They’re not much on looks. The uninitiated would describe them as too wispy, scraggly, gaunt, bedraggled, or even ugly. What really counts, though, is how they appear to trout—and that is another matter.

My introduction to soft-hackles came almost 40 years ago at the end of a trip to Scotland. My Uncle John was “a wee past fishing age” as he put it, but he and his cronies knew their way around lochs and running waters alike. Seeing me off at Prestwick Airport, he handed me an Altoids tin full of flies, instructing me to “Try these back in the States.”

On the flight home, I opened the tin to find 18 flies stuck into white foam strips glued to the bottom of the container. There was nothing to them. The bodies were made of thread or floss and ribbed with fine wire. Most had little fur bumps for thoraxes, and all were hackled sparsely. Not impressed, I arrived home, put the flies in the top pocket of my fishing vest, and forgot all about them.

Three years later, I was striking out on the Beaverkill. Trout were working the top within easy range, but they wanted nothing to do with the Adams and Blue-winged Olive patterns I was pitching to them. Even tiny ants and beetles wouldn’t work.

Thinking that my leader was too heavy, I reached into my top vest pocket for 6X tippet material and accidentally banged the tin of soft-hackles. (Uncle John must have run out of patience watching from on high.) I switched to lighter tippet, and knowing that I could do no worse, I tied on what I learned later was a Partridge and Olive and cast to a nice brown that had spurned my previous efforts.

The fly drifted just under the film for 2 or 3 feet, and then the trout pounced. He clamped down, shook his head in surprise, and promptly broke me off. I’m not sure which of us was more shocked. I went back to 4X tippet and tied on another soft-hackle. Suddenly, fishing was easy. I’d place the fly about 3 feet from a rising fish and let the current swing the slightly sunk soft-hackle directly in front of the trout. Most of the fish hit just as the fly came into their view, but once, when I was distracted by another fisherman working his way toward me, a trout struck hard while the fly was hanging motionless directly downstream. At that, the fellow quickened his pace.

He reached me just as I was unhooking the fish and asked what I was using. I showed him the bedraggled soft-hackle I had just removed from the trout’s jaw. Incredulous, the old guy looked at me sternly and said, “Don’t fun with me, son!”

I pulled out the Altoids tin and plucked a fly for him, explaining that at first I hadn’t thought much of them myself. He grumbled a quick thanks, went ashore, and moved about a hundred yards above me. His luck soon started to match mine, with a few of the browns putting a bend in his bamboo rod. When I looked up again he was heading back my way. The crotchetiness was gone from his voice. “Sonny,” he said, “I’ll give you five dollars apiece for every fly in that tin.”

That was a lot of money in those days, but I declined, mentioning their sentimental value and explaining that the man who knew the most about them was long gone. We waded ashore, and grateful for the chance to examine the flies, he seemed to be burning each pattern into his brain. All he could tell me was that the thread and floss bodies were made of real silk and that the hackle feathers looked like they’d come from “grouse, sparrows, or starlings.” Well, he was right about the silk and the starling feathers, but what he guessed was “grouse or sparrows” turned out to be gray- and brown-phase Hungarian partridge feathers.

That first time fishing soft-hackles changed my fly fishing forever. When all else failed, the soft-hackles would almost always work. Drag—the bane of dry-fly anglers—became a help instead of a hindrance. When I learned to use mending and controlled swings to get the trout to see only the fly first, they’d smash the soft- hackle with confidence. I attempted to duplicate some of Uncle John’s creations, but mine never seemed to work as well. (There was no Internet in those early days, so I wasn’t having much luck uncovering information.)

Then in 1975 Sylvester Nemes published The Soft-Hackled Fly, a work as slim and as useful as the flies it described. Unlike many of the book’s initial readers, who no doubt needed plenty of convincing, I was already a believer. But now I finally had the additional information necessary to get my own soft-hackles looking just right. I now own all of Mr. Nemes’s books on soft-hackled flies and recommend them to novices and experts alike. [Nemes’s first book is no longer in print but his expanded and revised The Soft-Hackled Fly and Tiny Soft Hackles: A Trout Fisherman’s Guide (Stackpole, 2006) is available. The Editor.]

These flies work but they must be tied and fished correctly. The tying is simplicity itself. Just as the most effective streamers are tied with sparse wings, soft-hackles must be sparse bordering on flimsy. Forget the “more is better” approach. Use a sewing needle to split the silk floss into three or four strands to reduce body bulk and tie with fine thread such as Pearsalls Gossamer Silk. Rib with the smallest copper, gold, or silver wire, and don’t overdo the thoraxes. All you want is a tiny bump of fur to give the hackle something to work against in the current. If the wispy hackles mat down against the shank, the flies lose their magic.

Starling, grouse, and partridge feathers are common for soft-hackles. Some tiers also use Indian hen capes. Feathers for a soft-hackle should be soft and undulate in the current to imitate the bedraggled look and movement of emerging caddis or mayflies, exactly the opposite of the stiff hackles desirable for dry flies. Limit yourself to 11/2 to 2 turns of hackle. Some tiers strip one side of the feather just to keep things extra sparse.

