Flies, flies, flies...

[Buddy Sanders]

Ever wonder why there are so many different fly 'patterns'.

Think about it.

You have all that printed material listing lots of them. I won't hazard a guess as to how many, certainly several hundreds of thousands, though.

You have the internet, certainly the largest repositiory of fly variety worldwide.

Then at the smallest level, you have the fly tyers like us. Some of us tie 'by the book', but many of us, from what I've read here, often if not almost always, change, fiddle with, or adjust continually as we tie. For whatever reason, be it materials on hand, local knowledge, or just whimsy.

The variations of flies out there are almost limitless and grwoing by the minute.

Yet, we hear very few tales of trajedy at the vise. More often, what we hear is that someones wild flight of fancy, something done for just the fun of it, catches fish, and often does so quite well.

But if you read some of the many volumes in print, or articles online, you'll get so called experts that will tell of the importance of color, the importance of matching the fishes diet, the importance of size first, color is most important, the fish look at shape first, you know, so you need to tie flies to match that first. No, no, it's presentation that's what matters.

None of these folks seem to agree about it. When you read threads here it's pretty obvious that there are several, if not hundreds, of different approaches to things like fly selection.

What is obvious is that they ALL work. While it may occur occasionally, few of the authors of published accounts are likely to have just made it all up. They believe that what they write is correct, based on their experiences. They are probably, almost certainly, right about it.

The good folks that post their methods of fishing and selecting flies here are also correct. That some few are more or less experienced is irrelevant. No one is likely to write about a negative experience, so if someone says they caught a fish doing a certain thing or using a certain fly, I tend to believe them.

I have a fly patern book that lists 1500 fly patterns, and I'm sure that none of them got into that book without at least catching a few fish. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think so. I've met Mr. Kaufman, he seems like a diligent fellow.

I have an old book, lists around 2200 patterns. Again, all have had some success catching fish, or they probably would not have come to Mr. Leonard's attention.

And, there are hundreds of these kinds of books. While many list similar, or sometimes many of the same patterns, that's still a lot of different flies.

I've seen a new fly of the week here for years. It's likely that each one has caught fish for the person who submitted it, and many of them have caught fish for me.

Just being logical about it, what does this tell us?

Logically, many flies will catch fish. Logically, the fish don't decide which fly to eat, since it's the angler that chooses to fish it. (I know "let the fish decide"-nice idea, but not doable in a true sense). Logically, whichever criteria an angler uses to select a fly is valid when it works. We've already shown that there is wide difference in angler selection criteria, and yet all of them seem to work.

From the evidence, and the amount of evidence supporting this is unsurmountable, it matters not at all which fly you choose as long as you do choose it based on some set of criteria that matters to you.

What appears to matter most is that you fish the fly. Not what fly you fish.

Buddy

[JohnScott]

What can I say, except ....

[Buddy Sanders]

John,

I disagree. You aren't giving yourself enough credit.

Better to say that you were right about the fish.

Buddy

[eaustin]

Well, all I can say Buddy is that you may not have fished the Henry's Fork during Flav Spinner time. During periods when the fish are on the Flav Spinners, you'd better have the exact size, color, and a good imitation, because absolutely no other flies will work. Well, OK, maybe an ant.

I've long heard the arguments that presentation is everything, and under most circumstances I would agree. Art Lee tells the story about Ed Van Put using nothing but an 18 parachute Adams for all his fishing, and most times I think that probably is all you'd need. Not always though, and if there is one absolute in fly fishing it is that there are no absolutes. Absolutely none.

As far as the plethora of old wet fly recipes from "Trout", "Flies", "Favorite Flies", etc. go, those were encyclopedic assemblages of flies, many of which went back hundreds of years. Many of those flies, like Greenwell's Glory for instance, work extremely well for brown trout today. They are used in the British Isles on a regular basis, and Greenwell's Glory is the top selling fly over there. I've caught fish with it on our Mad River here in Ohio. Many others were colorful American flies geared toward the visual hunting style of brook trout, and those days are pretty much done, hence the lack of popularity of flies like the Babcock and Lake George today. Yes, they can work under some circumstances, but your odds aren't good. In Maine however, I'd want a Parmachene Belle, even now.

Nice thought provoking thread. I would agree that virtually all flies work, in the right hands, under the right circumstances for the right fish.

[JohnScott]

John... Better to say that you were right about the fish.

