Ant with Fez & Co.
By Agostino Roncallo

Ant with Fez

  Several years ago, during a trip to the U.S.A, I had the opportunity to fish in the Green River, down the river with a boat. At the end of the day there was an exchange of flies with the guide: I gave him some examples of my ant patterns and the guide gave me in return a ant fly with a sailor hat.

  This particular ant is accomplished using a cylinder of black foam that has stuck at one end a stretch of white foam, I can remember the hat of the American sailors.

The ant I got from the guide remained several years in my box of terrestrials, then I began to use the fly until the day that I left it in the mouth of a trout.

At a later time when I walked around in a shopping center, I saw sea sandal in synthetic material, similar to the foam, that had the black and red sole. When I saw this, I remembered the imitation of ant with the sailor hat and I thought that I could use material from those sandals ants with red hat instead of the white.

I acquired the sandals, with as hole making plier I made a serie of foam cylinders of varied sizes, partly black and partly red.

If you do not have such a plier you can also use a metallic cylinder wich endsyou sharpen to use as a punch.  I use such cylinders to created a ant similar to the Sailor Ant. I call this fly "Ant with the Fez" because the red part of foam cylinder remember me of a Fez, the characteristic head gear of the Turks, also used by Lothar, the assistant of the magician Mandrake, person of a comic strip from my youth.

  The Ant with Fez is differentiated from the Sailor Ant only by the color of the headgear, I therefore thought that it is not the case to speak about her up to when, with the cylinder drawn from the sandals, came me the idea of realize an imitation of ant with the red abdomen and the black head.

Phases assemblage of a Red and Black Ant.

1) Using the pliers that it perforate the leather, proceeds from the slipper a cylinder of synthetic material. Calculus as will be along the red extended body of the ant, I cut it in the desired measure and I round the extremity of it.

2) Fixed the cylinder on a grub hook in way to get the abdomen of the ant.

3) In the same point fixed to half a poly spun that sink in the cylinder and it get up in vertical.

4) Still in the same point, fixed a hackle of rooster.

5) I cross the hackle around the cylinder and to the wings, fixed the point of the hackle on the stem of the hook, it beyond the deals with black cylinder, and I chop off his excesses.

6) I down with cylinder on the stem of the hook, I fix him in way from get the chest of the ant and I chop off the excesses of it.

7) I perform the head of the ant, I confer the wings the correct height and the imitation has finished.

Black & Red Ant

The idea of creating the ant with red abdomen has come to me thinking about the ants that have this characteristic and to the so much excellent flies equipped with red tag. When, using a black ant, I am not able to capture a trout, before renounce, I replace the black ant with that with the red abdomen and, sometimes, I do well in my intent.

Black & Red Ant

My Old Ant pattern

Text and photos by Agostino Roncallo © 2010