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My father inlaw has asked my son to tye up some Coho flys for fishing the Kenai river this summer. Heres a link to the basic Coho fly:
http://alaskaflyfishingonline.com/afb/cohoflies.html
I wonder if theres a better version for this fly? If you were going to Alaska and fish for Coho salmon on the Kenai, what would you use? The Coho pattern calls for Fishhair, anyone familar with this material and where to find it?
jman
jman-
Fishhair is a 70 denier synthetic fiber. A lot of fly shops should carry it, but you can substitute bucktail, and other synthetics like Super Hair, Unique Hair, Polar Plus Fibre, Poly Bear, Angel Hair if you can't find it on a FAOL sponsor or your local dealer.
Other Coho Salmon fly patterns that seem to come up a lot for Alaska fish include Bead Head Canadian Leech (rust and black), Egg Sucking Leeches (especially purple and black), Tinel Flash Flies, Polar Shrimp, Orange Comet, Popsicle and Bunny Flies.
There's also an article on the Kenai in the Great Rivers section of FAOL to check out too if you haven't already.
Here's a link that also may be helpful listing flies for steelhead and different salmon species including coho:
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/salmonid/flymatcher.html
If you look at the left hand side you'll see "Fly Patterns". Roll over it to get more options and click on the "Pacific Salmon" link to get thumbnail pictures and recipes for the flies. Be sure to check the fly archives on FAOL too.
Good luck.
peregrines
The Coho is a pretty good fly to stick to! I would also recomend looking at a variation of leech patterns and other streamers, purple and red seem to work well! If he is not planning to fly fish and is using a spin or bait casting reel, I would stick with the Coho. Because the method used to when fishing a fly on a spin caster, is the fish will let the line slide through their mouth thinking that there is bait on the end. And when the time is right you snag the fish.
Hope this is helpful information!
BC
Every time I go to Alaska (been there a few times) I tie up tons of flies, then buy all the hot patterns when I get there. Then I end up catching all my Salmon on purple egg sucking leeches and all my trout on beads. A good pattern that worked for me last year was tied with purple rabbit zonker strips (one for a tail and another wrapped round the hook shank)and a hot orange cone head for the egg. In addition to the cone it was heavily weighted so I could swing it right across the nose of a salmon hugging the bottom. In my experiance, they won't move very far to take something but if you can dance something right in front of them, they will sometimes smack it.