Your favorite wet ant pattern

[JerryC]

I don't use them that much but I have a few in my box. I like Harry Steeves "TransparAnt"

 

[Dave_W]

dc410 wrote:
The first trout I ever caught on a fly rod was taken on a wet black ant some 40+ years ago. It’s funny how I can vividly remember the details of tying that fly and catching my first trout on the fly on it. It was tied on a size 14 Mustad 3906B hook. Thread was black monocord. I didn’t have any black dubbing back then so I remember plucking some fibers off of a card of black yarn to use as dubbing for the two body sections. The hackle in the center was a feather from a brown Indian neck. It was good enough to fool a stocked brownie on the FFO section of the West Branch of the Octararo Creek and formally kicked off my flyfishing career. Great to take a moment to reflect back on those times.

Cool story!

 

[Dave_W]

My favorite wet ant these days is a version I designed using a tungsten bead at the bend of the hook as the head, then a plastic bead for the thorax, and a custom material for the abdomen; synthetic fibers for legs.

I like my patterns heavy (most of the time) and try to design them to drift hook upright. This ant drops down through the water column pretty fast and drifts hook upward.

 

[Paraleptalata]

I thread live ants onto a size 20 hook. Super effective in non FFO waters.

 

[Van_Cleaver]

My go to wet ant pattern is two small bumps of krystal dub, synthetic peacock or anything with a little flash and a turn or two of hackle in between. Make sure there is good separation; the silhouette is everything. I have caught the majority of my trout on this pattern for many years but lately discovered blue gills love them as well. Latest is on a 200R size 12, which they swallow a little less. I also tie with a small black bead for the front when I want to suspend beneath a dry.

 

[jifigz]

Since I started this thread, I tied and have been fishing the peacock bodied ant with a soft hackle in the middle and it has netted me a few fish. I was fishing it on the swing in moderate currents. My parachute ant has been killing it for a dry though and far out-fishing the slightly sunken ant.

 

[Baron]

I'm curious as to the line, leader and tippet combo you folks are using with your ants.

 

[redietz]

jifigz wrote:
Since I started this thread, I tied and have been fishing the peacock bodied ant with a soft hackle in the middle and it has netted me a few fish. I was fishing it on the swing in moderate currents. My parachute ant has been killing it for a dry though and far out-fishing the slightly sunken ant.

Some years, I do better with the dry, some years the wet. The wet has won hands down this down.

 

[redietz]

Baron wrote:
I'm curious as to the line, leader and tippet combo you folks are using with your ants.

I'm sure that others do it differently, but I fish them on a floating line, as the top dropper on leader about 14 feet long, with the ant about two feet above the point fly. 5x tippet to the ant, 6x below it (just so that if I snag the point fly, I only lose one fly. I'm sure I could get away with 4x to both.)

Ants sink slowly. I don't want them too far down below the surface.

 

[jifigz]

Baron wrote:
I'm curious as to the line, leader and tippet combo you folks are using with your ants.

It all depends on the water situation, the level of ambition that I have that day, and what type of ant I'm fishing. The other night I demolished the trout on parachute ants and I was fishing a 4 weight, 7.5 foot fiberglass rod and a leader about 9 feet long tapered to 5x tippet. Short casts are key this time of year, in my opinion..waters are often low and clear so careful wading and short casts as to not "line" fish.

When I was swinging thr wet it was the exact same combination of everything, just my cast was different and was the classic "down and across" swing. I also added split shot and fished the wet ant under an indicator. They all worked but the dry fly ant has been the best. Parachute ants are so easy to tie, too. Tonight, however, I couldn't get a trout to rise to a dry fly.

 

[just_jon]

I tie a fluorescent orange hard ant in #18 and 20. I came across the color by accident fishing a trico spinner fall on a Falling Springs. Struggling to find my fly finding the water so I tied on a flo orange fur ant with the spinner trailing off the bend of the ant as an indicator if sorts. Imagine my surprise when the ant out fished the spinner 5 to 1. Next time out, thinking 2 ants were better and I tied the flo orange hard body off the fur ant and cleaned up. The wet ant out fished the dry ant by a similar margin. For the record, I’ve never seen a flo orange ant in person and am not sure they exist, but I have not fished a trico hatch with anything else since.

 

[larkmark]

just jon- That is very interesting. I love fishing tricos so will be interested to try it.

 

[Bruno]

The WMD Ant - which I think someone on here made.

https://www.theflystop.com/ant-wmd


Have not seen them in years but all of the little stores at camp sold ants that were on a cardboard display. Which were basically two globs of lead with some hackle. Have not seen them in years but they worked well.

