AK's Best Callibaetis Spinner

John Gierach and I were fishing the Henry's Fork one day in the early 1980's and enjoying a wonderful Callibaetis hatch of duns.  The fish suddenly went off the duns but were still rising.  I netted the water and discovered there were many more spinners on the water than duns.  I had only two spinners with me so I give one to John and kept the other. Those two flies were the answer to an otherwise boring day.  We quickly lost count of the fish we caught on the spinners.  Now I carry at least a dozen of them in size 14.  The wings should be one size larger than you would think and the body should be very thin stripped and dyed pale dun quill.  Two turns of grizzly hackle are about right.  Remember to clip all the hackle from the bottom of the collar to put the fly right in the surface film.

- Umpqua