The Mickey Finn

A classic streamer that still catches fish

The first streamer fly I tied over 40 years ago was the Mickey Finn. I chose it because I thought it was a pretty fly and was an old and well-established classic pattern. The neat thing about many classic flies is that they work quite well on today's supposedly "educated" trout. Since we have some new materials to work with, we can make them more durable and a little easier to tie. These days I weight them and use woven gold Mylar tinsel for the body, but that's the only change I think needs to be made. Read more – offline – from the current issue; subscribe to FRR.