Martyn White | Thursday, 18 June 2026
You’ve had enough saltwater stuff for a while so it’s hedgehogs this week. Not sedgehogs, although I will mention them. These are real multifunction flies that I wouldn’t be without for still water.
They are dries, they’re wets, they’re nymphs/pupae, they’re sort of ersatz muddlers, they’re imitators or attractors, they’re even indicators. That’s a lot for one fly, OK there might be some specific patterns that do one of those things better in a certain situation, but I doubt you can think of many that do it all, especially not as well as ‘hogs.
They’re easy enough to tie as long as you pay attention to your proportions, sparser if you want more of an imitative profile, chunky for pullers. I generally prefer to keep them simple, but it can be good to embellish them a bit. A pulling hog for hill loch brownies can really benefit from a bit of flash at the arse, for example. As far as colours go, you can do what you like, but the standard loch style colours will do fine just about anywhere. Certainly, you’ll want black, claret, and olive, but don’t be afraid of bright colours like Orkney peach and sunburst, or just copy your favourite traditional wet fly’s colour scheme. A size 12 bibio hog is a fine choice when the heather fly are about, either dry or as your top dropper with 2 more subtle patterns being pulled behind.
Here's the dressing
Hook: Medium or heavy wet size 10-14
Thread: Uni 8/0
Wings: A few bunches of roe deer starting with one as a tail- you can use other deer hair, but roe is far and away the best.
Body: Seal fur, brushed into the wings- you can use other dubbing, but seal is the best.
Add tags, hot spots, legs or flash to suit your tastes. They’ll all work, and work well.
You can add hackle to make a sedgehog, which is fine, but I wouldn’t trim the underside of the hackle as it gets lost in the dubbing. When Stan Headly “came up with” the sedgehog he claimed the added hackle trimmed on the underside made the sedgehog a significant improvement on the hedgehog. This is nonsense. I’m willing to concede that a full hackle might help on a puller at times but that’s about as much as I’m willing to accept.
When it comes to fishing the, the world is your bivalve. Pull a team of them back through a wave at pace, or just put one on as your bob fly with normal wets following on. They’re a great point fly for keeping nymphs high in the water and more acceptable to many than a booby, a sharp single strip will draw it under before it pops back up like a hatching sedge pulling the nymphs back up with it. Deadly! If you ever encounter fish feeding on migrating snails and don’t have what you think is a good imitation in the box. Stick on a black hog with something like a black and peacock spider on the droppers-it’ll work. Fish them as a single dry in an evening sedge hatch, when there are coo-dungs, beetles or other terrestrials about. Use it as your indicator fly either NZ style or just as a dropper, competition legal and it will actually hook the fish that eat it.
There are loads of ways you can use hogs, you can do almost anything you like with them, and they’ll work. They really are that good, so tie some.