Many of the best feathers have a tiny transitional zone where the most delicate fibers are half fluff and half fiber. These impart excellent squirmy movement, so don’t remove them along with the actual fluff. I use smooth needle-nose pliers to flatten the hackle stem before winding it, so the barbules stand away from the shank and wind more evenly. Add a small, neat head and the fly is done. (A smidgen of dubbing wax keeps the silk thread tight in the whip-finish and eliminates the need for head cement.) Use regular #12-18 dry-fly hooks for soft-hackles that are to be fished “damp” as emergers. In early spring, late autumn, and winter use heavy-wire, wet-fly hooks. Bodies tied with colored wire, bead heads, or even both get the soft-hackles deeper, but the sparse and wispy rule still applies for the thoraxes and hackles.

Fishing Soft-Hackles

Fishing soft-hackles is just as easy as tying them. About the only way to fish them wrong is to strip them rapidly as you might a streamer intended to mimic a panicked baitfish. Slow and slower is the secret. Learn to let the water do the work. Think of yourself as sliding or leading the fly across and down the currents. Train yourself to believe that somewhere out there a trout has been watching from the instant the fly hit the water. Start operating on trout time: No quick jerks. Even a bad cast—fished out properly—can sometimes produce a fish. Quickly popping the fly into the air for another try will alert that watching trout. Effective mending up or downstream is also essential to success.

People in the construction trades stress the importance of seeing the end of the job from the beginning. Your goal is to have the fly appear to be struggling feebly as it drifts at the mercy of the current. Find a run or a riffle and position yourself at the top to fish the near water first. Cover the water from midstream back to your side, and if nothing happens, slowly work yourself and your casts toward the other side. Remember that in summer and early fall, trout often hold in shady spots near the shoreline. They’ll sometimes be in water just deep enough to cover their dorsals, waiting for morsels to drop in from the overhanging shrubbery.

If the opposite shore is lined with undercut banks or tree roots, and the current runs from medium to slightly fast, then you’ve found soft-hackle heaven. In this instance you must fish every inch of shoreline cover, but fish the water from good, to better, to best. Don’t put the first cast within inches of the roots. Sure, you’ll get plenty of strikes doing that, but the bigger trout will have your fly and themselves tangled in the heavy cover before you can react.

If you want to bring the trout to the net, concentrate on drawing the fish away from the roots and branches by letting your casts drop gradually closer to the prime lies. Hooking the fish 3 feet or so out from the cover will give you a fighting chance to turn it away from its lair, especially if the trout bolts upstream or down upon first feeling the hook.

In the slower stretches where the water slides against heavy cover, cast well up and across, mending upstream to give the soft-hackle more sink time. Many times there will be no yank or twitch—the line will come taut prematurely, as if you’ve picked up a weed or a leaf that often turns into a trout.

Use the line and leader connection to gauge where the fly is swimming, and then train yourself to watch the water 10 feet behind the fly. You’ll see a bulge or a flash as the trout moves into position to snatch the soft-hackle. Whatever you do, don’t think that you have to “help” the fish by twitching the fly or stripping the line. Trout are excellent predators. The fish already knows exactly where the fly will be at intercept time, so any “help” you provide is likely to ruin your chances. By moving into position, the trout is telling you that the delivery looks just fine. Let the fly find its own way to the waiting fish.

Some trout nip at the fly, but most take soft-hackles hard. Grip the line tightly, and when the strike comes, pull down only 3 or 4 inches on the line and lift the rod tip slightly at the same time. Some guys prefer to pinch the line against the rod handle and let the water tension set the hook. Either method works. You’ll know you have it right when you consistently find the hook in either corner of the trout’s mouth.

What does not work is yanking back in response to a trout’s initial strike. Doing that will just about guarantee a break-off, even with medium-size trout. If you’re still attached after yanking back, there will be a brief pull and then a slack line. A deliberate, coordinated strike works far better than the instinctive but ineffective yank.

If nothing happens by the time a soft-hackle completes its swing, don’t be in a rush to pick up and cast again. Let the fly hang directly below you for a full 15 seconds. (Count if you must, because 15 seconds is longer than you think.) Then, give the fly a little twitch with a short strip. After that, lift the tip to move the fly upstream about 3 feet, and then give the fly back to the fish that may be watching all this with great interest. This lift-and-drop technique is often a successful last-chance maneuver.

One raw day in May some seven or eight years ago, my buddy Bill and I were fishing the Delaware River on opposite banks. The wind was incessant and no fish were working, so I went searching with soft-hackles. In no time I had two nice fish, and both struck after the downstream swing was completed. I called across to Bill, telling him to switch to soft-hackles and to let them hang after the swing.

After a few fruitless casts, Bill decided to light a cigar, but the wind was giving him fits. He tucked the rod under his arm, and his head kept bobbing as he cupped his hands and tried to shield the flame from the wind. The inadvertent motion imparted to the fly proved irresistible to a watching trout. The fish almost tore the rod from Bill’s last-minute grab. Both lighter and cigar went swimming, but Bill landed an 18-inch wild brown.

We both caught some nice fish that day, and many hit after the flies had completed their drifts and were hanging motionless. A few of the more stubborn ones took after a lift and drop. I’m confident that we both would have wound up fishless had we given up on our casts too soon.

Soft-hackled flies are quintessential examples of the truth in the adage that looks can be deceiving. They lack the balance and grace of the Catskill drys, the proportions of well-tied parachutes and spinners, and the detail found in many stonefly and mayfly nymphs. What they lack in elegance, however, they more than make up for in effectiveness. Wrap up a dozen, fish them slowly, letting the water do the work, and see for yourself how highly the trout think of them.

Joe Cambridge is a teacher and writer. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

[For more information, including a history of soft-hackles (also called flymphs) see flymph.com/index.html. The Editor.]