It is completely predictable. Every year, after the holiday decorations are taken down and put away, a spate of stormy weather comes in, and I am confined to the house. I wander around, looking at its contents, moving them here and there, vowing to simplify my life and get rid of the excess. Eventually, I end up in the fishing corner and open up the fly boxes to see what is inside. This year my motivation was to see if I had a supply of mayfly emerger patterns after reading an article that convinced me I was not fishing that particular imitation often enough. I discovered that I had 21 fly boxes stashed in cabinets, gear boxes, and vests.
After clearing off a big table, I opened them all and tried to figure out what was there. I found recognizable and well-used dry flies. There were also nymphs and streamers. The contents were, to some degree sorted by insect type, pattern, and size. However, there were also a large number of flies that were mysteries or that fell into the category of “What was I thinking?” A lot of the flies had been created by me in an early stage of my fly-tying development, and apparently I have never had the ability to discard a poor effort. All in all, there was more stuff than I could reasonably be expected to use in the next five years, even though this exploration started because somehow I felt I needed more.
Looking at the boxes, it is clear that there are flies that are useful in taking fish and others whose attraction is greater to the fisher. Since I cannot keep myself from perusing every fly bin in any store that sells them, I am unlikely to be able to keep any resolution to simplify my arsenal. My frequent use of the phrase “That’s interesting” is revealed throughout my boxes. Sadly, many of these flies have not proven as interesting to fish as they were to me.
All this got me thinking about what might constitute a basic fly selection for the eastern Sierra waters that I call home. Would it be possible to narrow the field to a smaller selection of patterns, to a single, all-purpose box of flies, and if so, would that be advisable?
The result was a list of sorts — flies that could potentially work for me and my interests and style of angling. It reflects my own biases and the kind of fishing to which I am drawn. I do not fish still waters except in the backcountry, so there is no particular consideration of this kind of angling involved. My dry-fly groupings revolve primarily around post patterns, which are easier for my aging eyes to follow. Those who know me understand that my preference is to fish on the surface. I have developed a number of rationalizations for this bias, but the point is that it just pleases me to follow a fly as it travels along the current of a stream, recognize some form of take from a fish, and try to react in time to secure a hookup. For this reason, my fly selection is heavily weighted toward surface imitations and emergers. So there is nothing sacrosanct about this list — it is just a point of departure.
Dry Flies
Attractors. Principal among these is the Royal Wulff. I often use this as an initial searching pattern in situations where there is no identifiable rise. It has the advantage of being easily seen, even on choppy water, and seems to work in a variety of situations. I think of the Stimulator as an attractor, too (maybe it is the name), and will break it out on days when smaller, more precise imitations are not yielding results. I lean toward olive, yellow, and orange for the bodies and fish them in sizes 8 through 14. It is often appalling the see how large and ungainly these flies look on the water, but they take a lot of fish, including some that are not a whole lot larger than the fly itself. (Unless otherwise noted, all the dry flies listed here are in sizes 14 through 18.) There are some Humpys in the backcountry box, probably because they float well, but they seldom see the light of day. My wife swears by the Sierra Bright Dot, so there are a few in those in her honor, but it can also be a spectacular producer, which ensures its continued presence in the box.
Terrestrials. Cutter’s Perfect Ant is a remarkably productive pattern, especially in the backcountry. It is also capable of fooling fish, often large, at the more popular venues. I use it as a searching fly and break it out whenever more precise patterns are being turned down. It is also a good high-lake pattern when fish are feeding on the results of afternoon upslope blow-in. I have tied this pattern using orange or red deer hair for the post so they are more visible, but I think the original, all in black, is probably more productive. Grasshopper patterns are a staple, always effective in the backcountry and productive early in heavily fished areas until the trout have seen every hopper pattern known to man. That is a lot. I once received a book of nothing but hopper patterns. Many of them were really cool looking, so I have tied a wide variety. As to those that have actually worked, my boxes have Joe’s and Dave’s Hoppers, parachutes of several designs, and those with rubber legs such as the Tak’s Ninja Hopper. Hopper sizes are 8 through 14, the same as the Stimulators.
Mayflies. Mayflies are a staple of the diet of eastern Sierra trout early and late in the season. Blue-Winged Olives are present in March, April, and May and then reappear in October and November. Pale Morning Duns are significant in May and July, and Tricos are found in August. Generally, my mayfly imitations run heavy toward the BWOs, starting with the ubiquitous Parachute Adams. Visibility is a factor here, as is the fact that this fly imitates a broad spectrum of naturals. The box also includes Parachute BWOs, web-winged light and dark BWO dun imitations, mayfly emergers with a pheasant tail or peacock herl body, Comparaduns, and a couple of cripple patterns. The PMDs are represented with Parachute PMD and PMD Sparkle Duns. For Tricos, I carry spinners in black and rust. I am thinking that I might try fishing thorax patterns this coming season. Mayfly imitations are basically sized 16 to 20, with a few Adams Parachutes in size 14 for choppy water. The box contains some size 22 flies, which are beginning to seem more appropriate to a younger version of me with better eyesight.
