What is your favorite dry fly attractor pattern? When there isn’t a visible hatch, but it’s a dry-fly kinda day, what fly do you reach for first?
Mine is either an elk-hair winged egg-laying caddis, or a deer-hair winged X-caddis (Craig Matthews), both with no hackle so they ride low in the film. No matter where I go during late spring, summer and early fall I reach for one of these patterns first when nothing else seems to work or make sense.
Kelly, I’m witih you on the X-Caddis. Usually a small one in about a 14 is what I reach for. For fishing the film, the first fly I go to is a Baillie’s Black Spider, folliowed closely by a Pritt’s Water Cricket.
The 1st fish I ever caught on a fly was fooled by a Royal Wulff. So I always start with it. Then I’ll switch to a Stimulator if nothing happens with the RW.
I’ve only been fishing dries for a few months, but back in the spring I had about 4-5 10+ fish evenings (about 2 hours of fishing) with a #14 para-adams, on a 2X fine hook. Such an impressive showing (especially with a klutz like me behind the cork) made that fly my go-to dry anytime I cant identify what bug is coming off.
I later learned I was fishing that week through a good iso hatch, which explained the fantastic results, but I’ve pulled fish to the surface to take that fly on days where the only rise I saw was the one that took my para-adams.