If it’s a hot day, a warm balmy night, if water is rising over previously dry ground or almost any time for that matter you can get huge hatches of ants. They vary in colour but the dominant hatches are of black meat ants and banded sugar ants.

The ants that I have come across in my fly fishing exploits have all had the same general shape. They have three distinct segments. The bulbous abdomen, a thinner thorax where the legs and wings if they have them are located and a head that is also bulbous but generally smaller than the abdomen.

The recipe below can be used for all three and of course there is a winged version. Both the winged and non-winged versions are quite a lot different to traditional ant recipes in that they includes a full palmered hackle over the middle thorax area to represent the legs. The full hackle also of course serves the additional purpose of helping the fly to float which is something that is a perennial problem with traditional ties.

When the fish are feeding on ants they just sup the insects down one by one often at the exclusion of all other food sources.

The best technique for ant feeders is to grease your leader except for the last 60 cm or so and to cover individual fish or place your fly amongst the naturals in the path of feeding fish.

Materials

The ants and termites that I have come across have three recurring colour combinations. The colours vary but the main three types of ants and termites that I see in the trout’s food chain as black meat ants sometimes with a ginger head (8mm/#12), banded sugar ants Camponotus consobrinus) (10mm/#10) with a black abdomen and head but a ginger thorax and legs and finally what are generally referred to as red ants but are more often than not are termites (8mm/#12) and have a brownish ginger colour.

Process

A	Run out about about a meter of cotton and treat the whole length with fly floatant and then wind the cotton back on the bobbin. You don’t need to lay down a bed of thread/cotton along the hook shank for this fly because the full body of the fly is cotton or thread. Start by tying in the cotton at about the 5% position wind the cotton in touching turns to the bend of the hook. [member Link=”p=10018″ Title=”Understanding hooks”]

B	Trim the tag end of the cotton. Using the cotton build up the bulbous abdomen of the ant on the rear 1/4 of the hook shank.

C	If your tying a sugar ant tie the black thread off with the ginger thread. Tie in a slightly oversize hen hackle, with the dull side forward just in front of the abdomen.

D	Build up a thorax over the middle half of the hook shank. Tie the cotton used for the thorax off with the black thread that you are going to use for the head of the fly.

E	Palmer the hackle forward over the thorax. Three or four turns is plenty. Tie the hackle off and trim the excess hackle.

F	Build up a neat bulbous thread head between the thorax and the eye of the hook. Whip finish and varnish the head. [member Link=”p=2838″ Title=”Neat heads”]