Humpy fly
Artificial fly
Humpy fly
TypeDry fly
ImitatesMayflies, Stoneflies, Caddisflies, terrestrials
History
CreatorJack Horner
Created1940s
Materials
Typical sizes8-18 standard dry fly
Typical hooksTMC 100, Firehole 419
Thread6/0, 8/0
TailDeer, elk, moose hair
BodyDeer, elk, moose hair over floss
WingDeer, elk, foam, calf tail
HackleDry fly hackle
Uses
Primary useTrout

The Humpy fly is a popular and effective dry fly used by fly anglers for trout in fast-water conditions.

In The Professionals’ Favorite Flies (1993) Lefty Kreh praises the Humpy as:

The Humpy is one of the best flies ever invented for turbulent water where many dry flies are quickly drowned. It is not a specific imitation of an insect, but rather is a suggestive pattern that looks buggy, floats like a cork and has fooled thousands of trout. It is a fly that every serious western trout fisherman carries (and many eastern anglers are finding just as effective). I would never go trout fishing anywhere—Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, Europe—without a few Humpys in my box.

— Lefty Kreh[1]

Origin

The Humpy style originated with an early 19th century fly called the Tom Thumb which was being tied in both the Eastern U.S. and Canada as well as England as late as the 1940s.[2] The Tom Thumb was a dry fly with two opposing clumps of deer hair over a colored thread body.

The Tom Thumb style was adapted in the late 1940s by California angler Jack Horner into a pattern he called the Horner Deer Hair fly, the first version of what is called the Humpy today. When the pattern was introduced to fly shop owners in Montana in the 1950s, the pattern became known as the Goofus Bug. Wyoming anglers started calling it the Humpy and the name stuck.[3]

Imitates

The Humpy is an attractor style dry fly that imitates no particular prey for trout. Its buggy appearance can resemble adult mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies or terrestrial insects like grasshoppers.

Materials

Variations

As described in Trout Flies-The Tier's Reference (1999), Dave Hughes unless otherwise attributed [4]

Humpy Dry Flies
  • Adams Humpy
    Adams Humpy
  • Green Humpy
    Green Humpy
  • Royal Humpy
    Royal Humpy

Notes

  1. ^ Kreh, Lefty (1993). Professionals' Favorite Flies-Volume 1-Dry Flies, Emergers, Nymphs & Terrestrials. Birmingham, Alabama: Odysseus Editions. pp. 40–41.
  2. ^ Whitelaw, Ian (2015). The History of Fly-Fishing in Fifty Flies. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang. pp. 119–121. ISBN 9781617691461.
  3. ^ "Fly Tying: Horner Deer Hair / Goofus Bug / Humpy". Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited. Retrieved 22 December 2021.
  4. ^ Hughes, Dave (1999). Trout Flies-The Tier's Reference. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. pp. 61–66. ISBN 978-0-8117-1601-7.
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