Caddisflies. Caddis imitations fill in the blanks left by mayfly hatches during the season, with some overlap. July through October is caddis time, and some of the most enjoyable days ever have come with massive caddis emergences in the fall. I learned this past season that I have been too slow to reach into the caddis selection, being prone to think initially in terms of mayflies. Caddis imitations run from size 16 to size 20. The principal caddis imitation in the box is the Paracaddis Emerger in black or gray, occasionally in olive. It seems as if trout feed on caddis emergers more frequently than on adults, and I often start with this form. My adult patterns include Cutter’s E/C Caddis, the X-Caddis, Shroeder’s Parachute Caddis, and the Fluttering Caddis and Elk Hair Caddis in plain and parachute ties.
Midges. Midges become an important surface food source from May to October, but they are present throughout the year, particularly in the underwater diet. I have a lot of midge patterns, which is to say I have not settled on a dry imitation. The Black Gnat, Martis Midge, and Griffith’s Gnat work as truly dry patterns, although I more frequently fish an emerger as a midge imitation.
Nymphs and Subsurface Flies
Because my angling is almost totally devoted to fishing with a dry fly, assembling a basic fly section got me thinking about whether or not this bias actually serves me well. I am pretty sure that I deprive myself of a lot of opportunities to experience some form of success by restricting myself to this single approach. My first clue was the success friends enjoyed on days when I was just doing casting practice. Accordingly, one of my 2019 resolutions is to work on developing better skills and strategies for subsurface angling. I hope there will be progress to report in the future. In the meantime, I decided to consult people who actually know how to take fish below the surface in order to figure out what the nymph selection for my home area should look like. Fred Rowe is an eastern Sierra legend. He is the owner of Sierra Bright Dot Guide Service and has been successfully fishing the East Side for many years. He writes a very informative column for the Inyo Register, our local newspaper, and is on the water nearly every day. He was kind enough to let me look at his fly boxes and discuss their contents.
Fred is a devotee of Czech nymphing, a technique that fishes beadhead-weighted flies on a relatively short, tight line. The idea is born of European tournament fishing, in which one of the principles is that there must not be anything on the leader except the flies at its end. This means no weight (split shot or otherwise) and no indicator. His flies are tied on Umpqua C400BL jig hooks so that they can bounce along the substrate with less likelihood of hanging up. The beads are tungsten and are graded in terms of their size. He fishes flies with 3.5-millimeter and 4.0-millimeter beads. The crucial factor in selecting a nymph is not hook size, but the weight of the bead so that the fly gets to the substrate. Fred showed me five basic patterns that make up the bulk of his selection: a Hot Spot Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear, a Hot Spot Pheasant Tail, a Hydropsyche caddis imitation, an Olive Quill-Bodied RS2, and a Pheasant Tail Stoner. (Tying instructions for Fred’s PT, RS2, and Stoner can be found on the Sierra Bright Dot YouTube channel.)
The flies are fished in combinations of two or three. With three flies, there are two mayfly imitations in size 14 and 16 and a stonefly in size 10 or 12. The stonefly imitation is the heaviest fly and is fished in the middle of a three-fly setup or is the first of two. A normal rig for him is a size 16 Hot Spot Pheasant Tail Nymph at the end of the tippet, a size 16 Olive Quill RS2 as the top fly, separated by the Pheasant Tail Stoner, size 12.
I have had the very good fortune to have had Otis Hein as a friend, teacher, and mentor for more than thirty years. He is the person who inspired me to take the idea of fly fishing seriously and has doggedly tried to help me improve my knowledge, skills, and even outlook on life. I contacted him at The Troutfitter in Mammoth and asked him to share some thoughts on nymph selection.
There seems to be less of an emphasis in nymphing on specific pattern names and more on capturing the essence of selected insect species. Otis started by showing me what he described as crossover patterns that can imitate both
caddisflies and mayflies. These are the Hare’s Ear, Chamois Caddis, and Pheasant Tail Nymphs. He fishes these in both beadheaded and regular versions in sizes 14 through 18. Rather than naming a list of patterns, he suggested creating a selection of flies designed to imitate caddises, midges, mayflies, and stoneflies. His fly boxes contain a variety of patterns, some tied so as to be rather plain in appearance and some in flashier versions. Caddis imitations include Fox’s Poopah, various versions of the Copper John, and Silvey’s Caddis Emerger. Mayflies are represented by emerger patterns, including Harrop’s Sulphur Emerger. Midge larva and pupa imitations include Zebra, WD-40, Optimidge, and TDC patterns in olive, red, and black. Otis made the point that by and large, bugs in the eastern Sierra are not especially large, so he carries imitations that run as small as size 20 and 22.
