Culton's Drowned Ant

Culton's Drowned Ant

By Steve Culton, submitted by Zak.

Description

Basically a venerable Starling and Herl with a waist. This wet ant has caught a lot of trout for me and I'm grateful to the originator, Steve Culton, for this simple, deadly fly. He has a lot of other nice flies (especially flies for stripahs) on his website: https://currentseams.com/

Tying Process

See Steve Culton's video step by step below. Attach black thread just back of the midpoint of the shank and wrap back just into the bend of the hook. Tie in three peacock herls by their tips (fragile ends of tips cut off), with nothing going forward of the thread tie in point. Bring the thread to the herl tie in point and wrap herls around thread to form a reinforced sort of chenille. Wrap the herl/thread chenille forward to the thread tie in point and tie off herls. At this point you will create the waist and you can either clip the herl butts off and create the waist with touching turns of black thread (as I did here), or unwind the herls from the thread and tightly wrap over them. Create a small thorax of reinforced herl/thread near the eye, leaving room for a couple turns of hackle and a thread head. Tie in a shiny black starling body feather by its tip, soft hackle wet fly style, just behind the eye. Make two or three turns of hackle (careful, starling is fragile). Tie off, whip finish, SHHAN.

Materials

Fly types: Wet Fly