For those of you that fish dry - dropper rigs, any recommendations on what dries you’ve had success with over the years?
I’m looking for attractor patterns that are bouyant enough to float a tungsten beadhead nymph for a reasonable amount of time. Back East I’ve had days when they’d hit an Elk Hair Caddis and not touch a Humpy and out west I’ve had fish take a Chubby Chernobyl and stay away from a Bugmeister, but I’m sure there will be days when the reverse is true.
As I plan on trying to fish more dry - dropper rigs this year, I’d like to have ready several attractor patterns that I can try depending on various conditions, locations, time of year, hatches, etc.
This has been slowly become my favorite dropper rig top-fly. Tie it in colors to match whatever works best for your area. Floats like a cork, and it fishes well as a stand-alone fly also. All I tie these days are tungstens when I’m tying beadheads. Nothing huge for here mind you…max #12. But it floats them all just fine.
To me, realism in an attractor is a bit of an oxymoron. I use them to either provoke a strike (for whatever reason a fish feels provoked), or to suggest food in general as opposed to a specific bug. My choice for the application you’re talking about, if not a hopper, would be a foam-backed convertible:
Floats like a cork and has been good to me when I’m trying to pound them up.
I answered almost the identical question on anther BB. My question is why use a heavy fly like a tungsten beadhead when you want to suspend the fly with a dry fly? Why not use a regular beadhead or even a glass bead with the color of metal? It seems counter productive to me.
I quote from my post:
[i]"If you insist on a fly that will float with a very heavy nymph, use a foam pattern like a Chernobyl Ant or a Morrish Hopper.
I view the dry dropper as a hybrid fishing system. One fly must be the primary and the other fly is the secondary. The primary fly is the one you think will catch the fish, and the secondary is the one that is tagging along to increase the odds. You must decide which is the primary fly.
If the dry is the primary and you want to use an elk hair caddis, your dropper must be a fly that will not pull the EHC under. If the dropper is the primary fly you are fishing, then you need to choose a dry that will float the dropper.
You cannot always expect the dry to float all the droppers you want to use."[/i]
I don’t know that I’ve ever fished a tunghead off a dry. If you’re only letting the fly sink 18" anyway, it’s overkill. A buoyant non-foam #14 attractor will float a brass-beaded #16 nymph, probably not even an #18 tunghead.
Also, don’t neglect double-dry. A #8-12 hopper with a #14-18 attractor or caddis behind it will often outperform a big dry/nymph rig here, especially if you want to keep the trout numbers up and whitefish numbers down.
In terms of specific flies:
Big (#12 2xl or bigger): Turck’s Tarantula, Chubby Chernobyl, GFA Hopper, Double Wing, Pink Pookie, #10 Coachman Trude, Card’s Cicada, Doug’s Wrapped Foam Hopper, Morrish Hopper
Small (#12 1xl or smaller): Coachman Trude, Clacka Caddis (peacock and tan), Caddis Cripple (peacock and tan), Purple Haze or variation, Opal X-Caddis, regular X-Caddis, Mini Hot, small Yellow Stimulator
Spun deer hair bodies might work. I like large (e.g. size 10) parachutes with oversized hackle, oversized even by parachute standards. I tie them to represent terrestrial spiders, like wolf spiders. I have caught bluegill in December on those parachutes, but more on the nymphs drifting underneath. I don’t recall having used tunghead nymphs under them, but one could use foam for an underbody and wrap pheasant tail over the foam for the color and fuzz factor.
Most of the time when I fish a dropper its an emerger floating in or just under the film. If you’re going to fish a nymph, then fish nymphs. Nymphs should be fished along the bottom, that’s where fish find them. Once a nymph begins to ascend to the surface it’s in a transitional stage and you wouldn’t want a bead head on it anyway. If you must fish a tungsten bead head then a yellow or orange stimulator is a good choice as they float well and have the mass to hold the bead head.
I fish a dry/nymph combo most of the time and I use Tungsten bead head nymphs quite a bit. I use a Foam beetle or a Madam X sometimes but mostly I use an Elk hair caddis, great fly, easy to see and floats well. Many of our streams are quite deep and I might go as far as 8 to 10 feet between the dry and the nymph or in a riffle it might only be 2 feet.All the best.Mike
Stimulator if there are caddis or stones or hoppers around. Elk hair caddis if there are caddis around and the dropper is light. Foam ant or beetle if you’re in the woods and nothing is hatching. Daves Hopper, Henrys Fork Hopper, or Foam hopper if you’re in a grassy area and nothing is hatching. Yellow humpy if there have been light-colored mayflies hatching recently. Badger bivisible if you’re feeling old-fashioned. Other impressionistic hopper/stone/caddis imitators (Turck’s Tarantula, Madam X, Sofa Pillow, etc.) work too. Also some of Gary Lafontaine’s closed-cell foam patterns (Air Head, Cone, etc.) might be fun to try, although I’ve never done it.
Hi Chewydog, it is not as bad as you would think, I just open up the casting loop a little. Plus when I fish the Tongariro I am often fishing a long (sixteen to twenty feet+ leader) with two tungsten nymphs on the end, so a dry and one nymph is easier! The other thing is I do not use a dropper set up, I tie the tippet straight of the bend of the dry and this reduces tangles alot.
All the best.
Mike
