“It took me months, but I finally came up with a small portion of ostrich feather over brown squirrel hair and a red-and-yellow hackle tied with red and orange thread on a 1/0 hook. I tied a lot of flies until I came up with that version.
“One afternoon in 1939 I hit the Islamorada flats armed with those flies. I saw many bonefish and cast at them, and it didn’t take long at all for one of them to chomp it—about an eight-pounder,” Smith recalled.
