Pass Lake Special

Last Updated: October 9, 2019 by Drew Kasel

Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

The Pass Lake Special. A local legend. A hometown hero. Created by Badger ingenuity. Or was it? The tangled web of fly pattern genealogy is lengthy for this mainstay of Wisconsin fly boxes. Like all great flies of today, the Pass Lake Special was borne of great flies from yesterday.

The Pass Lake’s history began with Mr. Tom Bosworth, royal carriage driver and coachman for three English monarchs beginning with King George IV in 1820. Bosworth was a master both of the buggy whip and fly rod. He was famous for snatching pipes from the teeth of pedestrians while driving the royal carriage, and his Coachman wet fly endures to this day. Kings and Queens come and go, but their Coachman is still catching trout.

Bosworth’s Coachman had a body of peacock herl, wings of white feather slips, and a collar of soft brown hackle. Bosworth designed it for fishing at night, and he believed the contrast between a white wing and dark body made it more visible to trout. The most famous descendant of Bosworth’s Coachman is undoubtedly the Royal Coachman, in which the body of peacock herl is interrupted with a central band of bright red floss. It was designed about 1878 by John Haily, a professional fly tyer in New York. Its snappy name was conferred by L.C. Orvis, brother of C.F. Orvis, founder of the famous outdoors company. Theodore Gordon modified the Coachman to a dry fly by adding a tail, tying the wing slips upright, and floating the fly with stiff rooster hackle. Wet and dry variations of both the Coachman and Royal Coachman have proliferated ever since.

Hair-wing versions of Bosworth’s Coachman became popular in the early 20^th century. The first such fly was tied by Carter Harrison, a former mayor of Chicago, in 1901 while visiting the Idaho ranch of his good friend Mr. A.S. Trude. Harrison named his fly the “A.S. Trude” in honor of his host, and it proved to be very effective on the Henry’s Fork and other western rivers. To this day, wings of bundled hair tied in a slanting down-wing position are said to be tied “Trude style”.

Wisconsin’s Pass Lake Special is a Trude-style wet fly developed in the mid-1930s by Rev. E. Stubenvoll, a minister from Clintonville, WI. He had fished northern Wisconsin for years with flies having wings of white calf tail. He developed the Pass Lake Special during one of his regular trips for brook trout to the Pass Lake area of southern Ontario. The fly was a big hit both in Ontario and in Wisconsin, and he named it after the lake.

Stubenvoll kept the Pass Lake Special a closely guarded secret, but his son-in-law, Mr. Earle Paape of Marion WI, popularized it when he tied and sold Pass Lakes widely in northern Wisconsin. Stubenvoll’s original pattern had a tail of mallard flank, a body of black chenille, hackle of brown hen, and a wing of white calf tail tied in over the top of an already-wrapped hackle. Earl Paape modified Stubenvoll’s original by attaching and wrapping the collar of wet fly hackle over the top of an already-mounted wing. Both are “damp” flies, meaning they can be fished either wet or dry. As the chenille body soaks up water, it floats lower in the surface and can then be jerked underwater and fished as a winged wet or small streamer. You’ll find devotees of both variations today. Modern Pass Lakes often have bodies of peacock herl and/or tails of golden pheasant tippet or brown hackle fibers.

Wet and dry versions of the Pass Lake Special are now time-honored North Country attractors. Many lifelong Wisconsin anglers wax poetic about the power of a Pass Lake. Fished dry, wet, or stripped and swung as a streamer, Pass Lakes bring up trout at times when the stream seems lifeless using other flies. In the words of Larry Meicher, a revered former SWTU member, the Pass Lake Special is “on par with the Adams; it’s the most versatile pattern I know.”