Martyn White | Thursday, 25 June 2026
As we get into summer it’s time for ants, whether they’re just falling in the water or you have the immense good fortune to be on the water on a flying ant day fish will eat them with gusto, I sometimes wonder if that’s cause of the formic acid, like putting vinegar on your chips!
There are loads of imitations, and a lot of other patterns with ant in their names that probably don’t get eaten for ants-especially the big foamy jobs. This week’s pattern isn’t one of them as you’ll have guessed from the POD, the epoxy ant is an absolutely excellent pattern for summer. It’s not a dry, but it can be fished in the surface. If you hackle it a bit heavily, you’ll probably be able to get a short drift or two over a rising fish before it sinks. But sunk is how it’s supposed to be fished and that’s where it excels, on rivers it can be fished upstream or across and down like a north country spider, drifted like a nymph, on a dry dropper/indicator system or essentially any other sunk presentation. On still waters either straight line it like a buzzer, put it on between 2 dry ants or washing line it. I’ve heard of people doing OK on it under an indicator, but I prefer to keep it in the top of the column. Especially around scum lanes. Ants after all, are a key ingredient in that terrestrial soup you often get on warm windy days. There are few things better than drifting along a shoreline on a flying ant day. Make a washing line with a foam dry on the point and an epoxy ant on the dropper, right up in the top few inches.
So, here’s the pattern:
Hook: Straight eye dry, like a TMC 101 size 18-14 (maybe a 12)
Thread: Uni 6/0 in black or rust.
Hackle: High quality cock
5-10 minute epoxy
Simple really, but there are a couple of things you can do that will help you turn out better, more durable flies more easily.
The first thing is stick with the straight eye hook, it’s much harder to block that with epoxy than a down eye.
Use a round thread, it doesn’t have to be Uni but it really should be round so you can build the body better. Wax it very heavily so it grips the hook and itself- this really helps with the bulbous abdomen
Use epoxy, not UV resin. The epoxy is absorbed and adheres to the thread muh better and the drying wheel guarantees a lovely smooth finish. It won’t lift off like UV resin can. And it doesn’t matter if it yellows over time, you won’t notice it over the black or rust body.
Leave a space of bare shank between the epoxy body parts so the epoxy can contact bare metal at the end of each section. This seals the body and means there’s no chance of water getting in under the epoxy.
Batch tie them in stages. Do all the abdomens then epoxy them, all the heads and then epoxy them, then finally, finish off the hackle. It sounds time consuming, but if you are tying a few the actual time per fly isn’t that high. Here's an old tying video.