Fly fishing, and the sport of fishing in general, evolve through experimentation. An angler has an idea, often one that’s intended to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity noticed while fishing, and goes to the tying vise or the garage workshop to devise a solution. The resulting pattern, or rig, or piece of tackle, is then fished. If it proves successful, and the angler isn’t closed-lipped, the innovation may be adopted by others in the area where he or she fishes. The innovation thus becomes part of the character of that place. Think Spey rods in Scotland, which evolved to meet the challenges of fishing for salmon there, or shooting heads, developed in California for hard-to-reach steelhead in West Coast rivers.
These regional evolutions are not only interesting in and of themselves, they can have much value for anglers elsewhere. Locally, in Northern California, during my two decades of guiding, I have seen fly patterns and fishing techniques migrate both out of our area and into it from other areas. Often this migration occurs through guides, who are always looking for new ways to improve their clients’ rate of success. It occurs through f ly-fishing conclaves and sports shows, too, where anglers from different areas come together. It occurs through word of mouth. And it occurs through media such as television, books, magazines, and now the Internet, which has dramatically increased the speed at which innovations are spread.
The point, though, is that it pays off to pay attention to what’s happening elsewhere. I’m going to illustrate this through examples of my own experience that involve the Glo Bug, indicator fishing, and rubber-leg flies. The migration of ideas has had a profound and continuing influence on my own angling. It could likewise do the same for you.
The Glo Bug
When I started fly fishing for steelhead and trout during the salmon-spawning season, the only option for imitating salmon eggs was the Glo Bug. If you’re not already familiar with this fly, it is a simple pattern that uses yarn wrapped around the shank of a hook to create a ball the size and color of a salmon egg. I became a master at spinning Glo Bug yarn with Kevlar thread to form perfect little balls, and when I say “perfect,” I mean perfect. The challenge was to get a tight spin of yarn in a perfect circle and not have your egg end up looking like something flopped over easy in a frying pan. I wasted a lot of Tiemco 105 hooks, Shrimp Pink egg yarn, and spools of Kevlar thread before I could make anything resembling a sphere.
Then plastic beads showed up. Yes, I know that many fly fishers have an opinion on fishing beads, and those arguments are not for me to resolve. The reality is that plastic beads have been a game changer in Northern California. I remember the first few seasons when I was guiding with beads on the lower Yuba and lower Feather Rivers and many of the local Sacramento area guides were not . . . the difference in success rates was ridiculous. Not because I was any better a guide — it was just that a translucent plastic bead is a much more accurate imitation of a salmon egg.
From what I can determine, beads came to Northern California through a few guides in the Redding area who were spending summers working at lodges in Alaska. Fishing beads to imitate salmon eggs has been around for years in Alaska (and it’s worth noting that conventional-tackle salmon anglers in Northern California used them long before the mass of fly fishers caught on). These guides probably figured that fishing behind spawning salmon in California was not a whole lot different from fishing behind spawning salmon in Alaska. If beads worked well in one place, they should likely work equally as well elsewhere.
Beads were slow to gain acceptance here, but because it is difficult to argue with success, many guides and then many fly fishers eventually switched over. I don’t know a guide who still ties or fishes Glo Bugs on the lower sections of the Sacramento, Feather, Yuba, or American Rivers, and even coastal rivers such as the Klamath, Trinity, and Eel now have anglers fishing beads.
90-Degree Indicator Nymphing
While beads represent an importation into California, our state has also served as an exporter. The double-hauling of shooting heads is an example of a technique and a type of tackle that was developed in Northern California and then spread elsewhere. Another example is 90-degree indicator nymphing, a fly-fishing technique that places a hefty floating indicator such as a Thingamabobber or a Float Rite indicator (created by Sacramento River guide Lonnie Boles) at the end of a section of leader, rather than in the middle, as you might do with a corky indicator and toothpick. A second, narrower section of leader, often untapered, is then attached at a 90-degree angle at the indicator, with its length determined by the depth of the water to be fished. With one or more weighted flies, the second section of leader hangs straight down, floated by the indicator, which gives immediate notice whenever something impedes the motion of the fly or flies.
The 90-degree indicator rig is said to have been developed by Californians Dean Schubert and Dave Hickson, who used it for targeting deep-holding steelhead in Oregon’s North Umpqua. I didn’t become aware of it until I started guiding on the lower Sacramento River in early 2001. Growing up fishing the lower Yuba, I had always used a corky indicator that one would slide up the leader and fix in place with a toothpick. It worked well, but when I tried a 90-degree rig, I caught fish in runs that had been hammered by guides and other anglers. That’s because I was getting my flies down deep quickly and because I achieved a much better dead drift.
Although the 90-degree indicator rig was developed by anglers who wade fish, it changed how drift-boat guides fish large rivers in California. During my early years of guiding on the lower Yuba, a drift boat was used only as transportation or, in limited situations, as a fishing platform. Basically, boats ferried clients from one riffle to the next, where they would get out and fish. But the amount of wadeable water is limited, compared with the amount of water that can be fished from a boat when using a 90-degree indicator rig, so guides began to adopt this technique, with the indicator rig cast out to the side of the boat and both rig and boat moving at the same speed as the current. This provides anglers with a nearly perfect drift, often without having to mend or shake outline, and is similar to the tactic of side-drifting roe used by conventional-tackle steelheaders on coastal rivers.
