wooly buggers - nymphs??

[Tig]

Although they can be used to imitate dragonfly nymphs or hex nymphs and maybe a few others I was wondering how many of you out there classed wooly buggers as streamers?

[Uncle Jesse]

It seems to me wooly buggers are the utility infielders of the fly fishing world. I probably tended to think of them in terms of a leech but depending upon the colors they can imitate a sculpin or another small fish or fry.

[James Smith]

I'm with Uncle Jesse on this one. I've always classified them as leech patterns rather than nymphs or streams.

Jim Smith

[Buddy Sanders]

I just look at them as something fish eat.

[johnstoeckel]

I think it depends on how I'm fishing them. Sometimes I'm fishing them with a tight line and active retreive -- eg stripping them in or swinging them -- then I would consider them streamers. However, I also sometimes fish them dead drift like a nymph. Sometimes I'll do both in the same cast -- ie, cast up or up and across stream, dead drift back, and then strip in on a tight line.

Harry Murray used the term "Strymph" to refer to those flies which could be fished either way and the Woolly Bugger fits in that class for me.

[DG]

I fish em both ways. If I have a dropper under them and am dead-drifting them, it's a nymph. If I am swinging or stripping, it's a streamer. Doesn't have to fit in just one box.

[Lake Erie High Ball]

Me! I use them for streamers.

[philip43]

I've used them as streamers. But I think I will fish them as nymphs too!! Ya gotta be willing to try the oldies in new ways,
Philip

[tailingloop]

Slide a foam head onto the tippet, attach a woolly bugger, pull the hook eye into the foam head. Now you have a popper instead of a streamer or nymph.

[Silver Creek]

Although they can be used to imitate dragonfly nymphs or hex nymphs and maybe a few others I was wondering how many of you out there classed wooly buggers as streamers?

I think it depends on how you define a streamer .