McMurray Ant- by Charlie Dickson
featured, Step-by-Step Tutorials — By Kevin Hospodar on January 5, 2011 1:45 pmHook : 14 – 22 (dry)
Thread : Black, red or brown.
Body : Two pieces of balsa wood joined with monofilament. Painted black, red or brown.
Hackle : Dry fly hackle to match the balsa
I have found that for this fly it is best to start with a 1/8inch square stick of balsa wood. Grab the stick by one end with one hand and wrap a piece of fine sand paper around the other end and begin to spin the stick against the sand paper and round off the square edges creating a cylinder. Continue to sand the stick until the cylinder is the proper size for the ant you are making.
With a very sharp razor blade, cut off two segments of the cylinder. One for the ants head and one for its abdomen.
Poke a hole through the center of each segment with a piece of wire or a fine needle.
Thread one of the segments onto a piece of tippet. 2X to 4X works well depending on the size of the ant. Then burn one end of the tippet and form a small ball on the end. Pull the tippet back through the segment with enough pressure to pull the ball into but not through the segment.
Thread the second segment onto the tippet. Cut off the excess and burn a second ball onto that end of the tippet.
Pull the tippet back through the segment with enough pressure to pull the ball into but not through the segment.
Completed body, ready to paint.
Apply paint to the segments in the proper color to match the ant you are imitating. In this case black.
Put a hook in the vise and start some thread on the shank, again in the proper color to match the ant you are imitating.
Tie the balsa wood ant body you created onto the top of the hook shank.
Tie in a hackle in the proper color to match the ant you are imitating. Wind the hackle in between the body segments.
Tie it off, trim the excess hackle and whip finish for your completed fly
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10 Comments
That is an awesome ant pattern. I will by tying a few of those for the summer trout fishing.
i like this ant pattern looks like it will do a find job
What type of paint is used? Is that Testors model paint that I can pick up at the hobby shop while buying the balsa?
Now that the bodies for this pattern aren’t commercially available, tying this fly seems to be more trouble than it’s worth.
It looks to be rather time consuming to make the balsa body sections. It also looks awful fragile. The balsa body sections look like they can easily be popped off the monofilament. The primary attraction to the McMurray ant was that they were pre-made and just needed to be tied onto the hook and hackled.
It seems quicker and easier to make an ant by wrapping a strip of closed cell foam to make the body sections. Or the old time tested technique of simply dubbing the body. Has anyone tried taking some nylon monofilament and heating the ends to make them contract into a ball and then dunking them in paint?
The time of the McMurray ant has frankly seems to have come and gone.
Dear Mr. Dickson,
Rod Yerger claims a lot of things – he’s a rotten liar if he claims to be the only one licensed to produce the bodies. I’m the only one who can claim that. I have a video, written instructions (by Ed) and his original tools. I was a personal friend of Ed and for year bought his entire production of balsa bodies. Rod Yerger always tried to find out how to mass produce the bodies. Ed never told him. When Ed was dying, he asked me to visit him as he wanted to pass all the info to me.
Sincerely,
Otto W. Beck
Dear Mr. Beck,
Are you interested in sharing these secrets in the fishing/flytying comminity. I would love to fish Ed Sutryn’s great patterns.
Kind regards
Luke Albanese
Dear Mr. Albanese,
I certainly will. Give me some time to collect my notes. I’ll try to clean up the video and post it on youtube. The process is rather simple but geared to doing several dozen of one size at the time.
To my knowledge, Ed was probably the only person who ever went to war with a fly rod. Most young men going to war have other things on their minds than hoping to catch a German Brown Trout.
I have a picture of Ed holding his rod and a brown trout. If I can figure out how to post it on this site, I will.
Ed was attached to the 45th Infantry Division during WWII where he commanded an artillery company. He was highly decorated and reached the rank of Lt. Colonel. After the war, Ed settled in McMurray, Pa. and became known for his invention of the McMurray Ant.
Ed died on August 5th 1999 and was buried in Indian Town National Cemetery.
Otto Beck
Holy Moly!!!…I haven’t seen these in years…I remember being able to purchase the body sections back in the early 80′s…I believe they were from Creative Sports Ent. I still have a bunch of these guys in black and black & red in my terrestrial boxes…THANKS !!!
Tim B.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.
Hey All-
A friend of mine sent me this link.
I tied McMurray Ants for Mr. Sutryn throughout high school.
He would have rejected that pictured fly as:
“too much hackle, make ‘em sparse”
I certainly heard that enough times.
He sent me the bodies, hooks and hackle already sized and I tied them by the hundreds of dozens after homework was done.
He was a class act, as is Mr Beck.
A Ripepi
I would like to know if Mr. A. Ripepi would like to tie and maybe sell me a few dozen of the black ant in the most popular size which is probably size 16. How would I go about contacting him?
Barry