The exceptions to this general rule are stoneflies, particularly in the East Walker. He suggests that an angler become familiar with the insects that are present in the particular water to be fished and then do some research with local guides and shops to find flies well suited to that particular location. In addition to the above, my projected nymph box would include LaFontaine Deep Sparkle Caddis Pupas in brown, bright green, cream, and gray, Prince Nymphs, and a damselfly nymph imitation for backcountry lakes.
Streamers
I do not often fish with streamers, but there have been times on the upper and lower Owens, the East Fork of the Walker River, and parts of Bishop Creek when I have been very glad that I had them with me. I often favor smaller flies, so I have streamers in sizes ranging from 8 through 14. There are times when it can be both productive and quite entertaining to search backcountry streams, which tend to be small, with a size 14 Matuka. This fly is not going to be brought out for most of the water on these streams, but there are always occasional pools and deep runs that can hold surprisingly large fish that will respond to a streamer. For this reason, I carry four or five, even in the stripped-down boxes I take when hiking away from the beaten path.
My streamer selection is fairly limited, which is a reflection of the number of times that I actually use them. The basic patterns are Matukas (olive, black, and yellow), Woolly Buggers (olive, black, peacock, and purple), Zonkers (olive, black, and gray), Muddler Minnows, and Hornbergs.
Back to the Pile of Boxes
Almost as soon as I began thinking about basic fly collections, I realized that this would not mean that I would end up with a single box that would go with me anywhere on the East Side. In my mind, there are three broad categories of trout waters, and the flies that I carry need to be tailored to whichever I am visiting on a particular day. I carry fewer flies when I am fishing in the backcountry. Fish there are likely to be less selective, for several reasons. There is much less pressure on these fish, so they have seen fewer imitations. Their seasonal window in which to feed is smaller, and there is a smaller variety and quantity of available food. All of this adds up to more aggressive and less selective feeding, so I can get by with a couple of small boxes I have made out of empty Altoids tins. I fill these with perhaps as many as 30 or 40 flies in a half dozen basic patterns and sizes. The little boxes fit easily into a shirt pocket, weigh next to nothing, and are enough to get me through a trip away from the roads and the crowds. It would be foolish of me to try to extend this system to waters that are not truly remote and infrequently fished. For those general occasions (my second broad category), l carry most of the flies listed above, particularly the dry flies. I expect that as I more fully explore nymphing, my basic selection will grow to include more of these patterns, as well.
The supply grows larger still if I am fishing Hot Creek, the Owens, or a similar location with sophisticated, more selective and frequently fished-for trout (my third broad category). I feel a need to carry additional patterns that have worked one or two special times when all else failed. It is entirely possible that I may not have used one of these for several years, but they still will be in the vest.
Another factor makes it difficult to restrict myself to the boundaries in the list. Anyone with access to a fairly well-stocked fly shop or the Internet knows that fly patterns are proliferating, and they all allegedly have the ability to take fish. Many of these are variations on a central theme, for example, spin-offs from the concept of the Copper John. The number of patterns grows as new materials and technologies emerge. Every season seems to bring a fly du jour, when for a period as short as a week, a pattern will become all the rage. I hear about these flies by talking with other anglers, and I try to plumb their minds as often as possible, particularly when I am visiting Hot Creek, the Owens, or the East Walker. Because of this endless temptation, it is a good idea to build a relationship with one or more guides or shop employees so you can benefit from the most current information. It does not take long to figure out who is giving you useful suggestions and who is more interested in just making sure your fly box is full.
So, having gone all the way around the rabbit hole, I am less critical of myself for having all this stuff. It didn’t take long to realize that it is easy to overthink this f ly-selection business. I frequently have urges to streamline my life and my possessions, and the idea that I had all those storage boxes of flies seemed like a cry for help. My resolve was to create a single all-purpose box, but alas, like just about everything else, the answer turned out to be a lot less simple than I would have hoped. I still want to believe that you could do quite well with a dozen dryfly patterns, maybe even half that number, and I will pursue that goal when I am fishing off the beaten path. On the other hand, I worry about a hypothetical situation on technical waters like Hot Creek, where I might need a fly that I haven’t actually fished in five years. There is indeed a need to carry these patterns in various sizes to meet the demands of each specific day. Finally, there is the unfortunate fact that I tend to lose a lot of flies. This is largely due to inattention, but it still means that I need a lot of redundancy in my supplies.
I guess I should just be glad these things do not weigh very much or take up much room. I just saw some soft-hackle patterns that looked interesting. Maybe I should tie up a few of those while I watch the ball game.
