Book Three in the Fly Fishing series is entitled Long Flies. It is a look back and a look forward of the design of flies to imitate minnows, leeches, salamanders, eels, squid, and other elongate food prey of our sport fishes. The look back is to glean what we can from the thinking of long fly originators, and the look forward is to see where our current thinking could take us. In addition there are a host of tactics for fishing the long flies, all illustrated with actual angling situations from my fishing, Jason,s fishing, and the experiences of others.

One of the earliest long flies that we have on record was one tied by the Father of American Dry Fly Fishing–none other than Theodore Gordon. He was truly a remarkable tyer and fisher at a major junction point in the development of all fly styles.

Here is an excerpt from our forthcoming book, Long Flies, about the Bumblepuppy. This is followed with the tying instruction for one of the first long flies that ever swam in lake or stream, or near-shore ocean currents.

The Original Bucktails

Bucktails did not gradually evolve from other design styles, but sprang into being as a direct response for the need of baitfish imitations. Thus we can clearly see the conceptual thinking of those who were involved in the evolution of these flies. The first long flies of note appeared sometime in the late 1800’s with the advent of long-shank hooks of sufficiently small size to dress minnow imitations. The justly famous Theodore Gordon, Father of American Dry Fly Fishing, is said to have originated a bucktail-style fly as early as 1880. Called the Bumblepuppy, it was used for a host of fish. In Streamer Fly Tying and Fishing Joseph D. Bates, Jr. writes that Gordon sent a letter to a friend, Roy Steenrod, in which he stated,

“I have taken bass, bream, rock bass, perch, sunfish, pickerel, etc. on Bumblepuppies, not to mention big trout on the Esopus. Good when they are feeding on minnows.”

Clearly, Gordon understood the use of long flies as baitfish imitations. In a letter to another friend, Bates reports Gordon as saying,

“The striped bass of the American coast is one of the finest game and food fishes in the world. On the same tackle he makes longer runs and fights as well as the Atlantic Salmon. Large striped bass were at one time fished at the Falls of the Potomac with large flies. I have killed them with Bumblepuppy flies. I sent you patterns years ago.”

The play of Gordon’s skill as fly fisher and fly designer does, indeed, splash across the entire frontier of American fly fishing, from trout on wet flies fished both wet and dry, to the development of American dry fly designs, to the effective and promotive use of the fly rod for a host of warm water fishes, to fly rodding in the salt.

We need to pause for a moment and look at the design concepts that Gordon built into his Bumblepuppy. There are numerous variations on the dressing, even by Gordon himself, who used the name Bumblepuppy rather loosely to indicate practically any un-named fly, but first and foremost it was a fly that he built on a long-shank hook as a minnow imitator. In its purest form, it had a long red tail of hackle fibers, a white chenille body ribbed with a single strand of red wool yarn, a long collar of several turns each of red and white hackle feathers that were wound before the wing was added, a white bucktail wing that extended back beyond the end of the tail, and long shoulders of mottled brown turkey feather segments, often extending as far back as the rear of the hook shank. The bucktail hair on the lower half of the wing was cut to about half the length of the hook after the wing had been tied in.

All of these features, save two, came directly from the art of the salmon fly, and those two are the use of bucktail hair for the wing and the clipping of the hair in the lower half of the wing. The use of bucktail hair was probably a merely fortuitous instance of using what was on hand. Gordon never says he selected this hair for any particular reason. It’s good stuff, however. It’s tough, making a fly that will hold up under the chewings of pike and bass, big trout, and big stripers. It creates a good profile while still allowing background space light to pass through, giving the imitation a bit of a transparent quality.

Clipping the lower half of the wing was a stroke of genius, however. The clump of shortened hair certainly creates a dense shoulder effect, but more importantly, it holds the top hairs up and away from the hook shank. Not only does this help keep the hairs from tangling on the bend, but it also causes the wing to open and close against the shank as the fly is fished with a twitching, stripping motion.

The tail is a clump of red hackle fibers--Bill Keough offers large hackles for just this type of work. See his link to the right.

After the tail is tied in, a body of white chenille is added.

The body is ribbed with a single strand of red wool yarn (I tie it in as a loop and spin it very tight to give it strength.

A large white hackle is wound four turns and followed by four more turns of red hackle. Could be a steelhead fly at this point.

A wing of white bucktail is added ahead of the hackle.

The Bumblepuppy is finished by cutting the lower half of the bucktai wing to about 1/2 the length of the shank and adding long shoulders of mottled turkey. Yes it looks thinner than it did, but this is Gordon's design and I guess he wanted it a bit thinner.