The Stillwater Fly Fisher: Woolly Buggers!

woolly woolly
THE BASIC WOOLLY BUGGER IS A SIMPLE DESIGN, CONSISTING OF A MARABOU TAIL AND A BODY, TYPICALLY CHENILLE, OVER WHICH HACKLE IS WRAPPED FROM THE BEND TO THE HEAD. BECAUSE OF THIS SIMPLICITY, IT IS ALSO HIGHLY ADAPTABLE TO MEET A VARIETY OF NEEDS. THE WOOLLY BUGGER ABOVE, FOR EXAMPLE, INCORPORATES HIGH-QUALITY MARABOU BLOOD QUILL, LEGS, FLASH, AND A METAL BEADHEAD TO ENHANCE FISH-ATTRACTING VISUAL ELEMENTS AND ACTION.

One of the advantages of living in the American West is having access to many fishing opportunities throughout the year. These opportunities include the prospect of chasing native trout, anadromous migrants, inshore and offshore saltwater fish, and nonnative introduced species too many to name. Having so many choices complicates things, though. You never know when you’ll need a particular fly pattern, and you end up carrying almost every kind of fly you own. I returned in late October from a trip to Oregon that included stillwater fly fishing, but also several days on the fabled Williamson River swinging soft hackles and casting ant imitations and minuscule Blue-Winged Olives, hoping for a rise. That trip was easy to prepare for, because I knew in advance what flies to bring. I didn’t need to cram my vest full of fly boxes.

All my angling life, I’ve wanted to simplify my fly choices in that way, yet I also fear and have experienced the anxiety of not having what I need. If you carry boxes with hundreds of patterns, you will use only a few of them. Carry just a few patterns, and you won’t have the fly you need. Tie outfitter fly lists before a trip, and you wind up finding success with two or three flies not on the list.

If there’s a single fly pattern that you can count on to work in almost any angling situation, it’s the Woolly Bugger. One of my angling partners got second place in a Bass-n-Fly Delta tournament using nothing but a large purple Woolly Bugger, not Whistlers, Flashtail Clousers, or Pole Dancers. He tied up only two f lies. Another angling partner carries and fishes almost exclusively with olive Woolly Buggers. Regardless of location, he is as least as successful as most who carry hundreds of flies, if not more so.

Woolly Buggers are the first fly many anglers learn to tie. Because a large hook is used, both tyer and instructor can see what a student is doing, and this pattern can produce an encouraging result for most beginners — a fly that not only looks good, but catches fish.

But the Woolly Bugger is basically a fly design, not a single pattern. While it might seem to be the universal fly and the simple choice for any fly fisher who just wants to catch fish, in fact, the Woolly Bugger has been adapted in numerous ways by innumerable fly tyers, to the point where there are mutations that have been created to address all kinds of needs. That, too, is part of its appeal.

Years ago I interviewed Mike Mercer of The Fly Shop, a gifted tyer credited with designing the Poxyback Callibaetis, Z-Wing Caddis, and other noteworthy patterns. “Most patterns evolve, sometimes on a single tyer’s bench, but also may pass through many different benches to land, be recognized, and become a classic,” he said, and that certainly was the case with the Woolly Bugger. Some say that its ancestor is the Woolly Worm, with its reversed upright hackle fibers and origins as a black bass fly in the Missouri Ozarks in the late 1800s. The Woolly Bugger that we know today may have originated in the vise of Russell Blessing in Pennsylvania around 1967 in an attempt to imitate a hellgrammite or Dobson Fly nymph — according to Barry Beck, it was named the Woolly Bugger by Blessing’s daughter in the 1980s. It also may have come from Don Martinez, who commercialized the Woolly Worm in the 1940s or ’50s. Jack Dennis, famous Jackson Hole guide, flyfishing ambassador, and author of the classic Western Trout Fly Tying Manual, is said to have claimed that the Woolly Bugger was a variation of his Black Martinez.


