Hare's Ear (unweighted)
Hare-mask dubbing picked out rough, ribbed with fine gold wire, no bead and no lead. The prickly guard hairs suggest legs, gills and a splitting wing case all at once, which is why it has outlasted every pattern designed to replace it. The weighted and bead-headed versions are the ones you will find in shops; this is the original, and on a chalk stream where goldheads are barred it is the one that is legal.
From 1 July, upstream to a sighted fish or through a known lie. Let it sink ahead of the fish and induce the take with a gentle lift as it comes level — the Sawyer method, with a fly that suggests everything and imitates nothing in particular.
Rough dubbing traps air and light the way a real nymph’s gills and legs do. It is deliberately unspecific: on a river with olives, caddis and shrimp all present at once, a fly that could be any of them beats one that is precisely the wrong one.
