Mrs. Haase

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Mrs. Haase.

The Mrs. Haase is another Ray Bergman wet fly I found in Forgotten Flies by Paul Schmookler & Ingrid V. Sils. It is fly number 284 of 725 flies attributed to Bergman. Wow, that’s a lot of fly patterns!

Forgotten Flies is a spectacular book and includes flies from Ray Bergman, Preston Jennings, Mary Orvis Marbury, and Carrie Stevens.

I tried to locate the fly in my copy of Trout, which is the 1938 version. Evidently, the book continued to be revised over the years and the 1966 copyright version included Plate 16 listed under “New Wet Flies”.

I’ve selected several wet flies for my Throw Back Thursday Fly segment from Ray Bergman’s book. An easy method of finding all of them is to click on the words “Ray Bergman Flies” under CATEGORIES in the right-hand column on this page. If you are a regular at RiverKeeper Flies, you recall Bergman’s book includes colored plates to illustrate the dry and wet flies with a description of each fly in the back. It was the first book to provide color fly illustrations.

I like the elegance and simplicity of a Ray Bergman wet fly. I’m still learning to tie the quill wings of turkey or duck. One of the reasons to include the Ray Bergman flies for TBT is to force myself to tie them. I preach practice, practice, practice for becoming good at tying the flies I fish (like Sparkle Duns), so I thought I should listen to myself.

Here are a few other Ray Bergman flies I’ve included as Throw Back Thursday Flies: the Arthur Hoyt, the Babcock, the Blue Bottle, the Bostwick, the Bouncer, the Chantry, the Darling, the Loyal Sock, the Mark Lain, the Silver Stork, the Walla-Walla, the Whirling Dun, and the Wilson Ant.

Mrs. Haase

Fly pattern as listed in Forgotten Flies. This fly was tied on an older Mustad 3906B hook, size 10. 

Enjoy…go fish!