Edwards' Little Ant, a terrestrial dry fly pattern for trout

An ant imitation that is easy to tie, floats like a cork and looks a lot like the real thing.

By Martin Joergensen

Foam and bristles. Get out your ant repellent!   The proper positioning and angles of the legs are a key to the imitative quality of the pattern.

Ant patterns are usually a bit of foam and a chaotic dry fly hackle. But why not tie it more imitative? It's quite easy. This pattern was originally shown to me by Oliver Edwards. Oliver's hallmark is indeed very accurate imitations, but usually his patterns are quite complex and hard to tie. But not this one. It takes about a couple of minutes to tie - and a minute or so to arrange the legs - the key to the pattern's fine appearance.

All synthetic
The materials for the ant are few and simple - and all synthetic. For the body we use foam of the closed cell craft foam type and the legs and antennae are single, synthetic bristles from a broom or paint brush. A few years back I cut a piece of a new, small broom... much to the regret of my wife. But it supplied enough leg material for lifetime worth of ants and beetles.

The position of the legs is an important factor in getting the imitation convincing. I don't doubt that a trout will hit an ant whose legs and antennae are straight as a ruler - or chaotic like the dry fly hackle. But it adds greatly to the appearance of the pattern if the legs are bent as shown.
This is easily done with a pair of thin pliers or tweezers. Oliver Edwards heats them before the maneouvre, but I have used cold tweezers for all my ants, and that works fine.
Bend each leg as shown and double it over, giving it a hard squeeze to set the bend properly. Then open the bend to a proper angle and it will sit there for a long while. Getting the legs symmetrical can be tricky, but with a little practise you will get some fine results.

Materials

Hook	Up eye dry fly hook. Sizes 12-18
Thread	8/0, color to match body material
Body	Thin strip of black, grey, cinnamon or yellow craft foam
Legs and antennae	Synthetic, brush or broom hairs, color to match body material

Ventral and dorsal veiw of the same Edwards' Little Ant. Above you see a similar view of a small beetle tied using the same materials and technique.   A generic foam beetle tied as the ant - with a few modifications.

Tying instructions:

1. Start the thread on the rear section of the hook
2. Cut a 2 centimeters (approx 1') narrow section of craft foam
3. A width of 2 millimeters (less than 1/10 of an inch) is fine
4. You might need to slice the foam even thinner than it is from the start
5. Tie in the foam centrally on the hook shank
6. Tie it down in almost the full shank length
7. Prepare four bristles for legs and antennae
8. Tie three sets perpenducular to the shank, equally distributed on the middle third of the shank
9. Use a few criss-cross wraps to set each leg set
10. Tie in the last bristle on the front part of the body
11. Fold back the foam and tie down, pressing out all the air
12. It should form a small head over the antennae and a larger abdomen behind the last set of legs
13. Cut surplus
14. Whip finish behind the head and varnish
15. Bend the legs as shown above

Go to article start ^ User comments

From: jan johansen · jany·at·blueyonder.co.uk Submitted July 20th 2007 The beatles cool looks the part, of to tie some now, i love tying flies out of foam and the many ranges of colours, makes some of the patterns easier to adapt for terrestrials. Thanks Jan

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