What's your best fly?

[Mike Connor]

It's that time of year again when people start asking "What was your best fly this season?". I tend to make myself very unpopular when answering such questions! Because unfortunately I simply don't have an answer, or my answer apparently upsets some people. I am not evading the question, or prevaricating in any other way, I literally do not have a "simple" answer in the form of a fly name.

I have flies that I only use a couple of times a year under specific conditions, and they work very well when I use them and I consider them to be very successful flies, but I don't often use "general" flies at all, at least not at random, so picking one as being the "best fly" is impossible. Using general flies all the time basically implies that you don't really know what to use when. Obviously this works for quite a few people, but it's just not how I fish.

I do have some "general" flies which I use, but I use these also under fairly specific conditions, and always with good reason, not simply because I don't know what to use. I wont mount a fly at all unless I have a reason for doing so.

When I look back then there are some flies which I have caught more fish on than others, but that doesn't make them "the best fly". These are simply the flies that I used most that season, because the conditions dictated that. If you only used one fly then that fly would be "the best fly", because it's the only one you caught fish on!

If you use "general" flies chosen more or less at random, then perhaps one will emerge from that collection as "the best fly". but only from that collection, and that could be for all sorts of reasons, including that you used it most! I want all my flies to catch fish, and I don't use flies that don't. So the only question for me is whether a fly catches fish under the conditions it was designed for. If it does it stays in the box. If it doesn't, it goes. Only fair to point out as well that what I term "general" flies, would probably be better designated "generic" flies. They resemble various things, but still work best when they are a good match for whatever is being taken by the fish.

If I don't know what a fly is, or what it is supposed to represent, or how it should be fished, then I don't use it.

TL
MC

[narcodog]

Well, I have to say my best fly this year has been the CDC and Deer in various color combinations. Not a wingless wet bet a darn good pattern. It fished well in the spring here in the south. On the East Branch of the Delaware in the Catskills and on the various streams and rivers in Montana and Wyoming. Small Brook Trout in the Catskill's to a 22 in. brown on the East Branch, a 24 in. Bow on the Madison and a 22 in. Cutthroat on Slough Creek in YNP.

The best color combination was rust cdc and black deer hair which I tied for a small stone fly here at home. I think that the reason it was so successful out west was it has the color combination for ants that were very plentiful.

[Otter]

I can do the reverse, I can name about 8 patterns from my box that were useless this season, so useless that they were never used, as circumstances never demanded their attachment to the tippet - are they useless flies, absolutely not and will be in the box for next season and some for hopefully many seasons to come.

Skues description from way of a trout, along the lines that a fly is a good imitation when for whatever reason for a period of time the trout takes the fly as a good imitation of the relevant food item. Its interesting and foolish to ignore someone like skues that seems to have a lot of time on the water - often you can predicate your success by knowing what fly to use, but a proven pattern to match the natural does not ALWAYs work - and its an astute angler that can take note of the minutae of the circumstances that made a pattern work and also to note that for example in certain light conditions with the same fly life present that it fails miserably. Sometimes we can can discern some things , other times we can be utterly flummoxed.

[DNicolson]

Usually I avoid like the plague, any posting that begins "What is the best.......".
But the fact that it was initiated by Mike, made me stop and read.
There is a tendency for a lot of anglers to fall into the 'magic' bullet syndrome.

[willowhead]

Three very different and very interesting points of view.........or outlooks, shall we say. "Best" being so abitrary..............reminds me of a question like, what is Jazz? Many different things to many different people................when actually, there is only one VERY simple explanation that pertains: a way of playing music. If your listening, you'll "see" what i mean.....
.............far as flies go..........i probably have the most fun with the Usual.........but a soft hackle (flymph/whatever), will always outfish it.

[michaelgmcgraw]

I don't have a favorite fly pattern, but I do have a favorite type of fly. This would be Flymphs seconded by traditional soft hackles & spiders. They do very nicely on the small creeks I fish 90% of the time.

[Klaas]

My best fly whas the fly i fished at the right moment and got me alot of fish that day
Some days i didnt feel like changing a fly so my best fly that day whas maybe in my flybox and never came out.


Klaas

[daringduffer]

Knowing there is always a reason behind your doings - would you care to share your reasoning behind this fly? I suppose you use it, when weighted, as a stretcher in a tactcal team, but this might not be it's only application? Although being a wingless wet (disregarding the hackle) it is far from a standard spider. In as many words as possible, please...?

dd

[Mike Connor]

OK, but it's not my favourite fly! I don't actually have a "favourite" as such.