Buddy

Buddy -

Only the ones I CAUGHT. And they were the dumb ones.

John

[Soft-hackle]

Hi all,
Buddy, I think you are right all flies work at some point in time, however Eric has taken us into a different area. "Under what circumstances?"

Are the trout just feeding opportunistically, as they do most of the time, or are they feeding selectively?

Yes, we select the fly, and it IS important to put that fly in or on the water, however the trout determines whether or not they eat it or leave it. There is really only a few things we can do to entice the fish to change its mind. These are: fish the fly differently,, somehow OR change the fly.

I have often fished a fly and seen a trout come up to inspect it, then refuse it. In such a case, I'd use the same pattern in a smaller size, and after doing this, had the trout take the fly.

An excellent thread. Very thought provoking.

Mark

[WarrenP]

Buddy,

This is a great thread you have started and I know it will lead to a "split" in the members on which side they will support and that is to be expected when you have members who usually only fish a dry fly and those members who usually only fish a wet fly. I fall on the side that usually only fish some sort of under water fly. I do agree with your thoughts and do feel that any fly "in the right hands" will catch fish. I had a fishing buddy of mine out on the river yesterday and no matter how hard I try, I just cannot get him to understand that there is a difference between fishing with a fly and fishing the fly. I am a firm believer that you must fish the fly. You must put it where the fish are and most of the time you will get them to take it. Yes, there are times that the fish are looking for a particular food and will ignore the fly you are presenting, but, put it in front of them enough times and they will "give in" and take it. I do agree that those that fish the fly that imitates what the fish are feeding on at that particular time will catch more of them, but, there will always be some fish that are hanging back and they will take another fly if it is presented to them. I am a firm believer that if the fly you are presenting shows movement and looks "alive" the fish will be interested in it and will eventually take it. By "looks alive" I mean that the material in the fly provides movenment once in the water and that "movement" is provided by the dubbing or hackle used to make the fly. I am a firm believer that fish are more interested in something that looks like it is swimming or fighting the current or trying to escape. A fly with no movement looks to much like other debris floating in the current of a stream and I feel the fish want something that is "still alive" rather than something "dead" and no longer alive. The fishing buddy I had with me yesterday just does not fish the fly he is using and goes fishless which upsets him and he continues to look for the "secret fly" I may be using because he feels I have THE fly of the day. I told him yesterday that what he was holding in his hands is not a spinning rod and the fly is not a rooster tail spinner. I tried to explain to him that he must learn to become one with the fly, one with the rod, one with the fish and one with the river. He must think like a fish and know, or have some knowledge, of where the fish would be under the fishing conditions that were presented. I tried to explain to him that we were fishing water that was 39 degrees and there was ice along the edges and these conditions would put the fish holding along the bottom in the deepest parts of the river. I tried to explain to him that the fish would not be chasing food and that they would be conserving their energy because of a limited food source. There are times that fishing with a fly is "easy" when the fish are aggressive and actively feeding, but, there are times when they are not and that is the time one must "fish the fly" if they want to catch fish. Some will say that I am a very good nymph fly fisherman and I do not agree with them. I just feel that I spend a lot of my time fishing the fly and I do not spend enough time fishing a particular hatch that may be happening at the present time and those are the times that my "catch ratio" drops, but, once the short lived hatch is over, I can make up for it by fishing the fly again. When I am fly fishing, I am in another world and become the fly rod, the fly, the river and enjoy every second of it.

I think I have wondered off the subject and I do apologize for that. I just think Buddy has a good thought here and I feel any fly in the right hands will catch fish, maybe not a lot, but, still will catch fish. There are those patterns that will catch fish during a particular hatch, but, once that hatch is over, they lose their fish catching ability and there are flies that will catch fish when there is no hatch going on and since, here on my waters, there are very few hatches, I choose to fish the patterns that always produce when the short lived hatches are over. There are rivers that have great hatches going on during certain periods of times and then the balance of what fly to use would switch over to fishing patterns that match the present hatch going on.

I am also a firm believer that any fly that the fly fisherman has confidence in will always work for that particular fly fisherman, no matter what hatch is going on. That is because the fly fisherman will fish the fly harder and put it where he or she feels the fish are and just knows that they will catch fish. There are those that have great confidence in their abilities with dry flies and there are those that have great confidence in their abilities with wet/nymph flies and they will both be successful and get enjoyment from their fishing and that is what counts. So, pick the fly patterns that you know you have confidence in and those you know you can catch fish on and you will be successful no matter what the books and other fly fishermen/women tell you.

