The ant fishing fly is designed to imitate a mature ant. It is most often used to target riverine trout from early summer through late fall. The lowly ant fly is often overlooked by anglers but should be included in every dry fly box.
During summer and fall, ants are everywhere—and trout love them. When terrestrials take center stage in mid summer most anglers reach for their hopper fly, but over the course of a typical season trout will eat far more ants than hoppers. Grasshoppers are large, easy to see, and anglers naturally migrate to their hopper fly, but fishing an ant fly is never a bad idea—and may just catch you more trout.
Ant Flies for Prospection
The ant is a great prospector fly. As water temperatures rise, and trout activity on the surface dwindles, fishing a recognizable trout pattern will often get weary trout biting. It can be fished along the shorelines of larger rivers, and throughout smaller streams and channels.
The ant fly tends to perform best along grassing banks, near thicket, and undercuts in less than two feet of water where trout are accustomed to feeding on this delectable morsel. As with other flies, try to achieve a drag-free drift and approach the water at an angle to keep out of fishs’ sight.
Unmatching the Hatch
Many anglers report some of their best hookup rates when fishing an ant during a heavy fly hatch. If you’re casting a small mayfly pattern into a large hatch of thousands of Tricos or Blue-winged Olives, your imitation fly simply gets lost in the swarm. Mathematically, your chances of getting a bite by matchng the hatch are low in this situation.
When hatches are heavy and in full swing, fishing something a little bit different, yet familiar, such as an ant fly, tends to attract the attention of feeding trout. If your traditional “match the hatch” dry fly isn’t getting the job done, experiment with fishing a black, brown or red ant terrestrial.
Fishing the Ant Falls
Hands down one of the most productive and fun times to dry-fly fish an ant pattern is during an “ant fall” when thousands of winged or flying ants accumulate on the surface of the water. While these gatherings are somewhat unpredicable, they usually occur during the late summer or early fall during annual ant migrations.
Exactly how these winged insects all end up on the water in mass nobody knows, but when they do, the trout have a smorgasbord. Once on the water, a winged ant never leaves. It’s taken by a trout or by the river itself. Either way, it floats on the surface for a few hours until it meets one of these fates.
Often these ant falls are made up of ants of varying sizes and colors—typically black, brown, red, about 1/4″ to 1/2″ in length. When ant falls include a mix of colors and sizes, it simplifies the fly selection process as size and color of ant pattern aren’t going to be as important.
