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Black Ghost
A streamer, tied #4–10, carried year round. It is tied against 1 named insect in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — all year.
A bucktail-style streamer for stained water and low light, tied on a 4X long streamer hook in sizes 4 through 10 with black 6/0 thread. The tail is yellow hackle fibres and the throat repeats them; the body is black floss ribbed with flat silver; the wing is four white saddle hackles set long over the back; and jungle cock cheeks can be added at the head. The contrast is the point — black and silver below, white above, yellow at both ends — and it shows up in water that has colour in it or in the half-light at either end of the day. It imitates nothing in particular. This is a searching pattern, the fly that goes on when no hatch matches the water, and it is carried in every season. It is swung on a wet-fly line in open water for trout and smallmouth bass, the wing breathing on the turn.
- #4–10Hook size
- streamerType
- AllSeason
- 1Hatch matched
What it looks like
A drawing, not a photograph, and not traced from one. Its proportions were read off 5 independent reference photographs of the pattern and written down as 5 measured characteristics — wing angle, tail length against the shank, how far a hackle fibre reaches — every one of which had to hold across more than one of them before it could be drawn. What survives across many photographs of a fly is the fly.
What it imitates
Each of these is the same hatch record the app's own panel reads, so a pattern recommended on a river card in the app is recommended for one of the insects below.
It is also tagged for no hatch at all — a searching pattern.
Tying recipe
In tying order. This dressing is the standard one — these patterns have been in the publicrecord for decades — and materials substitute freely: the proportions and the silhouette are the pattern, not the brand of dubbing.
| Hook | 4X long streamer hook, sizes 4–10 |
|---|---|
| Thread | Black 6/0 |
| Tail | Yellow hackle fibres |
| Body | Black floss, ribbed flat silver |
| Throat | Yellow hackle fibres |
| Wing | Four white saddle hackles |
| Cheeks | Jungle cock, optional |
When to fish it
A classic Maine streamer that still takes brook trout and smallmouth. Swung on a wet-fly line in open water.
Carried all year. The insects it matches are active all year, in water from 35°F to 78°F.
Target species
- Trout
- Smallmouth bass
Rivers it fishes well
Rivers with a page here that sit in the regions where the insects this pattern imitates are recorded. It is a claim about coverage, not a report of a fish caught.
- Au Sable River northern lower Michigan · July mean 72.1°F
- Catawba River the North Carolina mountains · July mean 76.7°F
- Jackson River the Virginia mountains · July mean 66.3°F
- Muskegon River northern lower Michigan · July mean 71.0°F
- Escanaba River the Upper Peninsula · July mean 68.3°F
- Saint Croix River northern Wisconsin · July mean 77.2°F
- Smith River the Virginia mountains · July mean 51.9°F
- Tygart Valley River the Virginia mountains · July mean 74.6°F
- Kalamazoo River southern lower Michigan · July mean 71.3°F
- Aaron Creek the North Carolina mountains · July mean 76.7°F
- Aaron Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 77.1°F
- Aarons Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 74.2°F
Related patterns
Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.
- Kreelex streamer · #2–8 — All flash. For coloured water where the fish has to find it before it sees it.
- Mickey Finn streamer · #4–10 — Red and yellow, no pretence at imitation. Works on dropping water after rain.
- Muddler Minnow streamer · #4–10 — Sculpin sunk, hopper skated. Older than the sport's opinions about it.
- Woolly Bugger (Black) streamer · #2–12 — If you could only own one fly. Leech, sculpin, big nymph, all of it.
- Zonker streamer · #2–8 — Rabbit strip that breathes at rest. Deadly on the pause, not on the strip.