I was fishing a stretch of local river some years ago, and in a quiet stretch under some trees in the afternoon I noticed some insects struggling to the surface, and apparently having difficulty penetrating the film. Fish were "bulging" steadily, obviously taking these just below the surface. I caught quite a few but was unable to identify them. I took a few photos of several of them in a small glass vial, and then released all those I had caught ( a few dozen), in a very quiet pool and watched them for a while. A couple finally managed to break through the film and hatch, they were a light winged caddis fly, but I still don't know what species. ( There are over 400 in Europe ). The body of the pupae was a yellowy/pinkish colour with a very dark thorax and light buff appendages. The wings were a light buff and lightly mottled. I made some notes and resolved to try and identify them when I got home, and dress a few.

Although I was unable to identify them,that evening I dressed a couple of flies using hen pheasant wing coverts as hackle, and the same body you see there. The light buff mottling of the pheasant coverts was a good match and I dressed the flies basically as soft hackle emergers to be fished in or just below the film.

The next day I was on the water early, and when I got to the same spot the same insects were hatching again. I moved up the stretch from there fishing the flies as a single fly in "dry fly" style, but sunk. I got practically a fish a cast at first, but the hackle fibres broke or tore off quickly, and once there were only a couple the fly stopped catching. This is fairly unusual really, in most cases a well chewed scraggly fly catches more fish, not less!. Anyway, I used the three flies I had in the next couple of hours as the fish happily chewed them to bits, and after that I could not get a fish. I tried various other caddis pupae but they were quite obviously the wrong colour, although otherwise not too dissimilar. I didn't have anything else that colour in the box.

Quite excited about the success of the pattern, even though these things can be a "one off" and it is actually quite rare for me to find a new successful pattern which proves consistently successful, I determined to dress a few more, and try to make them more robust.

A very long time ago now I had dressed some black squirrel hair hackled spiders, among various other hair hackle flies, and they proved quite good in certain circumstances, and were more or less indestructible. So I looked for some hair which would suit my present problem. The closest I found was natural squirrel hair, and it looked pretty good when immersed and backlighted as well, so I dressed half a dozen flies using it.

This was the pattern

The Pink Squirrel
Hook: #12 Drennan carbon specimen ( You may use any hook of course, but I prefer straight eyed hooks for spiders).
Body: Yellow silk ( or you can probabyly use any 6/0 multi strand yellow thread), dubbed with a mix of 6 pinches of light hare underfur, mixed with 1 pinch of fine red ( pure) wool, and the last third dubbed with dark underfur.
Hackle: Squirrel body guard hair in a split thread technique.

Just to be on the safe side I also dressed a couple more using hen pheasant coverts, but with a few more fibres than on my first lot.

Anxious to see how this worked and hoping that the insects were still hatching the next day I was once again on the stream early and headed straight for one of the tree lined stretches. About 14.00 hrs the hatch once again began, and using the same technique as before, upstream "dry fly" style, I proceeded to catch a lot of fish. I don't know how many, but it was a lot, and some very good ones. I used the same fly until about 19.00 hrs when the fish stopped taking near the surface.

More as an experiment than in any real hope of success, I put a small split shot about 15 inches above the fly, and carried on casting. Once again I took quite a few fish, not as many as before on the surface oriented fly, but still respectable. Even after this the fly still looked almost as good as new although the body was getting a bit thin and raggy. The hair hackle looked as good as ever. I was somewhat surprised at this extraordinary success for several reasons. The hackle on the hair fly did not look as good to me, and I thought it was too bushy, but the fish were apparently of a different opinion. The movement and appearance of a hair hackled fly is not the same as the movement of a feather hackled fly, but again the fish didn't seem to care in this case. The resilience and "mobility" of hair also varies widely according to type and thickness.

When I got home I dressed a few with weight under the thorax.

This particular "hatch" lasted 11 days all told, and I caught fish every day on the same fly pattern, but I had to change the surface fly for a new one on the third day as the pinkish body had almost disappeared. When most of the pinkish dubbing was gone, the fly did not catch as well. When the fish stopped taking from the surface I used a weighted version with a pale deerhair dry caddis as an indicator and continued to catch until dusk. Curiously I did not get a single hit to the indicator fly! There were a few rises, but not very many, although the insects were coming off in a steady trickle the trout largely ignored them and took the subsurface flies. I had to change flies again on the fifth day, and on the seventh because most of the body was torn off by trout teeth. I managed at least a few hours every day using the fly, first the surface version and then the weighted version, and caught plenty of fish every time. I tried some flies ribbed with wire in order to strengthen the body but flies with a wire rib caught fewer fish, so I went back to the simple dubbed body very quickly. The flies caught upwards of several dozen fish before the body was so damaged that it stopped working as well. The hackle was the same at the end as it was at the beginning, hair is very tough, and when locked in properly not much will pull it out or damage it. Constant dragging at the body dubbing does pull it out of course and trout teeth are sharp!

