My favorite backcountry attractor dry fly might be the venerable humpy. Tied in yellow or red (or even “royal” fashion), the Humpy is a high-floating dry fly that imitates a host of bugs, from larger mayflies to caddis, but doesn’t exactly resemble anything in particular. It just looks buggy.
And backcountry trout in austere environments absolutely love them. They can be a bit tricky to tie at the vise, but if you follow Matt Grobert’s method in the video above, and listen Tim Flagler’s narration, you’ll get it down pretty quickly with maybe only a fly or two landing the “reject box.”
This is the time of year to spend tying your summer bugs, and the Humpy ought to be in every fly fisher’s box come dry-fly season.
– Chris Hunt