Fly patterns indeed pass through may different tying benches, and they continue to do so once they have achieved classic status, adapted to a multitude of different uses by varying size, materials, and tying techniques. That’s what I did when I was trying to come up with a bulkier, water-pushing largemouth bass fly. I was looking for a fly that would allow me to be competitive when fishing with conventional gear bass anglers and their plastic lures, and I stumbled on the Calcasieu Pig Boat in a dollar bin at Outdoor Warehouse. I realized that the fly I wanted to tie was a Woolly Bugger with the rubber hackle that defines the Pig Boat, which was developed by Tom Nixon, a legendary Cajun outdoor writer and Louisiana fly-rod bass fisherman in the 1950s.

pig
THE CALCASIEU PIG BOAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED A MORE EXTREME EVOLUTION OF THE BASIC WOOLLY BUGGER PATTERN, INCORPORATING A BENT HOOK SHANK, UV POLAR CHENILLE, SILICONE SILI LEGS, AND A GLITTER-AND-SALT-IMPREGNATED TRAILER.

I took a 5/0 Daiichi 2720 specialty hook that is often used for poppers, carefully bent it into a type of keel hook, and added spiral lead wire wrappings for a mostly weedless hook-point-up ride and a controlled sink rate . . . not too fast, not too slow. I used bulkier UV Polar Chenille instead of standard chenille and added twelve strands of bouncy silicone Sili Legs as a hackle that extended beyond the hook bend. Then, after many trials with marabou, dental rubber dam, pine squirrel, and bunny skin strips, I added a thin piece of two-inch-long, salt-impregnated plastic as a trailer (the salt seems to cause the fish to hold on longer). This adaptation of the classic pattern works very well and has allowed me to simplify my subsurface fly box dramatically, in that I carry just three colors: black, crawdad, and a tilapia green-and-purple version for Mexican bass lakes where monster Florida bass chase schools of tilapia young. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to sell it and get royalties, because fly producers avoid anything with trailers, much less heretical plastic ones.

Another Woolly Bugger fly adaptation that I’ve made is tied on 4X-stout or 5X-stout straight-eyed hooks with a red-and-black bicolor marabou tail and long-fibered saddle hackle or high-graded hen hackle, tied in by the feather tip, not stem end, to give more lifelike undulating action. As Jay Fair taught me, you can tie in the feather tip ends, then moisten the fibers and twist the hackle fiber stem while stroking the fiber toward the rear of the fly. Jay also said marabou tails should be the length of the hook shank. The fly undulates like a plastic lure in jerky retrieves. Another version uses an olive-and-tan marabou tail and a medium olive body. Why two-tone tails? Many colors found in the animal world are not uniform or solid. Though I tie it for bass, I find this adaptation of a Woolly Bugger to be excellent for large trout when drifted along deep, undercut banks. I can also enhance its attractiveness by adding Sili Legs tied in perpendicular to the hook shank. They can make the pattern come alive.

Why is the basic Woolly Bugger so popular? It has great action, one of the main things every fly needs, and it’s quick and easy to tie. But also, tyers can modify it to imitate many things, tweaking it with variations in size, materials, weight, and color combinations to meet specific needs. A quick Internet search will reveal many Bugger adaptations that can serve as inspiration for your own tweaks.     


Woolly Bugger Variations: A Few of Many

The ways in which tyers have adapted the basic Woolly Bugger pattern are legion. Here is just a partial list of patterns that you can find on the Internet to serve as inspiration for your own tweaks and redesigns: Crystal Bugger, Seal Bugger, Spirit Bright Bugger, Cactus Bugger, Spin Bugger, UV Bugger, Beadhead Bugger (metal, glass, or plastic), Balance Bugger, Midnight Cowboy, Backstabber, Rubber Bugger, Chilean Rubber Bugger, Egg-Sucking Crystal Bugger, Yuba Bugger, Micro Bugger, Red-Headed Bugger, Bass Bugger, Dark Bugger, Polar Chenille Bugger.

If you’d like to learn more about the history and early evolutions of Woolly Buggers, consider seeking out Gary Soucie’s Woolly Wisdom: How to Tie and Fish Woolly Worms, Woolly Buggers, and Their Fish-Catching Kin (Frank Amato Publications, 2005).

Trent Robert Pridemore