DryFlies4Life

Most of my fly fishing trout in streams. In these streams I don't base my change up time by casts, but the runs I fish. I will fish a fishy looking run, or a hole that I know holds fish. I will fish this run entirely with one pattern, putting multiple casts into the extra fishy looking spots. If I don't catch anything once I've finished the run, I'll switch up and start over. Hatches are an entirely different situation...

Forceps, needle nose pliers, tippet and leader material in sizes 2lb test through 8lb test, a couple ore made leaders, 1 or 2 fly boxes, dry fly floatant and my net.

I crimp my barbs using a vise. When I forget to or the hook is to small any hemostats or needle nose pliers will do the trick. It really dosent matter as long as the fly can pass the yarn test.

Those who can tie below a size 20 are truly skilled. However there fish ability I still question. We all know trout of all waters eat tons of midges and other no-see-ums, but how are you supposed to fish a pattern you can't even see? Even my young eyes can have difficulty at times trying to find a size 16 in the riffles, much less a size 22. I guess those who can fish flies that small are quite skilled to...

My father gave me his older fenwick. great rod, easy to cast, and very light compared to what i had been using previously. before I was using a 'berkley safari' or something like that. Old rod, beat to crap, but it served me well through the summer and i caught some my biggest trout on it. But switching to the fenwick was like like a dream. amazingly sensitive and shoot a line perfectly. would recomend.

Looks like one of the old lee wulff dragon fly patterns. Either way cool pattern.

I usually tie 5 demo flys, that way gives me enough room to master the fly, and enough flys so that can see what the trout think, considering I may lose some.

For those asking about my extended body fly, My technique was to take a small needle and put it in the vise tying my materials onto the needle. Im almost certain its impossible to tye a fly with techniques i use without a needle.

for the body I would take some elk hair and tie it in somewhere near the butts, at a point where the elk hair extends far enough out to match the size of a mayflys body and tail, also making sure I had a long thread tag. Then I would warp the thread up the elk hair with the tag also getting toyed down. Once at the appropriate length for the body, I reversed the process and back down to the butts, once again bring the tag with me. tye of and your base is done.

As for the dubbing, polypropylene dubbing is long and stringy and using a rotary vise, can be dubbed with out thread to make the body. Douse the body in head cement and let dry. Now the body is complete. Pull on tag to curve the body.

Experimenting with detached bodys and deer hair wings. So far tying the body hasnt been to hard, and the deer hair splays perfectly for the shape of mayfly wing.

I use my siscors most often, they are nessicary for almost ever fly you tie. I wish my station had easier access to materials, without making a mess and leaving materials scattered about. Normally depending on on the season 2-3 spools of thread sufices. I'm not an advanced tyer so the most tools I be ever had is a about 5 tools, scissors, bodkin, whip finisher, hackle pliers and hair stacker, just the basics.

I received a older superfly fly tying kit a few years back (I think it was made in 1997) and it came with a bottle of head cement. I still have that bottle of cement and still use it today.

If your also going to be teaching them to cast I would go for a 5-6wt. When I learned to fly fish I started with a 8wt fly rod. Learning to cast I didn't let the rod do the work and ended up putting a lot of force into my casts, which killed my young arms and made me tire quickly, however I was also only 13 at the time.

As for techniques, the 5wt is probably the most versitile rod ever made. Having spent the past summer fishing dries with an 8wt, anything less then a size 12 dry is diffucult to fish with and you will find yourself drowning a lot of flys with a larger, clumsier rod. Especially if your a beginner.

TL;DR, 5wt extremely versatile and easier to cast with. I'd go with the 5

fish in my locale are rainbow trout, costal cutthroat, and dolly varden, but i havent ever heard of anyone catching a dolly so methinks there all gone around here. They fish around here dont seem to have there habits set in stone. during the summer the rainbows would rise to anything, and the cutthroats will try and eat anything that moves. That said however, muddlers tied with a bit of red bucktail in the wing often produces and pink-orange shrimp imitations are a good standby.

As for the situation of one fly catching one species, and another fly catching the other, this holds true around here. Our cutthroats are normally sea runs; they are used to eating shrimp, salmon fry and other little copepods. So if you went to the river and started fishing a shrimp pattern you could pick up a cuttie fairly easy. However when a resident rainbow sees a pink fly coming down the river, it probably dosent have the slightest clue what its looking at, and probably wont take.

In the summer during anysort of hatch, if you can match it, you'll catch rainbows, and very small cutties. The big sea run cutties are meat eaters coming into the rivers only to eat eggs in the fall, and salmon fry in the spring and it takes an extremley dense hatch to get the larger cutties dialed in on the insects. the smaller cutties on the other hand spend 2-3 years in the river and will feed on what ever the river has to offer, much like the rainbows.

so theres my example of one fly catching one species, and another fly catching the other. This is north america west coast stuff though, so i dont know how useful it is to those in the east.

interesting experiment, neat to see how in pans out.

My question is though, dont the rosters try and nip you when you pull there feathers out? surely they must not like it and be rather annoyed with it. If someone was trying to pull my hair out they would end up with a broken nose.

Got bored and tied these big size 10 hair bodied flys. Don't know how productive they'll be as they are really quite huge, coming from a persons who's staple fly is a size 8 stimulator

In my opinion chenille has the ability to be a substitute, but dubbing is way more versitile, and depending on the fly, produces better results.

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="clarkii" data-cid="529454" data-time="1357526973"><p>

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="flytyinfreak" data-cid="529235" data-time="1357431935"><p>The spot to stand is where the best presentation is achieved.</p></blockquote>

^ yep-<br />

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my question would be- what smart fisherman would fish upstream from a starting point and not fish on the way back?<br />

and- im not sure about this whole san juan shuffle stuff- but in the small clear mountain streams i fish- any disturbance has the potential to put the fish down- you tread soft...<br />

<br />

Clarkii.</p></blockquote>

The San Juan shuffle dosent nessicarly meen disturbing the fish. Assuming you get far enough upstream and above the fish and don't knock around rocks and grind gravel the fish won't be disturbed. Instead a wave of silt; and the goodies that come with it (various larvae, smaller nymphs, worms) will hit the fish. The abundance of food will put the fish in a feeding mood and make it easier to approach them.

I wouldn't call this technique ethical as its basically chuming. I know this yew unique has been used by bait fishers for a long time, but it seems wrong to use it fly fishing.

I fished with my dog, Masie, a Brittany / Springer cross fishing almost everyday of the summer and had no problems. being a bird dog she was quite content galivanting through the bushes chasing birds while fished. the only problems i ever had was when she saw a bird on the other side of the river, and decided to cross the river right where i was fishing. This would end up with her disturbing the whole pool, me having to swim across the river to get her, and a "bad dog".

looks like an excellent imitation. probably the best imitation of a caddis fly that dosent require extremely complicated steps to creating an exact imitation. will have to tie some up and try this summer.

Caddis flys cant be beat in my opinion. they are the number one hatch on my local waters and the trout seem to be more willing to take caddis flys then other hatches in the area.