Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

What’s in a name?  At times, a bit of confusion. 

The lexicon of fly tying and fishing can mis­lead be­gin­ners and experts alike.  For example, wings of a blue-winged olive are not blue.  Green drakes are not always green.  “Michigan Caddis” are Hexagenia may­flies, not caddis­flies.  Pale Morning Duns often hatch in the afternoon, etc., etc.  The list is long.  No truth in adver­tising.  No Tooth Fairy.  No Easter Bunny.  Just cold hard reality.  The South Platte Brassie is a good exam­ple, for it con­tains no brass.  The fly is, however, an excellent imita­tion of small nymphs and larvae of many different insect species.

Gene Lynch of Colorado Springs, CO is credited with in­venting the Brassie in the 1960s for fishing Colo­ra­do’s South Platte River.  Trout of the South Platte are famously large and notoriously fussy.  Lynch was a South Platte regular who weighted his nymphs by tying them over underbodies of copper wire.  Lynch’s fly tying was interrupted one day after wrapping sev­eral bare hooks with their copper underbodies.  Hav­ing no time to finish the nymphs, he tossed the wire-wrapped hooks into his fly box.  He was fishing the South Platte a few days later, when he ran out of split shot.  Lynch improvised by trailing an imitative nymph several inches behind one of the wire-wrapped hooks, hoping that the hook and wire would work in lieu of split shot.  The tandem was a hit, and Lynch caught several large fish, but not on the trailing nymph.  Instead, all were caught on the bare wire-wrapped hook!

The South Platte Brassie was born in that eye-open­ing moment.  Lynch had used brass-plated cop­per wire, hence the eventual name “Brassie”.  Together with Ken Chandler and Tug Davenport, Lynch re­fined and devel­oped the original pattern into the cur­rent South Platte masterpiece.  Enameled copper wire eventu­ally replaced brass-coated copper wire, because electrical wire was available in many different sizes and colors.  The original South Platte Brassie looked more like an electrical connector than a fly.  It had a body of cop­per wire and a short length of black, plastic, heat-shrink, electrical insulation behind the hook eye as a head.  Brassies were sold in the 1960s in air-free gelatin cap­sules to keep the sparkling copper wire from oxidizing and tarnishing.  The Brassie’s shiny wire imitated ab­dominal segmentation, and its thin profile caused a Brassie to sink quickly.

Nymphs tied primarily of copper wire were not en­tirely new.  The most extreme example of wire nymphs is Oliver Kite’s Bare Hook Nymph of the late 1960s.  The Bare Hook Nymph is descended from Frank Sawyer’s Pheasant Tail Nymph, which contains only a hook, pheasant tail fibers, and fine cop­per wire.  Kite no­ticed while fishing a Sawyer Pheas­ant Tail that it was effec­tive even after being chewed and shredded to the point where almost no pheasant material remained on the hook.  Kite then eliminated the pheasant alto­gether by wrapping just fine copper wire on a bare hook as a small bulging thorax.  When presented with movement to imitate swimming nymphs, Kite’s Bare Hook Nymph was remarkably productive.  He used it for years, not as a carnival trick but as his main ap­proach to nymph­ing.  For ex­ample, Kite caught 218 trout and grayling in 1967, and almost half came to hand on the Bare Hook Nymph.  Kite coined the term “induced take” to describe when and why trout feed on the unlikely imitation due to its movement.  The Bare Hook Nymph is yet another demonstration that presentation, not imi­tation, is most important for catch­ing trout.

Whatever trout see in the South Platte Brassie, they admire it.  Jim Poor, a former Denver fly shop owner and an acknowledged master of the South Platte, was once asked his opinion of why Brassies are so effec­tive and what trout take them for.  Poor, who consid­ered nymph fishing an inelegant endeavor to be done only when des­perate, re­plied mischievously, “I think they take it for a Mepps spinner“.
Copyright 2018, Rusty Dunn

South Platte Brassie

Non-tarnish, polymer-coated, copper wire makes today’s Brassies sparkle forever.  The available rain­bow of colored wires makes for a rainbow of different Brassie imitations.