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tidewaterfly

Your Best 12 Trout Flies?

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I could have gone several different ways here. I tried to keep it a "12 best" list. If I had to restrict myself to 12 flies forever, it might be a different list.

 

Pacific Northwest:

 

Troth pheasant tail

Prince nymph

Silvey's caddis pupa

Pat's rubber legs

Seal bugger

Chromie

BWO thorax

PMD parachute

Quigley's cripple

X-caddis

Flying ant

Norm Woods special

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tidewater, I am giving this topic a bump. I am somewhat surprised that more lists were not posted. Perhaps many trout guys are out enjoying a brown trout run or it is just too hard to narrow it down to 12. Would enjoy hearing from Al and/or Gretchen. Their work on the Fly Pattern Encyclopedia is still among my top 3 books ever, great inspiration for trout catchers.

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Colorado

 

Parachute ant

Klinkhamer style emerger (many sizes and colors)

foam beetle

Parachute Adams

Griffith's Gnat

Mole Fly

Rio Grande Trude

Beadhead Pheasant Tail

Pat's Rubber Legs

Span Juan Worm

Zebra Midge

Blue Poison Tung

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Colorado

 

Parachute ant

Klinkhamer style emerger (many sizes and colors)

foam beetle

Parachute Adams

Griffith's Gnat

Mole Fly

Rio Grande Trude

Beadhead Pheasant Tail

Pat's Rubber Legs

Span Juan Worm

Zebra Midge

Blue Poison Tung

Is your Mole fly the original or Charlie Craven's variation with CdC?

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I fish in New England

 

Pheasant tail

hares ear ( nat., olive, black)

Riffle stone

deep sparkle pupa

green rock worm

SBF hendrickson nymph

Elk hair caddis

rusty spinner ( 12-24

parachute BWO ( 18-24)

Hair wing dun in Hendrickson, red quill, sulfur, March brown

Parachute light cahill

compara dun ( BWO, sulfur, red quill,

 

steve

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Virginia Shanandoah streams...

 

1. Black Betty

2. Cooper John

3. Prince nymph

4. Elk hair CDC

5. GRBHHE

6. BHPT

7. Olive crystal bugger

8. Lime trude

9. Zebra midge

10. SAN Juan

11. Clown egg

12. Yellow/orange stimulator

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Is your Mole fly the original or Charlie Craven's variation with CdC?

I tie Craven's Mole Fly.

 

Have never heard of the original. I googled and first two pages are all Craven's.

 

Googling mole fly images, I found this. Is this the original?

 

5659L.jpg

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In no particular order:

rio grande king trude style

san juan worm

purple haze

psycho prince

bead head prince

lightning bug

wooly bugger

simulator(Kaufmann's)

stimulator

muddler minnow

pheasant tail

palomino midge

 

I have boxes and boxes of these but I still keep tying them The muddler is an older pattern but it never fails on the Yellowstone.

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Is your Mole fly the original or Charlie Craven's variation with CdC?

I tie Craven's Mole Fly.

 

Have never heard of the original. I googled and first two pages are all Craven's.

 

Googling mole fly images, I found this. Is this the original?

 

5659L.jpg

 

No. It's more of a style of tying (named after the River Mole in England) where the wing sticks out over eye on a dry fly ("Advanced WIng"). I think Craven based his fly on the idea (I could be wrong), but I know that Gary LaFontaine had a fly explicitly based on the idea ("the Occasion"). The fairly popular French fly "Pont-Audemer" was a copy as well. The idea is that the fly floats tail down, with the wing sticking up.

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Many thanks to all who replied! If 12 couldn't be listed, no problem, I expected some folks might have fewer in their list. I knew that more could be listed, but decided to limit it to 12.


I'll be compiling a master list from the responses. I also posted a similar thread on 2 other sites, and got a good cross section of geographic areas.


Just browsing the listed flies I find it very interesting that there are a few that seem to be universal.


Anyway, thanks again all!


BTW, if anyone else wants to post their list, feel free, as the more the better! smile.png

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1. Adams - Catskill or parachute - sizes 12 - 20

2. BWO - sizes 12 through 20 mostly parachute style

3. March Brown - foam extended body parachute size 8 - 12

4. March Brown Emerger size 8 - 12

5. Grey Fox - Comparadun and/or Parachute size 10-14

6. Grey Fox Emerger size 10-14

7. Sulphur Comparadun and/or Parachute size 14-16

8. Sulphur Emerger size 14-16

9. Iso-Brown Drake-Whatevertheheckitis (pheasant tail tail, pheasant tail body,Deer Hair post, Brown and Griz hackle Parachute) size 10-12

10. Yellow Stimulator - sizes 10 through 4

11. Little Yellow Stone (caddis style tie) - sizes 16 - 20

12. Ants - crickets and Hoppers

 

These are just the dry's - I'd add the green weenie - an egg and a caddis pupae to this list if more than 12 was allowed.

 

BCT

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1 - Grumpy Frumpy... Yellow/Red with Cree hackle

2- Articulated Trout Slider - White Gold

3- Belly Scratcher Minnow - Chub color and the good Gammy bait hook

4- Complex Twist Bugger - Olive with a copper cone

5- Cheech Leech - Any color, any time.

6- Mongrel Meat - White and pasty like John Stockton

7- Stoneflopper - Tan

8- Cinnamon Toast Ant - depending on the season, this might be closer to the top 3

9- Butt Head - Stimmy simplified with all the right flash in all the right places.

10- Duracell Jig - It just plain hunts

11- Bunny Midge - Yes... sometimes you need to fish a size 30

12- Rapala X-rap - white. No, I don't fish it on a fly rod.

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Cheech, I'm also a big fan of the X Raps, primarily for LM bass & Striped Bass and I don't fish them with a fly rod either! biggrin.png

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Cheech, I'm also a big fan of the X Raps, primarily for LM bass & Striped Bass and I don't fish them with a fly rod either! :D

X-raps awesome, but avoid barbaric, blasphemy if you tie up a silver & white& grey Zonker; recommend an 8 wgt, floating line wIth 10 lb. flourocarbo leader. If it moves fish on South Fork of Snake River, it will move them elsewhere. Chell, don't write me letters, I secretly use spinning, spincast, & casting rods too, especially if grandkids are fishing. Just sayin...

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