Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear Nymph

Posted: July 2, 2026 by Drew Kasel

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

by Rusty Dunn

Some of history’s most famous trout and salmon flies are frighteningly complex. This is especially true of Atlantic Salmon flies in Great Britain from the mid-1800s through the early 1900s. That period, which coincides with Queen Victoria’s reign, was a time of great prosperity. Both the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire were at or near their peaks and had created immense societal wealth and upward mobility. The era was a time of conspicuous affluence. Many aspects of daily life (architecture, home furnishings, fashion, etc.) adopted a decidedly showy and extravagant character. Victorian splendor even trickled down to the design of salmon flies. Such flies evolved to be “full dressed”, meaning they were elaborate designs tied of numerous rare (often precious) brightly colored materials. Imitation was of no concern (Atlantic Salmon don’t feed after entering rivers), but an intricate and beautiful appearance was paramount. For example, the famous Jock Scott full-dressed salmon fly, designed in 1850 for the River Tweed, contains no fewer than 17 individual feather elements, many of which are taken from exotic birds collected throughout the British Empire. A single Jock Scott took a skilled fly tyer two or more hours to complete! Such were the extravagances of angling’s newly minted gentry class. Beautiful? Yes indeed. Practical? Not so much.

Fortunately, trout fly design did not suffer from Victorian excesses. For example, the Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear (GRHE) is one of history’s all-time great trout flies. It contains thread plus three common materials and is so ancient that its origins are uncertain. Angling books as early as Walton and Cotton’s The Compleat Angler (1676) describe flies tied of hare’s fur. The name “Hare’s Ear” was first used for a fly (as opposed to the material) in 1800 (S. Taylor, Angling in All It’s Branches). Flat gold tinsel appeared later, first as a tag and then as ribbing to divide the abdomen into fuzzy segments that imitate nymphal gills. Hare’s Ear wet flies proliferated during the 1800s under many different names, including Hare’s Lug, Hare’s Fleck, and Hare’s Pluck. Regardless of name,

Hare’s Ear wet flies have long been angler favorites.

The Hare’s Ear even enjoyed a lengthy period of fame in the late 1800’s as a celebrated dry fly. Dry-fly fishing was widespread in the UK by the mid- to late-1800’s, and the Hare’s Ear dry was very popular. F.M. Halford, the influential author who popularized dry-fly fishing worldwide, was first to use the term “Gold-Ribbed” Hares Ear in print. He declared in 1886 (Floating Flies and How to Dress Them) that a dry GRHE was the single most productive fly on the River Test, his home waters. Halford was famously rigid in his opinions and, remarkably, he later stopped using the GRHE because his fully developed approach to dry-fly fishing required that flies imitate specific hatching insects. Halford decided that a GRHE did not imitate a specific species, did not therefore conform to his angling philosophy, and its use was unsporting. `

Today’s GRHE is usually fished deeply as a generic searching nymph, but it is also effective at the surface. Quoting Halford: “It has always been my theory that [the GRHE] is a fair representation of a dun in the act of disentangling itself from the nymphal shuck.” Americans Preston Jennings and Ray Bergman described in the 1930’s great success with GRHE wet flies after cutting off their wings. The resulting stubs suggested emergent wing buds, and the snipped flies fished well just under the surface during a hatch. A wing case later replaced the wing buds, and the modern GRHE nymph was born.

Fly tyers are an unsettled lot, what with all the tweaking and amending of perfectly good fly patterns. Evolution of the Hare’s Ear is a good example. It prospered at times as a wingless wet, a winged wet, and both a winged and wingless dry fly. Some features of the older flies were evolutionary dead-ends found today only in angling’s literary fossil record. Remarkably, after all the tinkering with GRHE designs, the modern nymph looks a lot like the original.

For proof of how effective an ancient fly can be, present a #16 or #18 Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear in or just under the surface during a BWO hatch. The tug on your line will confirm that simple flies tied of blue-collar materials can be both beautiful AND practical!