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?
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?
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.
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I'm with Uncle Jesse on this one. I've always classified them as leech patterns rather than nymphs or streams.
Jim Smith
I just look at them as something fish eat.
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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.
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.
Me! I use them for streamers.
Thanks Old Man GO IRISH!
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
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.