Practitioners of the fly tying craft are continually being harangued, by angling writers and vendors, to try this or that revolutionary new material or technique. As any veteran tiers will tell you, most of these innovations turn out to have a popularity span about as fleeting as a book-borrower's memory.

The utilization of deer-hair however, a comparative newcomer to fly tying's 2000-year-old history, continues to expand. Its use has become firmly entrenched in the trade. More and more tiers have developed successful patterns exploiting its unique qualities.

Besides the very effective lures made by securing the hollow hair on hooks and clipping to shapes that suggest such things as moths or frogs, some quite sophisticated dry fly patterns have evolved.

One of these, a western creation called the "Humpy" has found a place as a staple mid-western fly.

Various people have claimed credit for making the first Humpy. Grant King, a well known California tier, tells me that the late Jack Horner originated it years ago. It became very popular there, where it was called the "Horner Deer Fly".

From California it spread throughout the west, picking up new names as it went. In the Jackson Hole area it became known as the Humpy and that one seems to have stuck.

I am inclined to believe Grant is right because I remember hearing of Horner deer flies long before Humpys, or "Goofus bugs" as they are sometimes called in Montana, surfaced.

Some eastern tiers developed dry fly patterns that utilized deer hair before the Humpy, but none achieved such wide acceptance. At one time a great deal of publicity was given to the use of hollow hair for elongated mayfly bodies. These were made by wrapping clumps of hair with thread to give segmented appearance and leaving the tips project as tails.

The clumps were then tied to hooks in such a manner as to project well back of the bend and give a 'detached body" appearance.

These floated well and took fish readily, but never really caught on.

Probably because they seemed to have an unfinished, "homemade" look.

A well tied Humpy, on the other hand, has a pleasing professional air about it that appeals to fishers as well as fish.

It drifts well downstream from a moving boat or canoe, and when fished up stream from the bank, will ride out the roughest water and take fish from places that would drown other flies.

Although lacking the steep gradient of many western rivers, many of our best trout and smallmouth streams contain long stretches of broken water. Remember the hassles between white water inner-tubists or canoers and anglers in some northern counties?

In southern Wisconsin, night fishing for trout is becoming increasingly popular. A Humpy floats like a cork in the riffles where large browns forage after dark.

To make one you will need a light wire hook, deer body hair, some yellow, orange, red, or green floss and dry fly grade rooster neck hackle.

Clamp the hook in a vise and coat the hook shank with fly head cement. Form a base for the material by spiraling thread the length of the shank and half-hitch at the start of the bend just across the gap from the barb. Let the thread hang with tension from the bobbin on it and coat this winding with cement.

Select a clump, about the diameter of a toothpick, of deer body hair for the tail and tie this on the hook with the tips extending back beyond the bend approximately the length of the hook shank. Make a couple of turns of thread around this and the hook and half-hitch, then trim the hair butts so they extend only half-way along the hook. This will be the front of the fly body. Now cement the half-hitch thoroughly.

At this point, I usually spread the tail and fasten it to the vise barrel with masking tape so it is out of the way for succeeding steps.

Now select another bunch of hair about twice as thick as the tail clump. Make sure the tips are even and remove any short hairs by stroking the butts with your fingers.

Secure this clump on the hook on top of the tail hairs in the same way, making sure the tips extend slightly beyond the tail. Trim the butts on this hair clump flush with the previous one and cement this half-hitch liberally.

Next tie on a five or six inch strand of floss (I like yellow) where the last half hitch was made and cement this knot. Form a fly body by winding the floss tightly back and forth around the two clumps and the hook so that all the hair between the place the tail starts (across the gap from the barb) and where the butts were cut off is completely covered. Tie the floss off at the spot where the hair butts were trimmed flush and secure with a half-hitch. Cement this knot thoroughly and trim off the unused floss. You have just made the fly body.

Fold the second clump of hair forward over the floss body and make two wraps of thread and half-hitch over it where the last half-hitch was made and cement this knot.

You now have a shell-back laid over the body and the hair tips are extending forward past the hook eye.

Lift the tips upright, divide them into two wings and criss-cross thread between and wrap ahead of them to hold the wings in the desired position. Half-hitch again and cement the wing base and windings liberally.

Select two hackle feathers. Trim the soft fibers from their butts and tie them to the hook back to back (convex sides together) by making a couple of wraps of thread and a half-hitch around the trimmed butts and the hook close up in back and ahead of the wings. The feathers should now lie parallel to the hook shank with their tips projecting to the rear. Make the last half-hitch ahead of the wings and cement this knot. Cut off the projecting feather butts.

Grasp one feather by the tip and wind it on edge around the hook just in back, then ahead of the wings. Tie off, cut off the excess tip and cement the knot. Repeat with the second feather and make a neat fly head with several half-hitches or a whip finish. Saturate the head with cement.

Hackle feathers can be either brown, grizzly or badger, depending on your preference. I like brown. As a rule it is stiffer and floats better than the other. Sometimes using one white feather will make seeing the fly easier under adverse light conditions.

The Humpy is an ideal lake fly for bass and bluegills in and around weedy areas. It is more buoyant than a cork popper and can be presented delicately in shallow water where fish are notoriously wary. If it takes on moisture, usually just squeezing the water out and false casting once or twice will dry it enough so it floats nice and high again.

If you're not a hunter, you can obtain scraps of deer-skin with the hair on from taxidermists, fly tying supply houses, hunters or plants that process deer for hunters. Borax sprinkled on the flesh side will help dry and preserve small pieces of raw skin.