 

[afishinado]

just_jon wrote:
I tie a fluorescent orange hard ant in #18 and 20. I came across the color by accident fishing a trico spinner fall on a Falling Springs. Struggling to find my fly finding the water so I tied on a flo orange fur ant with the spinner trailing off the bend of the ant as an indicator if sorts. Imagine my surprise when the ant out fished the spinner 5 to 1. Next time out, thinking 2 ants were better and I tied the flo orange hard body off the fur ant and cleaned up. The wet ant out fished the dry ant by a similar margin. For the record, I’ve never seen a flo orange ant in person and am not sure they exist, but I have not fished a trico hatch with anything else since.

The WMD ant (Weapon of Mass Destruction) was invented or maybe discovered by PaulG on here. Paul is now gone, but the legend of the fly lives on.

Here is a thread with Maurice talking about the fly >

WMD

 

[jifigz]

Okay, I'm going to tie up some WMD's and give em a shot. Orange opossum fur, two bumps of it, and I'll tie a brown hackle in the middle. Fished wet, right? Or should I float it? I don't have any white hackle other than big, webby saddle hackles I use to tie buggers and the likes.

 

[SmoothOperator]

Just an FYI......... Fished the Madison river all summer.....Once the hatches were over ( August) threw a hopper with an ant .....Ant caught fish about 3 to 1 over the hopper.... Caught the biggest fish of my life on a 3 fur hump parachute, size #14 with a white post ( brown was well over 20" by 3"-4").....Also caught a 18" brown right against the bank in 3" of water....( came out from undercut to look at the hopper and then he spotted the ant !!!!!) going to start using an ant more often here in the east......

 

[KeviR]

Only marginally related to the topic. The above post with a link to original discussion of WMD made me think of using the search bar to see if it came up any other time. The search function doesn't accept three-letter words. So WMD and ant are both not searchable words. Doh!

 

[mt_flyfisher]

Hadn't seen this thread earlier, so I’ll add my $0.03. (It would have been $0.02 three years ago, before all the recent inflation.)

By far, my most successful wet fly ant pattern is a 3 segment soft black fur body pattern with a couple turns of black hen hackle between the 2nd and 3rd segments. I try to tie each of the segments in the same proportionate size as they’d be on an actual ant. A Tiemco 3761 size #16 hook is my favorite hook for these ants, but I sometimes tie them in size #14 and #18 too.

I’ve almost always fished these with a couple small weights on my leader to get them down deep, but I think I’m going to try tying them with a small black tungsten bead, or 2, placed under one of the fur segments (I really prefer fur rather than bead segments), thereby eliminating the need for weights on my leader.

Years ago, a good friend (who was the river keeper on Coffee Run at the time) gave me a piece of tanned black cat fur, which was perfect for tying those ant bodies. However, another friend’s black lab also liked that cat fur so well that he ate it all one night, and I haven’t been able to get my hands on more black cat fur ever since, so black rabbit seems to work almost as well.

I’ve caught lots of fish on these ants in your back yard, @jifigz, including in Kish, Coffee, Tea, Honey, Penns, Little J, and others.

 

[JimNovo]

My best ant is this one.

Klinkhammer hook.
UV epoxy over thread abdomen.
CDC wing
Foam thorax over split thread CDC.

Sits in the film a bit due to the UV thorax, but floats due to the foam and CDC.

 

[jifigz]

Hadn't seen this thread earlier, so I’ll add my $0.03. (It would have been $0.02 three years ago, before all the recent inflation.)

By far, my most successful wet fly ant pattern is a 3 segment soft black fur body pattern with a couple turns of black hen hackle between the 2nd and 3rd segments. I try to tie each of the segments in the same proportionate size as they’d be on an actual ant. A Tiemco 3761 size #16 hook is my favorite hook for these ants, but I sometimes tie them in size #14 and #18 too.

I’ve almost always fished these with a couple small weights on my leader to get them down deep, but I think I’m going to try tying them with a small black tungsten bead, or 2, placed under one of the fur segments (I really prefer fur rather than bead segments), thereby eliminating the need for weights on my leader.

Years ago, a good friend (who was the river keeper on Coffee Run at the time) gave me a piece of tanned black cat fur, which was perfect for tying those ant bodies. However, another friend’s black lab also liked that cat fur so well that he ate it all one night, and I haven’t been able to get my hands on more black cat fur ever since, so black rabbit seems to work almost as well.

I’ve caught lots of fish on these ants in your back yard, @jifigz, including in Kish, Coffee, Tea, Honey, Penns, Little J, and others.

Well John, this thread is from 2020. I'm not sure why it was randomly revived but......

Ants are a fun pattern to fish.