How to Tie the Borcher's Special Dry Fly

Learn how to tie the Borcher's Special dry fly pattern, including step-by-step instructions, a video tutorial, pictures, and much more. Improve your fly-tying skills here.

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This fly put together by Ernie Borcher of Michigan in the 1940's or very early 1950's is called Boucher's Special. I've also seen it referred to Borcher's Drake. It can imitate a number of the darker mayflies. The body was originally tied with Condor Quill but today Turkey is used. Tied in sizes 14-18 for the early season mayflies like the Hendrickson and sizes 10-12 for the big later season mayflies.

Material List

• Hook: TMC 100BL in size 12
• Thread: UTC 70 Denier in Black
• Wing: Blue Dun Hen Cape Feathers
• Tail: Hareline Pheasant Tail
• Body: Hareline Turkey Tail Feather
• Rib: UTC Extra Small Copper Wire
• Hackle: Whitting Cape Hackle in Grizzly
• Whiting Cape Hackle in Coachman Brown

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Carl at Trident Fly Fishing. Today we're going to tie Borcher's Special. This fly was put together by Ernie Borcher of Michigan in the 1940s or the early 1950s. Ernie passed in 1952. I've also seen it referred to as Borcher's Drake and it can imitate a number of the darker mayflies. The body was originally tied in condor quill, but today turkey is used. Tied in sizes 14 through 18 for the early season mayflies like the Hendrickson and in sizes 10 through 12 for the big later season mayflies.

Here's the fly in the vise. The hook we're going to use today is the TMC 100BL - that's their standard dry fly hook, barbless. This is a size 12 and our thread is going to be some UTC 70 denier in black. We'll get our thread started about an eye length and a half behind the hook eye, then go back about halfway down the hook shank to form a bit of a base for our wing.

The wing for this fly is a well-used hen cape in the color dun and we just want the very small feathers up at the neck. Pick two - sometimes it's hard to get a hold of the little things - and we're going to tie these in opposing each other so the shiny side of the feathers are going to be against each other. We'll tie these in with a pinch wrap and run our thread back about halfway, cut off the excess, bring our thread back forward, jump it in front of the wing, and form a thread dam to help stand the wings up, and a couple of cross wraps to further separate the wings, like so.

Run our thread back to where the barb of the hook would have been and we're going to tie in our tail here. It's going to be some pheasant tail fibers - just need five or six. Pull those out so that they're even with the stem and pull them off. This has a longer tail than some, so it's going to be a little bit over a hook's length. Tie that in right on top. These mayflies have a big tail, a lot of them.

This fly has a rib, so we'll tie that in next. For the rib we're going to use some extra small ultra wire in copper. Tie this in right behind the wing on the near side and run our thread all the way back to the base of the tail.

The body of the fly is going to be made from turkey, so we will pick out four or five barbules worth off the side of the stem and cut those off. We'll tie those in by the tip, neaten that up a little bit, run our thread all the way up to just behind the wing, and grab our hackle pliers and make wraps forward. This turkey feather gives the body a real nice mottled appearance. That looks pretty good. Get rid of our excess.

For the rib, our copper wire, we're going to wrap that in the opposite direction that we wrapped the turkey. We'll just make some nice even open spiral turns and tie that off.

Last we're going to tie in our hackle. This is going to be a combination of grizzly and brown - this is actually Coachman Brown. We'll prepare our feathers by snipping off some barbules on either side of the stem, leaving some little stub material there to give us some purchase for our thread when we tie it in. We're going to tie these in shiny side out and we'll tie them in both together but wrap them separately. Run our thread up to our eye.

I'm going to use my hackle pliers for this grizzly feather. We'll make two or three turns behind the wing, pull our wing back, make two or three turns up front, capture our hackle, tie it off, and cut our excess. Now we'll take the Coachman Brown and wrap that, capture it, and cut off our excess. Pull everything back, form a small head, take our whip finish tool, four or five turn whip finish, and cut our thread. A little head cement - this is Loon's water based. There, our fly is complete.

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