The 18th pattern in Mike Valla’s “Tying the Founding Flies,” the Usual was created by Fran Betters from upstate New York for fishing in the Adirondacks, and in particular the Ausable River.
- Hook: #12-22 dry fly
- Thread: Fluorescent Orange
- Tail: Snowshoe Hare’s foot fur
- Wing: Snowshoe Hare’s foot fur
- Body: Snowshoe Hare’s foot underfur
Mike Valla’s “Tying the Founding Flies,” 2015, is available on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/354oSir
Fran Betters came up with this pattern probably sometime in the 1940s. He tied this as an experimental pattern, a one material fly made out of snowshoe hare’s foot fur. He said he had half a dozen of them in his shop and nobody was buying them– until a guy named Bill Phillips came in and bought them all.
Philips said they did really well for him and anytime anybody asked him what he was fishing, he just said, “Oh, the usual.” So Betters originally called the fly the “Philips Usual,” but over time it got shortened to what we know it as today, simply The Usual.
Now, I love a pattern like this as it’s pretty easy to tie and so shaggy looking that if you mess it up, you can just say, “I meant to do that.” Now, Valla says this can be tied from a 12 to a 22. I don’t know anybody that could tie this little shaggy thing on a 22. The one in the following video is tied on a size 12, but I did tie a handful of 14s for my spring brook trout box.