. We are not a fishing club or entertainers. We are a volunteer organization. There are lots of ways to pitch in and help our chapter. Kiap is known for getting stuff done. Our brushing work days are always well attended and often draw people from outside the chapter. In fact, that’s how I became a member of Kiap. I was a TCTU member from St Paul and went to WI to work on the Willow and ended up switching my membership. I actually have a picture from my first workday.
Left to right: Gary Horvath, Chuck Goosen, Ken Hanson, and two other TCTU members.
Photo by: Jim Humphrey
There are lots of ways to volunteer and help Kiap. Behind the scenes, there are many people including our board members and other volunteers that make things happen and get things done. Some tie and donate flies and some write grants to help raise funds. Ed and I manage our chapter’s MailChimp email service and this website. Using these tools we put out timely updates and our regular electronic chapter newsletters. We also, with help from Matt Janquart, managed our past two online auctions via the fundraising application and are currently working on the 2023 auction that will begin on March 6th. Ed is 76 and I am 64. Not the typical age range to be doing this work. Our chapter is looking for help in the areas of communication and social media. If interested, please contact chapter president Greg Olson, someone from the board, Ed, or myself. Our contact info is on this site right here.