The 90-degree indicator rig has also opened up other types of water for fly fishers. When I first started guiding, most of us usually just rowed through, without fishing, what was called “frog water” (I prefer the term “flats”) — slow, deep reaches with little current that were nearly unfishable from the bank or when anchored. This water, however, can hold a lot of fish, and the 90-degree indicator rig is perfect for reaching them.
This form of indicator fishing, which was perfected initially for steelhead, has spread to other steelhead regions, including the Great Lakes, as well as to trout regions such as the Montana/Idaho area. And indicator fishing in general has even spread to competition bass angling — it’s one of the hottest new techniques for catching bass in lakes such as Shasta, Folsom, and Oroville. Called “float and fly,” it is usually practiced during the winter or for bass that are sitting on spawning beds. Depending on the lake and situation, a big bobber or indicator suspends a length of monofilament that terminates with a jig-style fly tied to look like a baitfish. A good client of mine also fishes bass tournaments, and I have tied him many small jig-style Clouser Minnows that he uses with huge success. This technique is also very similar, if not identical, to a stillwater setup that uses a fly pattern called a Balance Leech with a sliding indicator, the offering suspended level in the water like a living creature. This has become incredibly popular when fishing for big trout in many lakes in the West, including Nevada’s Pyramid Lake (see “The Balance Leech,” by Denis Isbister, in the March/April 2015 issue of California Fly Fisher).
Modern “Rubber Legs”
Although flies tied with rubber legs have been fished on Western trout waters for decades (examples include the Bitch Creek Nymph and Girdle Bug), my experience is that for a long time, they were not all that popular in California. Big patterns, such as those used to mimic stoneflies, weren’t even on the radar of many fly fishers, and something as odd looking as a big black Rubber Legs Nymph was the last fly they would pick out of a box to catch a trout or steelhead. Even I didn’t have much faith in fishing big flies in Northern California for trout, believing large nymph patterns would turn off more fish than would be turned on.
It took a 2005 road trip to Idaho Falls for my bachelor party to change my perspective. Visiting the fly shops there, I discovered huge chenille bugs that had legs of Spanflex, Super Floss, Flexi Floss, or Life Flex. These are all names for thin, highly elastic, and impressively wiggly spandex fibers, and legs created with these fibers have a lot of motion in the water and can easily be knotted to give the appearance of joints. Whether the fish think these legs look realistic or are enticed by the motion is a question for which I don’t have an answer. All I know is that patterns tied with spandex legs draw strikes and seem to do so more frequently than patterns tied with the rubber material traditionally used for rubber-legged patterns.
Nymphs using spandex legs are now a staple on almost all trout and steelhead rivers in California. When fishing or guiding the lower Yuba, lower Sac, Pit, or many other trout waters, I rarely fish without one on my nymph rig. From my perspective, the match-the-hatch style of tying stonefly nymphs has almost disappeared in California, because any imitative design one may come up with, no matter how accurate, will rarely outfish a simple attractor spandex-legged nymph.
The first pattern I saw in a California fly shop tied with spandex legs was called Pat’s Rubber Legs, named after its designer, Colorado fly tyer Pat Dorsey. Not long afterward, I began to see another spandex-leg pattern named the Jimmy Legs in fly-shop bins. This was a bent-shank pattern that had knotted, curved-down legs, making the bug look more realistic. A popular pattern on the South Fork of the Snake, it was pretty much unknown in California until my friend Kevin Price of Chico recognized its effectiveness and introduced the pattern to a national fly company that made it a commercial product.
Both Pat’s Rubber Legs and the Jimmy Legs became game-changing patterns when they came to California. I remember when these flies hit the rivers, it was a commonly held theory on the lower Sac that they were effective only below Anderson and that the best areas for them were from Balls Ferry on down, probably because guides such as Lonnie Boles and Mike Costello had been fishing big stonefly nymphs through the rocks of the Jellys Ferry and the Bend Bridge areas for years. As the seasons progressed, however, guides started fishing spandex patterns with success on the upper sections of the Sac, and they became popular as well on the lower Yuba, the Pit, the McCloud, the Trinity, and other rivers where many anglers rarely fished a nymph larger than a size 12. Nowadays, spandex patterns are a must-have for fly fishers who target fish subsurface. I may use mayfly nymphs or caddis pupa patterns to match the hatch or the mood of the fish, but day in, day out, trout in Northern California will eat a modern “rubber legs.”
These are only a few of the techniques and flies that have migrated in or out of California during my brief time as a fly fisher and guide. There are surely many more. The moral of the story is to pay attention to what anglers do elsewhere when it comes to fly design, rigging, techniques, and tactics. Another moral is that you should experiment, too. The innovations I noted were developed by individuals much like you, who saw a problem or an opportunity and created something to deal with it. Perhaps someday your name will show up on a Google search list!
