Flies, flies, flies...

All about flies Fly Tying
1

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

2

What can I say, except …

3

John,

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

Better to say that you were right about the fish.

Buddy

4

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.

5

Buddy -

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

John

6

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

7

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…

8

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-FISHING-LURE-Budweiser-NICE_W0QQitemZ180455111388QQcategoryZ7300QQcmdZViewItem

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

9

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!

10

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

11

“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.”

[COLOR=black]That’s my style…[/COLOR]

Thanks, Buddy

12

Buddy -

From your post above - “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.”

This very much reminds me of my personal approach to fishing for trout in moving water - it’s a matter of timing, tackle, and technique. But I don’t agree “that you can make the fish eat what you offer” or “that the fish has no choice but to respond to your offering.” While some would like to be in control, that ain’t so, or they could catch EVERY fish in the system EVERY time out, and no one that I know or know about can do that.

Catching trout in moving water is about refining your timing, tackle, and technique and fishing flies that enhance the prospects of enticing a fish to eat the offering. You are right that there are many, many patterns that will work in a lot of, maybe even most, situations - but I don’t believe there is a pattern in existence that YOU CAN MAKE WORK in any or every situation.

John

13

Buddy,

My two (euro) cents are that any discussion on pattern vs. presentation is that it makes little sense.

Presentation builds up to delivering a fly to a fish where it has access to it, and presented in a non-threatening manner.

Then, and only then, the importance of the pattern selection kicks in.

As I see it there is not a great deal of overlap, but then I am a simple soul :wink:

Cheers,
Hans W

14

What a great thread!

I think that a happy medium between the two extremes is the solution that works best for me.

On one had, there’s the guy who fishes a chartreuse woolly bugger or a blue glo-bug 95% of the time, and catches fish, and on the other hand, you have a guy with 3 variant ties of every stage of every insect hatching on the water this week…from this information, I couldn’t hazard a guess at who will catch more fish. It’d seem the second guy is better situated to do well, but if we add that the first guy’s been doing it this way, like his dad taught him, on these waters, for 35 years, and the second guy just walked into a fly shop and bought everything he needed for this trip 2 days ago, the tables turn considerably.

This leads us to believe that its more about the angler than the fly.

On the other hand, everyone knows of a stream, or a hatch, where the fish get very picky, and an imitation one size too large will mean a fishless day, no matter how well presented. I’m thinking tricos here.

Really, I think that pattern matters…but only insofar as 2 conditions are concerned: 1) the fly is of a size that the target fish CAN and WOULD eat…that is…no 2/0 streamers to native brookies, and no #24 midges to tarpon, and 2) that you fish the fly in the manner it was intended to be fished. This is the part many people just dont understand.

For example: a woolly bugger looks like everything and nothing. You can drift it, strip it, swing it, weight it, whatever. I even got a trout on a brand new woolly bugger that hadnt soaked up water yet, so that I effectively was fishing it dry. A woolly bugger was intended to be used in a variety of methods and conditions, and as such, when it is fished, it performs well in a wide variety of methods and situaitons.

On the other hand, a #24 trico spinner was not intended for a variety of situations. it was intended for when trout are eating #24 tricos. It was not intended to be used with a variety of methods, it was inteded to be used drifted dry, usually on a long leader. Skating that spinner or weighting it and bouncing it across the bottom will not produce. Sure you MAY catch a trout using those methods, but I’d fish a bugger dry before I’d use a trico spinner as a nymph.

Also keep in mind that that trico hatch may very well be one of those situations where a woolly bugger wont get you a fish. It’s just not one of the many appropriate situations for a bugger. Conversely, there are a multitude of situations where that trico won’t produce.

Bottom line: fly fishing is easy to learn, but impossible to master…and that’s why we love it.:stuck_out_tongue:

15

The flaw in the premise is that, even if presentation is everything, the fly aids to presentation. For example, there’s a reason that beadheads have been so successful in the couple of decades they’ve been around – they help get the fly down to where the fish are. Along the same lines, if you read the old literature, people had been catching fish on what we now call wet flies while they were still floating (before they were water logged and sinking), but the invention of the dry fly made it easier to fish floating flies. Some flies are going to add movement (such as those with marabou) and there are times when that’s an important part of presentation. Some dries are designed to ride higher or lower in the water, and that’s part of presentation. A wet tied on a light wire hook works better in the film than one tied on a heavy wire hook, but doesn’t do as well if the fish are further down in the water column.

It’s true that any fly (including a bare hook) can take fish under some circumstances. I watched a guy last year on a heavily fished spring creek taking fish after fish on a foam beetle which he was fishing like a nymph with several large pieces of shot. I had to ask him about that; he said he only ever fishes two flies – a foam beetle and a foam ant. If the fish are feeding on top, he doesn’t weight them. If they’re feeding on bottom he does. It’s about a minimalist approach to flies as you can get, and on that day, it seemed to be working for him.

OTOH, I’m somewhat perverse in that I’m willing to experiment when I’m catching fish. I’ll change flies even though the one I’m fishing is doing quite well, just to see what else will take fish. If the new fly fails to take, I’ll switch back to the original just to make sure I haven’t put all the fish down, or that they’ve stopped feeding at the surface/on bottom/in the film (where ever I’d been fishing.) I do this frequently enough that I’m certain that, at times, color, shape and size matter a great deal, not just presentation.

