All of a sudden, you see fish rising. What are they rising to? Hmmm, something just flew into me. I look on my shoulder. It’s a flying ant! Have you ever fished the flying ant hatch? I don’t believe it’s a well-known hatch, but on my home waters, expect to see ants hitting you or dropping on the water on the first 80 degree day. If you time it right, fishing the flying ant hatch can be exciting!
Honestly, I haven’t seen many flying ants with red bodies. In fact, I was surprised to see it when I looked at the image on my computer when I downloaded the files! Most of them look like the one below.
In my experience, flying ants are only available to trout for a few days and we happened to be lucky. I was hoping to try my new Flying Ant fly pattern. We arrived at the river and found a few fish rising. Upon closer inspection, there were indeed flying ants floating downstream with fish occasionally rising to eat the natural. I found a fish within casting distance and tied on an ant. The fish rose slowly and ate my imitation on the first cast.
Dancingtrout had four fish to her fly, but was unable to hook any of them. I saw another rise and after a few casts, the fish rose to eat my fly. I fought it briefly before it broke my leader. Boy, I wish I could have seen the fish close-up!
This is my Flying Ant which caught the fish.
Here is another flying ant I found holding still on vegetation.
I returned the following day, but didn’t see many ants. I tied on my Flying Ant and hooked a trout, but lost it after three head shakes. Another rose to my fly, but didn’t hook up.
I’ll be back on the river this week and will keep a lookout for more ants, but I really don’t expect to see them. I think the moment has passed.
This is an image of a regular ant I found walking along a log.
My tip for you is to always carry an ant fly pattern or two. Here are three flies I like.
I taught a Zoom fly tying class for Central Oregon Fly Tyer’s Guild on 1/2/25 where I taught 3 flies, Arrick’s Parachute Ant, Harrop’s CDC Ant, and a Flying Ant I came up with. The link below takes you to a video of the class.
I also created separate videos of each fly if it’s easier to view only one fly pattern you might be interested in.
Lastly, I’ve been filling fly orders for my customers and the Hatchmaster Green Drake was on the list. I needed to prepare a few Mallard flank feathers, so I quickly created this video to demonstrate how I steam the flank feathers which are used for the tail, body, and wings.
Enjoy…go fish!
On the Metolius, in the latter days of Summer, fishing near the banks with something like a Clark’s Stone trailing a wet ant can be productive.
I experienced red flying ants on the water one September afternoon at Rocky Pt last year. The wind was pushing them across the surface and the big redbands were feeding voraciously. I caught one fish on a brown beetle imitation but the fish wanted red. I’ve since tied a half dozen red ants. They’ll be in my box
when I go to Rocky Pt this year.