All this originally took place at the end of July in a very warm period, which is not usually all that successful for fly-fishing. I have now seen these insects quite a few years at about the same period, although they were missing some years,( or I missed them), and been successful every time with that fly. Just for the sake of experiment I used the fly as a weighted point of a tactical team in some other hatches, and when nothing was really "hatching", it took at least as many fish as the dropper, which was supposedly the main attraction. So it has a permanent place in my wet fly box. It seems to be a very good "general" fly. I can't really say why this is, it just is. I assume the translucent pinkish yellow body has a lot to do with it.

Macro photos can be very deceiving, and though the fly looks huge in the picture, it is really quite small and delicate but with a fattish profile for its size;



I have tried various modifications to this fly over the years, but some apparently minor modifications like ribbing, and different dubbing methods made it less attractive to the fish. I was just lucky to hit the right combination immediately. With various other flies I have tried various things for years before they worked as well as I wanted, and quite a few never did.

I have a few hair hackle flies, but none of them has been as consistently successful as this one. They work well enough in various circumstances and they are very robust, but I still prefer feather fibre hackles on the majority of flies because they usually catch better, and if I get a couple of good fish on a fly I consider it has served its purpose, and am not too upset about having to change it because the hackle has been bitten off.

TL
MC

[Mike Connor]

Cause and effect.

Many years ago now I used to fish occasionally with a bloke I worked with. he was extremely enthusiastic but a bit haphazard, and was always trying something or other but with no particular method as far as I could see. Although he had not been fly-fishing for very long, he had several large boxes of flies and would quite happily spend hours trying various flies. Indeed, I think he spent more time changing than he did actually fishing.

He had asked me what he might do to improve his fishing, at that time I had already been fishing quite a few years and doubtless appeared very competent indeed to somebody who had basically no idea. I had loaned him a few books, and he did spend some time reading them. I also took him fishing a few times, In one book he read about an old poachers trick.

It was early December and we essayed forth to a certain water in pursuit of grayling. I used flies and he used bait. Just after nine in the morning on a bright and sunny but bitterly cold day he started shouting excitedly form somewhere downstream, and I thought he had either caught a decent fish or fallen in. I hurried back down to where he had been fishing and saw him trying to drag something out of the river. It was a dead sheep, it had obviously fallen in and drowned. After he had calmed down a bit he proceeded to enlighten me regarding this rather odd behaviour. In one of the books I had loaned him he had read of an "infallible" trick for catching fish of all kinds. When he told me this I recalled the trick. Basically one hangs a dead animal, preferably a sheep, in a tree overhanging the water, and eventually it will be blown by various flies. The maggots will eventually start consuming the animal, and numbers of them will fall into the water thus attracting fish to the area and keeping the shoal there. This is especially good for grayling but works on other fish as well. The main difficulty of course is obtaining a dead sheep. Now he had one!

My initial misgivings about the wisdom of the procedure in this instance were ignored, and I reluctantly helped him to heave the carcase into a tree overhanging the river at the top of a large pool which ran out in a long glide.

After that I cleaned myself up as best I could, and wandered off upstream again fishing. I did not catch many fish that day even though I wandered upstream for several miles I never found more than a couple of fish, and I only caught a couple of them. When I got back down to him in the late afternoon it was already getting dark, but it was still light enough to see him grinning like a Cheshire cat and he very proudly showed me a round dozen of lovely grayling all about a 1lb to a 1 1/2 lb, which are very respectably sized fish in that area. "See!", he told me triumphantly, " I told you it would work. The bloke in that book you gave me said it was infallible, and it is" he almost chortled with glee.

Taking a look at my thermometer, I showed it to him. "So what?" he asked. It was just at 7 degrees below zero celsius. I took him up to the tree and prodded the sheep. It was frozen stiff. "So what?" he asked again. I pointed out that there were no flies at all extant, and even if there had been they can't blow on frozen flesh, and even if they could it takes time for maggots to hatch and start consuming flesh, so the sheep was completely useless as far as catching fish was concerned. To my astonishment he replied " Well it must have had some effect, or I wouldn't have caught all these lovely fish. You don't know everything you know. Perhaps it's the smell". ( There was no smell, frozen sheep don't rot, so they don't smell, but that's bye the bye). Realising he was serious I refrained from any further comment. This was even harder later in the pub when he began the story of how he caught the lovely fish he insisted on showing to everybody, with the words " Well, first of all, you need a dead sheep. It's infallible!"....................

TL
MC