16

Bob,

The flaw in the premise is that, even if presentation is everything, the fly aids to presentation.

That may certainly be the case, and if fly (type) selection can assist in getting the fly to the fish, this is certainly an important component. In your example a bead head fly which may help the angler to reach a certain depth, or achieve a descent rate, which with less dense pattern choice be more difficult, or even ‘impossible’.

This has little to do, though, with selecting the fly in the hope it will be acceptable to the fish, or a sufficient enough enticement for the fish to inhale it with gusto and confidence.

Your thoughts?

Cheers,
Hans W

17

I went to a fly fishing show this past weekend and there were several tiers there all saying that this fly or that fly was the cat’s rear end. I don’t doubt any of them. I think as fly tiers were often over emphasize the fly instead of technique, approach of the hole or fishing location and presentation. A fly is so black and white. If I only had this pattern I would catch fish. That’s way too simplistic.

Give me a guy that can read water and present a fly with just 10 patterns in his box and hie will outfish a guy that carries 800 flies in his vest while fishing.

I know that I have to simplify my own pattern collection. I have tied willy nilly for too long. I need a master plan. Matching the hatch can be very important at times but in my area we just don’t have huge hatches like out west.

Rick

18

Hans,

I’m really glad you jumped into this.

Clay and Cold,

I’m with you on it being more about the angler than the fish.

John,

I think I may have gone a bit far or more likely chose the wrong wording. I think that an angler makes a fish strike by supplying the stimuli that triggers that response in a fish. Not all fish are the same, so sometimes, probably most time, you don’t get all the fish, or even a majority of them. If I somehow sugggested some kind of angler’s mind developed energy that caused the fish to strike, I apologize. That’s bit out there, even for me.

But I still contend that it’s never the fish that choose. They can only respond to what we offer to them. How we select both how it’s offered and what is offered is more about us than them. We react to the conditions we face based on our knowldege and experience. The more of that we have, the better choices we make.

And this is where it gets tricky. Take several dozen experienced anglers from all over the world. Show them the same river. Most of them will reach varying conclusions and select differently than their counterparts. And, almost all of them will catch fish. Give them a few days on the river, and all of them will certainly catch fish. Most of them will do it differently.

What this leads me to believe is that the fish aren’t nearly as selective about particular patterns or how they are presented than we often give them credit for. So many different presentations work. So many diffferent flies will catch fish.

I beleive that angler experience is probably the primary factor in angling success. Followed by luck. Then things like weather, moon phase, and clothing color choices (of course that matters!!).

I beleive that fly selection is a matter of angler experience, not some magical equation based on fish preferences, aquatic entomology, and light refraction, et. al. Thus, I believe that in any given ccircumstance there are thousands of flies that will be effective. That could still mean that only one will be effective for you, but that’s because of your experience and choices, not because of the fish.

And, last of all, I beleive that fish are pretty dumb. Thankfully, at least for me.

Buddy

19

For me flies come in just a few main varieties:

-midges
-nymphs
-emergers
-dries
-streamers
-poppers
-terrestrials

Pretty much most flies fit under those categories and are variations thereof.

20

Bob and Cold,

I wanted to answer your ideas on fly selection in a separate block.

I think we may be getting off the track here. So I’ll try to make this clear as mud ;).

When you say ‘Trico spinner’, I’m sure you have a particular pattern in mind. In any given situation where there is a trico hatch, there are probably hundreds of ‘trico spinner’ patterns out here. All of which might match the existing bugs well enough to catch fish.

Then, there’s the presetnation angles. In adddition to matching the hatch with a dry, there will be the guy who always throws a #12 Royal Wulff and catches fish. Then there’s the guy who never fishes a dry fly, by his choice, and will fish an imitative wet or nymph and catch fish. Plus the woolly bugger folks, and the streamer folks. There are dedicated streamer fishermen out there who can entice huge fish from small waters on streamers that look larger than most of the fish we catch. It approaches an art form, and they will just look at that trico hatch and smile while still throwing their streamers. Occasionally they will catch a fish, often the largest ones available. Plus a bunch of other options and variations that I’ve not thought of.

The use of beadheads on flies certainly changed the action, as well as the depth, of the patterns it was added to. But there are litterally thousands of patterns that use them. Even I would suggest that they are not interchangeable. But I would wager that if you are catching fish with a beadhead pheasants tail, there are dozens, probably hundreds, of different patterns that will also catch the same fish.

Clay,

I’ve also considered trying to downsize and organize my fly collection based on some sort of logical system. I keep thinking general categories, then broken down into shape, size, and color. I.e: nymph, size 12, brown…nymph, size 12, olive, etc…

I could tie all of my nymphs with the same materials in different colors, and be sure I had the correct one on hand for whatever I found, but.

I’m having trouble with that because all of these fancy ‘patterns’ are so darn pretty and fun to tie.

I’m also considering tying most of my flies, primatily dries and nymphs, in the round. I think it has merit as far as presentation goes, and the concept simplifies the tying and really speed things up at the bench.

But I have lots of time to tie, and enjoy playing with the flies and patterns I tie. Makes simplifying hard, even when I know it would improve my fishing.

What to do?

Buddy