Simple But Deadly: George Harvey's Pusher

Throughout the years, I've very infrequently delved into fly tying on this blog. That may partly because fly tying feels more like actual work to me than fishing does, but that's neither here nor there. Whatever the reason, I only occasionally have written actual fly tying posts, with recipes, tips, and productive patterns. And because I do routinely mention specific fly patterns, and have over the years simplified and honed my own fly selection down to relatively simple to tie but extremely effective patterns that can fool more than one species of fish, it's high time I started a fly tying series. Most of these flies, basically all of them, are other tyer's designs. A few are my own. But they all work, and I have an immense amount of faith in them. This series is not written for beginner tiers who are still learning simple methods and steps, but for experienced tiers looking to diversify their fly selection that can understand very simplified instructions that don't cover every step in detail. This is "Simple But Deadly". 

George Harvey's "Pusher" isn't as much of a pattern as it is a template that can be tinkered with in as many ways as you want save for one. It's the wings of the pusher fly, what sort of feather they are and how they're tied in, that make it an innovation in the world of flies designed to catch trout at night. You may never have hear of the Pusher before, and that's okay, most fly fisherman haven't and most never will, but if you want to try to catch salmonids in the dark it is a good idea to have a few of these in your box. Now, lie I said this fly can be tied in different ways, and what follows is my own. I believe George typically used Guinea Foul for his wings, others use mallard flanks. My friend Mike like to put in some black marabou for added movement. But this is what I do:

Materials:

sz6-4 2xl-3xl streamer hook

any ol' black thread

golden pheasant neck feathers

black dubbing

grizzly rooster saddle

black hen hackle

pheasant neck feathers

Begin, after affixing your thread, by tying in a clump of golden pheasant neck fibers for the tail.

Tie in a grizzly rooster saddle hackle at the tip. 

Then dub a roughly cigar shaped body with any black dubbing of you choice. The body should be 2/3-3/4 the length of the hook shank. I tied a small order of streamers not long ago that used up a lot of black craft fur, so I used some of the excess soft under fur (if you could call an artificial product that) on this fly and other pushers I've tied recently.

Palmer the hackle up the body. You can use wire or mono wrap here to secure the hackle better if you'd like. 

Tie in a black hen soft hackle, tip first, cleaned of fluff. 

Use every wrap of fibers out of this feather. Bulkiness doesn't hurt like it does tying a soft hackle spider. Tie in and trim the stem.

Pick and clean two cock pheasant neck feathers like this:

Then tie each in, concave side out, on either side of the hook. You can put some thread wraps immediately behind them to prop them out even more if you'd like. 

Tie in another grizzly saddle hackle, this time butt first, and dub the head with the same dubbing as the body or wrap peacock herl as an alternative. 

Wrap the hackle forward three times, tie off, and whip finish or do some half hitches. Don't worry if the head looks a little sloppy, or the rest of the fly for that matter as long as the body is well tapered and the wings are set straight and true with the concave side out. 

The Pusher can be fished wet or dry, though it was designed as a subsurface fly. I've taken numerous trout as well as smallmouth and largemouth bass at night on Pushers. Joe Humphrey's Pennsylvania state record brown trout fell to a Pusher. Fish these flies when the rivers are low and warm. Work them down and across stream, in slow walking pace water and over shallow drop offs, with a hand twist or figure eight retrieve. Takes are often very jarring. The idea is to imitate a large aquatic insect, or even something like a crayfish, creeping through the shallow, slow water that trout and bass often feed in after dark. The Pusher does this job quite well, its wings moving water and getting the attention of fish that may otherwise have let a more subtle offering slip by.

Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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