Just my thoughts and nothing more. Great thread, Buddy....

[hugefish_80]

When I was younger (8 or 9 years old)I went out bass fishing alot with my father and his buddies. We would get up early, load our gear in the boat, and usually meet the other person at the boat ramp. One day as we were driving to the lake my Dad told me that I should pay very close attention to the guy that was fishing with us that day and not ask him a whole lot of questions, we would talk on the way home. I was very interested because this wasn't something that he had ever told me before.

The trip started out as most did, meet the guy at the ramp, secure his rods and tackle, get the boat in the water, ect... Nothing struck me as out of place until the friend (whose name escapes me at this point) started to rig his rods up. The damn fool tied on one of those beer can novelty lures. if you have never seen one they look like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/HEDDON-BIG-BUD-F...QQcmdZViewItem

I looked at my Dad and he winked at me, and I remembered what he said about being quiet and watching. We were cruising a rock bank picking up a few fish on plastic worms and, much to my surprise, the occasional fish on the beer can lure. Throughout the day, the guy stuck to that type of lure, only switching from one type of can to another, and changing the way he worked the lure. He varried from a steady retrive, to a jerkbait type retrieve, and at one point even added a weight a foot in front of the lure and fished it like a jig. The man caught fish. Even some pretty decent fish. He didn't catch as many as we did switching back and forth to what we though was appropriate, but at the end of the day he had a couple of 3 pounders in the livewell to take home and had released quite a few others.

After we got the boat loaded and were headed home I started pounding away at my father with questions. Didn't he know those were a joke? Why was he using them? Why were the fish biting them? Why didn't he use anything else? Dad pointed out that the man had caught fish that day, and then he told me that there was a very important lesson in what the man had done that day. BY presenting the wrong bait in the right manner to the right fish, he had managed to be sucessful. In the end it was persistence and presentation that had made the difference more than the lure selection.

I fully believe that every one of those published patterns will catch fish if presented properly to a fish with the right attitude. If the fish is hungry then nearly anything that looks like it might be food wil work if it is presented to the fish in the proper manner. (When have you ever seen an olive wooley bugger hatch?)

Fish

[JeffHamm]

Hi,

I'll apologise now since this isn't my story, but one of Hugh McDowell's that he relates in his book on tying New Zealand Flies.

He called the pattern a "Rotodyeran Special", and it is tied like a Fletcher's Fuzzy Wuzzy. He tied in a tail of black squirrel tail and then the rear half of the body was made from a piece of flourescent lime green chenille. Upon a whim, he then tied in a bright yellow hackle for the mid-body collar. This looked too garish, so he tied in a grizzle hackle in front and this toned down the glare. The front half of the body was more of the lime green and the front collar was again the yellow and grizzle mix.

He goes on to say that this was one of those rare occasions where the proportions of the fly were just right. He proceded to fish it regularly, but by the end of the season it had not accounted for a single fish; he didn't even get a strike on it! So, he put it in his hat and forgot about it.

A few years later, Hugh and a friend of his were fishing lake Rotoiti with no luck. His friend asked for the above mentioned fly from his hat, and insisted on it after Hugh explained it's lack of effectiveness. By this time, apparently, with the constant wettings and dryings, and from being in the sun, the yellow dye from the hackle had run and blended into the grizzle, creating a sort of "pale yellow glow". Sure enough, upon casting this out, his friend started getting into one good fish after another. Hugh, having nothing else like it, was left in frustration until his friend, finally tiring of fighting all these fish, returned the fly upon which Hugh was into great sport.

Since then, he's tied up more of these and they have taken fish (so you don't need to age them), but none have done so well as the day on Lake Rotoiti when fishing the fly upon which the dye ran.

Now, after all of that, why should a fly pattern, fished by a very accomplished angler, simply fail to produce for an entire season but later ends up being a respectable fish catching pattern? Not the faded one, etc, where it might be argued the colour shift was the key. Maybe on that day it was since it was notably better than other days, but his later ties were like the original and the later ties caught fish? (By the way, the pattern reminds me of Bragg's Dragon, which is a dragon fly nymph pattern. Bragg's Dragon is a short black tail, green body, palmered with a mustard yellow dyed grizzle hackle). Was it the pattern that day? Maybe, since one would have to assume they were using similar presentations (probably deep, low, and slow for many of the NZ lures in the lakes). Was it specifically the colour scheme? Maybe, since I would have been surprised if a few similar sized and shaped Red Setters and Fuzzy Wuzzies were not also cast about.

