Calling for Salmonfly Patterns

[Byron haugh]

Hi,

I plan to be fishing Salmonfly dries this June. Would like to see some of your favorite ties for this hatch.
Thanks,
Byron

[flyfishfairwx]

This is my favorite one: TTFU..

[John Rhoades]

Byron -

I use Stimulators that are very similar to your fly.

We have tons of Little Yellow Stoneflies that are also on the Yellowstone where I am during the same time as the Salmonflies so I mostly fish with yellow bodied Stimulators, but in sizes that are somewhere in between these 2 stonefly species (hook sizes #10 and #12). -- the fish don't seem to mind at all, and I catch a bunch of them fishing that way.

John

[ScottP]

I plan to be fishing Salmonfly dries this June. Would like to see some of your favorite ties for this hatch.

Lucky dog. I've only seen the bugs once and that was while hiking in YNP; never could get our kid's schedules to coincide with my fishing plans. Hope you hit it right.

Regards,
Scott

[DUB]

If you are fishing where I think you are fishing, drop a Baetis emerger or Softhackle off that big dry fly.

[pittendrigh]

The big female's (above) average 1-7/8" long. Most store-bought imitations are significantly shorter than the real bugs.
I'm not sure if size really matters, but that is how big they are.

During the hatch I fish the nymph as a dropper, hanging below the foam-bodied adult. One thing I learned from my long time fishing friend John Wilson (well known Missouri guide)--about the salmon fly hatch--is to fish caddis patterns in the evening. The nymphs are particularly effective in the morning. And big dry flies are fun to watch all day long (especially so if they have a nymph hanging off below). But the fish will often bite caddis in the evening, and hardly anybody fishes them then.

The last photo is a Boomerang Salmon fly. So named because the tippet goes through a tube or channel on the bottom of the fly. If you snag the hook the tippet breaks. And the fly drifts back to you, like an obedient Labrador retriever. If you want to use it as a bobber, you can loop the tippet up over the fly body, and then back through the tube again. Then you knot another tippet to the bend of the dangling hook. If you snag that rig you'll lose the nymph. But you do still (most of the time) get the big foam bodied bobber fly back again.



One final note: big bushy elk hair wings (on salmon fly adults) are common. But they are wind resistant and hard to cast. If you make a more realistic, less prounounced wing (like the top photo in this post) then the fly is not only more realistic, but far easier to cast. And, unfortunately, damned hard to see. Even a big bug is hard to see if sits that low to the water. A tuft of white or hot pink yarn right behind the head (not shown in this case) fixes the visibility problem--from fly engineering 475--for graduating seniors?

[JohnScott]

... and friend on June 1 last year on the Lochsa just about a week before the runoff peaked ...



... and the river was really ripping. Even near the edges the fishies had to come up a long way to grab a dry fly, and they came up regularly for this one.

Follow the link for some background and tying information. Since this article, I've gone to a darker FEB ( two dark brown antron strands and one orange ) and now use Montana Fly Co small speckled orange centipede legs for the antennae, legs, and tails.

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/fotw...tw20100607.php

John

[Byron haugh]

Thanks guys!! Appreciate your help.
Byron

[Byron haugh]

If you are fishing where I think you are fishing, drop a Baetis emerger or Softhackle off that big dry fly.

Dub, not going there as you don't have much in the way of hatches in June which is the month I will be fishing. Change of plans. Back to Last Chance, Idaho again then.

[pittendrigh]

I published this in Dick Stewart's Fly Tyer in .... 1986 I think.

http://montana-riverboats.com/index....yan-Bugger.htm