Overview

The Chernobyl Ant is the fly that made foam respectable, and it still does two jobs better than most patterns do one. Stacked foam over a rubber-legged body gives a big, buggy silhouette that trout read as a hopper, a beetle, a stonefly or simply something worth eating, without ever needing to be a precise copy of any of them. The Black over Tan dressing keeps a dark underside against the sky and a lighter deck for the angler, which is the combination that works from a distance.

The second job is structural. The foam gives so much reserve buoyancy that the fly will carry a genuinely heavy nymph on a dropper without sinking, which turns it into the most useful indicator in the box: one a trout will occasionally eat. Rubber legs keep working on the surface even in dead water, and the whole thing shrugs off repeated fish rather than needing to be dried and dressed every few casts. Fish it tight to banks, over pocket water, or as the top of a dry-dropper rig on any freestone. Tied here in size 10.Read More +