What, no one fishes chironomid on this board?!?
I've been flyfishing for over 20 years, and the 6 flies I've listed below have produced for me again and again and again. A lot of it is confidence, but it's also a lot of strategy. You need your flies to be versatile, and you need to know how and when to fish them given various circumstances. Here are my choices, along with the reasons why those would be my 6 patterns...
Wet flies:1) Black Sally Chironomid, size 14
The majority of a fish's diet is chironomid, so get the best all-round pattern you have and use it! You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you never fished chironomids.
2) Olive Woolly Bugger with gold bead head, size 12
This fly can be a damselfly nymph, a leech, a dragonfly nymph, or an standard attractor pattern... SUPER versatile, and the gold bead gives the fly extra action on the retrieve.
3) Black Doc Spratley, size 10
This one is my original go-to fly, this can be a leech, dragonfly nymph, a BIG chironomid if thinned out, or an attractor... the fly for almost any situation!
Dry flies:1) Natural-coloured Tom Thumb, size 12
The go-to dry fly for BC flyfishers, this thing floats like a cork and when put on a sinking line, doubles as a caddis larva!
2) Olive-bodied Elk Hair Caddis, size 14
A smaller fly for smaller applications when the fish are fussy and won't take a Tom Thumb
3) Black Flying Ant, size 14
another small pattern, for those windy days where ants are hitting the water, or put it on a sinking line and it doubles as a water boatman!
Cheers!
Tex
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Topic: go to flies (Read 10210 times)