Trout Fishing Flies
Information on choosing the right kind of fly to use to catch a trout.
If you are fishing with flies, how do you know what to use? Picking the right fly is important in trout fishing and you may even call it an art, but don’t worry too much about it. The important thing to do is to take the first step and get out there and go fishing. Brush up on the trout fishing news in your area, get your gear and go fishing. Experience will teach you a lot and it will be great fun.
Every time I think about flies, I remember helping a friend with a charity garage sale where a woman donated an entire collection of flies that had belonged to her husband, now deceased. To her, they were just a bunch of creepy looking fake insects. Of course she knew they were for fishing, but she had no idea what their value was. I knew very little about flies at the time. A young boy came up to the sale and asked how much they were and the woman said 25 cents each. I watched as his eyes widened and he reached deep into his pockets for his last coin to buy as many as he could. Then he whispered with excitement to his friend and they ran home to get his father. The boy’s father came within minutes and bought all the rest of the flies. I was thinking “oops!” We could have gotten a lot more money for those weird looking bug things. He confided in me “these women don’t know what they have here.” He was right. (Neither did I, but I was not about to admit it.) These were beautiful hand tied flies. That guy probably still talks about the day he found that great garage sale bargain. It was a fisherman’s dream.
Wet Flies
Flies can be broken down into three categories; dry flies, wet flies and nymphs.
The difference between a dry fly and a wet fly is that a dry fly floats on top of the water and a wet fly sinks beneath the surface. Dry flies are easier to fish with because you can see if you are getting any action from the trout. Wet fly fishing takes quite a bit more skill and attention to be able to tell when you have a nibble.
When it comes to fishing for trout, I have noticed an unspoken pecking order of skill sets at work. It is not enough that you can catch trout in mid season with worms or other bait. Where you get the most respect in the fishing community is when you can catch a trout any time, early or late in the season. This is usually done by the avid fly fisherman. You have reached the top of the fishing elite when you become an expert wet fly fisherman. So now you know why fishermen use flies. It is because they can snag a trout after all the worm and bait fisherman have given up and gone home. Some fly fishing experts frown on using spinners and other hardware, and the idea of using natural bait is even further down their list of tolerable tactics. Granted, there are times when a natural bait fisherman will out fish a fly fisherman and be very smug about it. A fly fisherman purist might view that kind of fishing simply unsportsmanlike conduct and just one up from using dynamite.
Fishing with a wet fly is very effective in catching trout although you won’t find many anglers who specialize in wet fly fishing. Wet flies are good in fast currents and they are much smaller than dry flies. They have less wind resistance for casting. When casting a wet fly you are actually just casting your line because the fly itself is lighter than the line. A wet fly is soft and absorbent for quick sinking. The standard wet fly has a feather wing. For most trout, use size 10 to 8 wet flies. For steelhead and salmon, use sizes 2 to 8.
When casting with a wet fly, cast across stream and allow your fly to float into the calm pockets around rocks, logs and other objects. When the fly reaches its target, you should feed some line into the current so it will rest there and not be swept away. A wet fly dragged too fast won’t get many strikes. A slight drag is okay.
Dry Flies
The purpose of a dry fly is to float on the surface of the water, rather it is moving or still water. As a fisherman, your goal is to coax the trout to mistake them for food that just fell in the water. Therefore, you should not be tugging or dragging on the line, but let the fly drift naturally down the current. There are basically two kinds of dry flies. One is the imitative fly and the other is the searching fly. If you are familiar with the current hatch of insect in the area you might see if you can mimic the same look and movement they might display to feeding trout. A dry fly that mimics the look of a particular insect present in dominating numbers is called an imitative dry. The other kind of dry fly is a searching dry. In the absence of rises, or with sporadic rises all over the place, that is when you use a searching dry. Searching dry flies are very visible and are used when trout are alert for something adrift on the surface, but aren’t’t being selective to any particular abundant insect.
Nymphs
If you would like to increase the amount of trout you catch you should have an array of nymphs on hand in your tackle box. Trout spend most of their time on or near the bottom feeding on natural nymphs. Nymphs and larvae are more the color of the bottom so your nymphs should be drab in color.
Nymphs are weighted according to where you want to present them. If you want them just beneath the surface, when trout are feeding on emerges, don’t use any weights at all. These are usually flies imitating mayfly, stonefly nymphs or caddis and midge pupae.
The middle depths are rarely fished, but a very light weight is used in that case. Most of the time you will present your nymphs at the bottom. These flies are usually heavily weighted.
In order to try to catch a good sized trout, the size of the fly, the color, its style, and its adaptability in different water and fishing conditions should be considered. The size of the fly is determined by the type of water conditions that you are fishing in and what the trout seem to be feeding on.
You need a fly that is 2 to 3 inches or more in colored water or cold water. The clear water of early summer requires small flies. The color of the fly is an important part of the decision when you are trying to pick the right fly for the conditions that you are fishing in.
Another thing that should be considered when selecting the right fly is what kind of trout you are fishing for. Rainbow trout fish are more aggressive towards lures whereas, on the other hand brown trout are not. Most brownies are attracted to imitations like a nymph breaking the surface of the water. Most fishermen out for brown trout will use imitations of original fish in order to attract them. The only time when the brownies might be tempted with an artificial insect lure is in the beginning of the year. So go get your fishing pole and prove me wrong.
