Today at Jimmy’s 7-29-09

Last week we talked about Joe Allen’s double renegade. This week let’s look at another South Fork favorite with decades of popularity.  It’s Wes Newman’s super-X, and few flies have proven as effective there.  Wes took the old super renegade, first created in the late 1950s by Ardell Jeppson, and made changes.  Wes’s modification initially was to replace the central brown hackle with rubber legs tied diagonally to form a horizontal “X”.  Thus the super-X.  Later Wes replaced the rear grizzly hackle with gray Antron yarn.  Later changes by Wes and others were mainly in body colors.   Wes saw that his fly was most effective when swept slightly submerged close to overhangs, sweepers and undercut banks, then pulled back into the stream. Trout lying under these features would interpret it as an escaping food form and chase it.  Seeing that the super-X has never lost its effectiveness, we stock and highly recommend it.   We also thank Wes for his wonderfully effective pattern.