Myrtle Powell’s Buzz Hackle

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Buzz Hackle.

I haven’t been anywhere near water with my Nikon camera for over 3 weeks because of Covid, so I thought I’d present a TBT fly.

In yesterday’s post, I shared a couple of flies I tied for customers. This is my last order, a fly I had never heard of.

The Buzz Hackle is an older fly pattern developed in the 1920s by Myrtle Powell, wife of E.C. Powell. The Powell’s operated a fly shop in Marysville, CA. You also might recognize the name “Powell”, because E.C. crafted bamboo fly rods too.

In my search for a little history of the fly, I found that a friend of theirs named Al Lent asked them to tie a fly with materials of brown and grizzly hackle and peacock herl. This is the fly Myrtle created. Several years later, Lent’s son Buzz passed away and naming the fly for him was a way to honor his memory.

Note how the aft hackle is one size larger than the fore hackle. It was designed that way to help offset the extra weight of the hook bend, allowing it to float flat on the water’s surface.

I tried to recall all of the fore and aft flies I’ve tied over the years.

One of the first TBT flies I wrote about back in December 2014 is the Renegade.

Here are three other fore and aft flies I’ve featured over the years as Throw Back Thursday Flies.

Sierra Bright Dot Fly

Grey Ugly

Polly’s Little Yellow Stonefly

Enjoy…go fish!