Hornberg
Tied by John Gremmer

While fishing a Trico hatch in SW Wisconsin a few years back I was using a size 22 spinner and fish were rising all around me. Spinners were in the air and on the water. But, nobody was taking my imitation. When I would get a hit, I often couldn't get a hook-up. After about an hour of this frustration I opened up my fly box and stared at it. Why this happens I don't know, but I saw that never used Hornberg sitting there. It called out to me---use me, use me. I tied it on and cast it across the stream. It bounced off a rock and was six inches above the water when a fish emerged and grabbed it out of the air. Wow!!! An epiphany! I went right up that stream for an hour catching one nice Brown after another. Sometimes it landed on the water and floated. They hit it! When I stripped and jerked it in---they hit it. The Hornberg is my favorite trout streamer.

One afternoon last Spring, while fishing a Hornberg, I hooked and landed many Browns, three of which were 18 inch fish. This was a stream that in some places you could run and jump across. I love fishing streamers. You can cast them long, short, and if you are accurate right on the money. You can animate this fly---fast, slow, erratic----make it look alive. Swing them downstream. I fish the same size Hornberg with a 2 wt., 3 wt., and a 5 wt.

Fish don't sip or suck this fly in---they attack it. It should be outlawed (Well, I may be getting carried away here!). I know everybody today is carried away with nymphs and dry flies---see how many streamer articles you see in the fly magazines---not many, but fishing streamers has its own rewards. When fishing a nymph you watch the bobber(strike indicator) and have a slack line---often you don't feel the hit. The thrill of dry fly fishing is seeing the hit. But, when fishing a streamer you have a tight line and the hit reverberates up the line, through the rod and into your body. It is a startling shock! Then your reptilian brain takes over and you(I) give the rod the "Musky Haul." Sometimes launching a small fish. That expected, yet unexpected hit is always a thrill! To me it is equal to a dry fly hit.

There are many ways to modify the standard Hornberg. Add weight, add a red hackle throat, use different types of wing feathers, use different colors, etc.. Frank Hornberg, a DNR warden who created this fly, used flank feathers not breast feathers as are used today. He also used over-sized hackle. To learn more about Frank Hornberg go to http://globalflyfisher.com/streamers/swaps/hornbergs/ . Bob Hunt has modified his by not adding a hackle collar and he calls it the "Huntberg"---I have watched Bob do his magic with the fly while fishing with him on the Bois Brule.