If it’s a hot day, a warm balmy night, if water is rising over previously dry ground or almost any time for that matter you can get huge hatches of ants. They vary in colour but the dominant hatches are of black meat ants.

Meat ants are of the genus Iridomyrmex and there are about 60 species in Australia. Their general appearance is black with a reddish brown head. They are typically 5mm to 10mm in length with the dominant size being around 8mm and often build large nests underground with sand or gravel mounded around the entrances to the nest. Most ants that build trails to their feeding grounds are meat ants. They are quite aggressive and determined and as well as being scavengers and predators they farm aphids and scale insects in much the same way as farmer tends cows i.e. they protect them and move them around from place to place so they can feed and produce nectar for the ants to harvest.

When the fish are feeding on ants they just sup the insects down one by one often at the exclusion of all other food sources.

The best technique for ant feeders is to grease your leader except for the last 60 cm or so and to cover individual fish or place your fly amongst the naturals in the path of feeding fish.

Materials red ant

Process

A	Run about about a meter of black cotton and treat the whole length with fly floatant and then wind the cotton back on the bobbin. You don’t need to lay down a bed of thread/cotton along the hook shank for this fly because the body of the fly is thread so start by tying in the cotton at about the 5% position wind the cotton in touching turns to the bend of the hook. Understanding hooks

B	Trim the tag end of the cotton. Using the cotton build up the bulbous abdomen of the ant on the rear 1/4 of the hook shank.

C	Tie in a slightly oversize hen hackle, with the dull side forward just in front of the abdomen.

D	Take just one full turn of the hackle. Tie the hackle off with a couple of firm wraps of thread.

E	Trim the excess hackle with a blade. Build up a thorax of thread about the same size as the abdomen.

F	Tie the cotton off with the rust coloured thread. trim the excess cotton.

G	Tie in a slightly oversize hen hackle, with the dull side forward just in front of the thorax.

H	Take just one full turn of the hackle. Tie the hackle off with a couple of firm wraps of thread. Pull the excess hackle forward over the eye of the hook. Build up a neat head over the hackle stem stopping just a little short of the eye of the hook. Neat heads

I	Lift the hackle and whip finish under the hackle at the eye of the hook and trim the thread. Using a blade trim the hackle leaving jut a couple of barbules of hackle facing forward to represent feelers. Varnish the head.