The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts. ** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below. With season four of the Troutbitten Podcast, we're back to the Skills Series format, with tightly...
My hands are cold. It’s the second week of May, and I’m caught unprepared by a cold front that has moved in with more wind, more rain and more of the wet stuff than was predicted. “Last night’s forecast promised better than this.” I think it before I catch myself....
Last night, I slumped back in my chair and away from the tying desk. It’s lit like an operating room. With three hi-wattage beams shining on one very small object from left, right and center, my eyes don’t miss much. Combine that with 2X-power readers and some steady...
** NOTE ** This is part of a Troutbitten series on three styles of dry dropper. Here are links to all articles in the series: Three Styles of Dry Dropper (Overview) #1 Bobber Dry Dropper #2 Light Dry Dropper #3 Tight Line Dry Dropper -- -- -- Matt was full of...
Commonly, we find trout feeding on multiple stages of a hatching insect. And we easily adapt to this behavior with multi-fly rigs. A pair of nymphs or a brace of wets covers two or three zones under the water, reaching interested trout through the water column. And when both flies are under the surface, the rigging, casting and drifting is straightforward.
But mixing fly styles — fishing both a dry fly and nymph on the same line — requires a different mindset . . .
Adding a nymph to a dry fly rig produces. You can throw a nymph under a dry and start casting, but in my world, there are three distinct styles of dry dropper fishing. And within each of these types, the elements of fly, nymph and leader are arranged, balanced and modified toward unique objectives. How we rig the fly and nymph matter . . . a lot.
When is a fly original enough to deserve its own name? And do a few material changes result in a new fly, or is it the bastardization of an existing pattern?
“That’s just a Woolly Bugger with flashy chenille, bigger hackle, rubber legs, and dumbell eyes. Oh, and it’s two of them hooked together.” That’s the first comment I heard about Russ Madden’s Circus Peanut. And to that I say, sure it is. But aren’t there enough material and form changes there to be a unique fly? When we think Woolly Bugger does it really look anything like a Circus Peanut? No, not really. So I’d say the Circus Peanut deserved a name, and it got one.
I have a similar fly stored in my own meat locker. I call it a Water Muppet, but it’s mostly a Circus Peanut. I tie it smaller, dub the body instead of wrapping chenille, and I use a tungsten bead instead of dumbbell eyes. And while I have my own name for the pattern that amuses me, it’s pretty much a Peanut.
But I think there’s a genuine desire on the part of many fly tyers to get this right. We want to give credit for inspiration, and we know that all good ideas stem from somewhere. At the same time, we’re proud of the material or form changes we’ve made that catch more fish in our own rivers. And sometimes those innovations define a genuinely new fly pattern, so they deserve a unique name . . . . .
The trout were on. They started with nymphs, but as soon as the emerging tan caddis popped to the surface, a green summer morning turned into something special.
Steve was the first to switch to dry flies. Around 9:30 a.m. I leapfrogged his position again and stopped to visit for a moment. Steve spoke as I approached.
“Man, these are the days you dream about,” he said while casting.
Standing in the creek, not far off the bank, he glanced over his left shoulder in my direction, judging the length of his fly line against the back casting space I’d left him. And I continued wading closer to my friend in the ankle-deep water.
“You switched to dries?” I used the statement as a question . . .
Buoyancy is all about trapped air. It’s what keeps an eight-hundred foot cargo carrier afloat at sea, and it’s what floats a #24 Trico Spinner. With just enough trapped air to overcome the weight of the hook and material, the fly floats on the surface and resist being pulled underneath and drowned. It’s simple.
Regarding this buoyancy, we must consider two things: the materials of a fly (what actually traps and holds the air), and a way to preserve the material’s ability to hold air (waterproofing).
Let’s tackle both . . .
Good things happen by thinking outside the box. Norms are for normal people, and in the strange world of fishing, there aren’t many of those. At some point, every type of fly has been used against its intended purpose, because fly fishers are a creative bunch — not so normal, really — and the penchant for experimentation is urged on by the trout themselves. Everything works sometimes.
So here’s a list of flies and techniques that do double (or triple) duty.