Hare's Ear

Scruffy hare's fur, a gold rib and a tungsten bead. It looks like every nymph in the river and none in particular, and it gets down to where the fish actually are.

What it is

The Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear is one of the oldest nymphs still tied and, with a tungsten bead, one of the most useful. Every run and pocket on an Australian trout stream holds nymphs and caddis larvae under its rocks, and this fly stands in for all of them: on the Monaro and in the Snowy Mountains, in the Victorian high country, on the tableland streams of New England, in Tasmania’s rivers and the south-west of Western Australia. A tungsten bead-head Hare’s Ear is a sound first nymph for reading pocket water and the runs between it: the fly you fish first, that tells you where the fish are holding and how deep.

Anatomy

From the bend forward: a short tail of guard hairs from a hare’s mask, or a few fibres of partridge. An abdomen of dubbed hare’s ear fur, tapered, ribbed with oval gold tinsel or gold wire in open turns. A fatter thorax of the same dubbing with the guard hairs picked out to suggest legs. A wing case of pheasant tail or turkey fibres pulled over the thorax on the traditional tie; many modern ties omit it. A tungsten bead at the eye, gold, copper or black, which is the fly’s weight and its flash.

Key features

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Scruff. The guard hairs and picked-out dubbing give the fly a halo of movement and a buggy, indistinct outline that reads as a nymph, a caddis larva or a shrimp depending on what the fish expects.

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The bead. Tungsten is nearly twice as dense as brass. A 3 mm tungsten bead gets a size 14 to the bottom of a fast slot in a metre of drift, which is the difference between fishing the water and fishing above it.

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The rib. A gold rib segments the body and adds the flash of a real nymph’s gills; it also holds the dubbing together after a dozen fish.

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Sits beside the Pheasant Tail. Fatter, lighter in colour and more mobile; when one is ignored the other is the first change.

Typical materials

Part

Typical material

Hook

Standard or 1X-long nymph hook, size 12 to 18; a jig hook on the modern tie

Bead

Tungsten, 2.5 to 3.5 mm, gold, copper or black

Thread

8/0 or 70 denier, brown or tan

Tail

Hare’s mask guard hairs or partridge fibres

Abdomen

Hare’s ear dubbing, tapered

Rib

Oval gold tinsel or fine gold wire

Thorax

Hare’s ear dubbing, spikier, guard hairs picked out

Wing case

Pheasant tail or turkey fibres, on the traditional tie

In Australian hands

It covers more situations than a detailed imitation. When trout are keyed on exposed shrimp, a small Hare’s Ear on a floating line is the uncomplicated choice. On the upper Meander, try a Hare’s Ear finished with CDC or a soft hackle in the fast chutes.

Fishing it

The bead is the point. Choose it by the water: a 2.5 mm bead for a shallow riffle, 3.5 mm for a deep slot at the head of a pool. Change the bead before you change the pattern; a nymph that is not reaching the fish is not being refused, it is not being seen.

Under a buoyant dry, a Stimulator or a Royal Humpy, as a dry-dropper it covers the pockets of a gorge with one cast. On a tight line, nymphing the deeper runs, fish it with the rod tip up and the leader ticking, and set on anything that stops. Carry it beside a Pheasant Tail. The two look different to a fish and fish the same to an angler.