Personally, I think most fly patterns will catch fish under the right circumstances. If the trout become really selective, then you have to get more of the parameters just right. Bad presentation can spook a fish, even if the right pattern is used, but the wrong pattern, or size, can do the same even when presented well. Of course, if the fish go into a feeding frenzy, when the bite is on, there can be times when any thrash of a cast will produce fish, or just about any pattern seems to produce. I know I've been talking with fellows who figured they had "cracked it", and when we've compared what flies we each were using for the fish we had caught, we each seemed to have cracked differently.

Hugh and his friend were probably fishing at a time when the trout had keyed in on dragon fly nymphs. Since the pattern was tied as a large lure, it's size may have worked as a "super stimulus", etc. After that, he may then have started to select it under similar circumstances, and so on. Regardless, like Hugh, after a new pattern has been tried for some time, if it hasn't accounted for some fish, I think most people just give up on it.

We have a tendancy to stick with what works, which then leads us to believe that this, and only this, fly will produce; or this and only this presentation approach, will produce, when in reality it is probably more accurate to say that trout have a range of dimentions on which they can become selective; depth of feeding, size, shape, colour, action, and presentation forgiveness - the latter is more of an indicator of general spookiness. Very selective trout will require the angler to fit all the keys, oppertunisticly feeding trout might be fairly loose in their fly criterion but still be very spooky, and trout in a feeding frenzy might be highly keyed into a particular insect (requiring good match to depth, size, etc) and be so focused on feeding that they seem hard to put down (I've had this a few times, fortunately for me and my rather curious casting style). The match the hatch vs presentation debate is based upon examples from different fishing conditions. It's important to be aware that you may have to observe along all of these dimentions to figure out what you need to do.

- Jeff

P.S.
Here's a photo of one of my ties of a Rotodyeran Special. I don't have "flourescent lime chenille", so I just used a bright green (insect green) seal's fur. I've tied a few of these, but keep forgetting to fish them!

[Buddy Sanders]

I just think we are giving way too much credit to the fish.

I'd not want to give up having lots of flies. I enjoy the tying, and I enjoy the catching of fish on flies I've tied that are different.

But I think that fish are unable to think, decide, or mentally recognize the difference between fly patterns. They respond to stimuli. You can attract them and provoke them into stiking. You can attract them and temp them into eating.

One of the recent thread mentioned the San Juan in New Mexico, citing the requirement for having an exact color and having to change with the fish or you would not be successful. I'm sure the person who posted that believes this to be true.

I've been on that water myself a dozen times over the last few summers. I've caught all the fish I've wanted to, and maybe a few more than that, on the same two flies. Never saw a need for anything else there, ever. I know a guy who uses nothing but size 8 olive woolly bugger with a small thread nymph in tan behind it. He does vary the size of this on occasion, but mostly uses an 18. He fishes, and has fished, this water for several decades and always catches fish there.

So, are the fish there color or pattern picky? Not for me. For the other guy I know, certainly not. For the guy who thinks they are? Sure. We all hear of the 'one fly' fishermen, and the beer can lure story is illustrative of it, not as far as technique, but as far as outcome goes.

If someone tells me that there is an 'only' fly a fish will take on a certain waters at a certain time, I automatically disbelieve him. HE amy believe that, but I don't, ever.

All of this is anecdotal, but it tells us something important if we let it. Someone alluded to a portion of it, the confidence factor. But it's larger than just that.

There are so many flies, so many different ways to fish them, and so many diferent fishermen that we need to think deeper than color, pattern, or what the fish may 'want'. That's too simplistic.

Don't look at fly fishing as if you are being graded, like there are fish waiting below, watching your flies go by until you 'get it right' at which point they reward you by eating them.

You catch fish because you make them eat the fly. You choose to fish it in a certain way. You choose which fly. You choose when to fish it.

You have confidence that you can make the fish eat what you offer. They do not do it voluntarily. You make them do it. You combine the variables of location, presentation, and fly selection so that the fish has no choice but to respond to your offering.

There is no right fly choice for any given situation. There are thousands and thousands. You have to pick the right one for you. Then you make the fish eat it.

Buddy