Mini Deer Hair Week

I tied several downsized deer hair bugs in the past week for creek fishing on light tackle, 1wt and 3wt mostly.  Why tie tiny deer hair bugs?  They are fun!  Fun to tie, fun to fish, and the fish seem to enjoy them.  I started with a prototype for an idea I have been kicking around for a while.  I wanted a small hopper pattern with a popping face.  I'm not 100% sure it will ride correctly, so I only did a few to test with.  The failed experiments are in the back of the photo.

Next, I wanted to have a few small sliders, like Sneaky Pete's, in my favorite panfish color: yellow and black.  I had never tried slider heads shaped like this with deer hair, but I thought they turned out pretty nice.  These are on size 10 Gamakatsu B10S stinger hooks.

My most productive tiny deer hair popper color combo has been chartreuse/blue/black, so I added some backups to the fly box with a couple more of them tied on size 10 3XL streamer hooks.  Pre-trim and post-trim.

Lastly, for the deer hair portion of the week, I tied a couple of size 6 deer hair popping frogs, using the smallest size available in Cohen's Creature Frog Legs.  Pretty simple recipe, just the legs, a collar of Estaz, a bunch of deer hair, and some rubber legs and eyes.

For the non-deer hair portion of the tying slate, I refilled the creek box with my #1 subsurface panfish pattern.  It's by all rights a slight variation on a traditional bugger pattern, with a few material modifications.  The hot orange bead seems to really drive creek fish nuts.  You see this fly in the jaws of probably 75% of my creek catches.