SBS: Patriot Dry Fly
One day a few years back i was on Spring Creek in state college in July, i was sitting on my tailgate eating a sandwich in the parking lot at Benner springs. I was watching a guy fishing up the cress beds that parallel the parking lot there for anyone who knows the area. He was fishing up stream, while i was watching he caught a good number of fish, i didn't really keep track but probably around 6 in the 20 minutes or so i was watching him. he got to the top of the parking lot and got out of the stream to get in his car, so of course i walked over and wanted to check out what fly he was using. Then he showed me, a size 16 patriot ... i just kind of stood there looking at it wondering why they took it. it really didn't look like anything, at all just a fly. He then told me he loved to use it as a searching pattern, and it seemed to work good for him. He clipped his fly off his line handed it to me and drove off. I didn't catch the guys name but unfortunately it wasn't Charlie Meck (which would have just made it all the more magical) but none the less this guy cleaned house with the fly, he said he was over 20 fish in just under two hours of fishing that day with it. i use this pattern a lot on brookie streams and for dry dropper it serves as a great strike indicator. Tie some up and check them out for yourself its a good fly and a fun tie!


Check out charlies page on it here!
charlesmeck.com/a20000600.html


1. Start off with red thread, 8/0 uni in this case.

 2. Stack a small clump of calf body for the wings and tie them in tips out the front of the hook.
 3. Pull the tips back and make a few wraps infront to stand them up.
 3. Split the clump into two wings.

 4. Strip some hackle fibers and tie them in as long as the hook shank.
 5. Smolt blue krystal flash is the body
 6. wrap two starnds of the flash on the body seperated by a space of red thread in the middle.
 7. Tie in some brown hackle sized for the hook.
 8. Hackle the fly, whip-finish, and go fish it!