How to Tie the Foam Humpy Fly

Learn how to tie the Foam Humpy 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 is a variation of Jack Horner's Humpy Fly that came out of California in the 1940's. Some folks struggle to tie in the deer hair back of the original fly. This foam pattern is much easier to tie and like the original it floats extremely well. It can be tied in many color variations and is typically tied in sized 10 - 16.

Material List

• Hook: TMC 100BL in size 12
• Thread: Danville's Flymaster 6/0 in orange
• Wing: Hareline White Calf Tail Hair
• Tail: Hareline Moose Body Hair
• Body: Danville's 4 Strand Floss in Orange
• Back: Hareline 1mm Foam in Tan
• Hackle: Whiting Saddle in Grizzly
• Whiting Saddle in Furnace

Video Transcript

Hello, I'm Kyle with Trident Fly Fishing, and today we're going to tie the Foam Humpy Fly. This is a variation of Jack Horner's Humpy Fly that came out of California in the 1940s. Some folks struggle to tie in the deer hair back of the original fly, and this foam pattern is much easier to tie, and like the original, it floats extremely well. It's usually tied in sizes 10 through 16.

The hook we're going to use today is a TMC 100BL - that's the barbless version of their standard dry fly hook. The thread we're going to use is Danville's Flymaster 6/0 in orange. We'll start this tie by getting a thread base about a hook's eye length, one and a half maybe, behind the hook eye.

The wing for this fly is going to be some calf body hair from Hareline in the color white. I've got a patch here that's already pretty picked over. I prefer to use the body hair over the calf tail hair because it stacks easier and just looks neater when the fly is finished. The problem with it is the calf body hair is not as long, so you've got to kind of hunt around through the packages to find some hair that's suitable for the fly you're going to tie. We'll get all the broken pieces and the fuzz out and put this in a stacker. I'm going to tie this in with the tips forward. We want it to be a hook shank in length. With a pinch wrap, we'll get that tied in. I'm going to cut this off at an angle, jump our thread up in front of that hair, and form a dam to help stand up the wing. We're going to separate it into two wings with some crossing wraps and then some X-wraps, and then we'll make a few posting turns to further separate the wings. As you pull back on the wing, it helps separate it further - pull back and then wrap around like so. Get rid of our strays. Pinch the wings, stand them up.

The next material we're going to tie in is going to be the tail. It's going to be some moose body hair - just several strands will do. Get all the short broken ones out, put this in a stacker, get the tips all evened up. We want this to be the length of the hook shank. Tie that in right over where the barb would be. Trim off our excess.

Next we're going to tie in the foam back. This is some Hareline 1mm foam in the color tan, and I've cut a strip of it that's about a hook gap in width. To keep some of the bulk down, I'm going to cut a point like so, and wrap back to the base of the tail.

For the body of the fly, we're going to use some Danville's four strand floss in the color orange. Run this all the way back to the base of the tail where the foam is, run our thread back up to the wing, and wrap our floss. When we reach the wing, capture the floss and tie it off. Get rid of our excess. Now we're going to bring the foam back up over the top - make sure it's centered on the fly - and take a couple of fairly loose wraps to make sure it's where we want it. Tighten it down, pull up on the foam, and cut off the excess.

Next we're going to tie in the hackle. That's going to be some grizzly and furnace from a Hareline half cape. We'll tie these two in together, but we'll wrap them separately. Prepare the feather by removing all of the material that's no good, and snip off some barbules on either side of the stem to give us a tie-in point. Thread forward to the eye. They're pretty short, so I'm going to use some hackle pliers here. Make a couple of turns behind - maybe three. Cut that off and tie in the last one. Cut off our excess, pull everything back, make a small head, and a four or five turn whip finish. Cut our thread and get that wing back a little bit.

Add some head cement - Sally Hansen's water-based, soaks in well. A flick of the eye cleans it all out. And our fly's complete.

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