This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the McMurray Ant.
Ed Sutryn invented the McMurray Ant in the early 1960’s while fishing on a stream in McMurray, Pennsylvania.
He watched trout crazily feeding on ants. Sometime later, he found out they were timber ants and set about designing a fly using monofilament, cork, and black hackle to imitate the natural.
His pattern was so unique, he obtained a patent for the fly.
The fly above was tied by a friend of ours and he gave it to my wife. I don’t think she’s used it yet…perhaps I should keep it and give it a try!
I’ve seen packages of ant bodies when conducting a Google search. I wonder if they are still available?
Enjoy…go fish, stay safe!
These flies are real killers. Not too fly like, but since their debut in FF, so many other flies are basically lures that i don’t see the problem at this point. Even as small as they are, they can also do hopper dropper duty.
What makes them super great other than the great gaster, is that they float like a cork, but are still subtle, which makes them perfect for people who want to learn how to really poke into a river while not having to spend a lot of time in fly maintenance, particularly if you are not all that convinced about the effectiveness of really small flies. Also a great searching fly on rivers that may not hold any fish, you can really poke around until you get hits and later try all the flies in your box, if you get that far.
I have never really been a fan of the hackle. Both ants and these bodies just float around, so something sparser and more mobile would seem a better choice, but I can’t really say I have proven it. I tied some with deer hair…