Trout Egg color

[Timmy Ties Flys 0]

Hello, Timmy again simple question today I fish central PA what colour should I make my fly eggs? For Rainbow, brows, brooks and mabey tiger trout what colours and what time of year do i fish them.

[flytire 0]

[tjm 0]

Two things, eggs haven't produced much for me, even real ones, and, eggs can be found in every shade from bright orange to almost white. I think the red/orange eggs fade with age.

The guys doing well with egg patterns right now in Mo. are using paler colors and some are using the half and half things in green and white. My thoughts are, can you tie some pale pink or peach and use markers to adapt the color to what the fish want that day? I don't know if appropriate markers are available, but it sure would cut down on stocking materials.

You could tie a dozen in every yarn color and experiment. I'm a lazy bum and just use nymphs. I think the reason eggs don't work for me is I don't know how t fish them.

Very pretty blue flytire. Contrasts nicely with the hot spot.

[Bruce Derington 0]

Blue can be productive in the Erie Tribs.,

Check out Jeff Blood"s blood Dot video for technique

[CasualAngler 0]

Two things, eggs haven't produced much for me, even real ones, and, eggs can be found in every shade from bright orange to almost white. I think the red/orange eggs fade with age.

The guys doing well with egg patterns right now in Mo. are using paler colors and some are using the half and half things in green and white. My thoughts are, can you tie some pale pink or peach and use markers to adapt the color to what the fish want that day? I don't know if appropriate markers are available, but it sure would cut down on stocking materials.

You could tie a dozen in every yarn color and experiment. I'm a lazy bum and just use nymphs. I think the reason eggs don't work for me is I don't know how t fish them.

Very pretty blue flytire. Contrasts nicely with the hot spot.

Sharpie markers come in an ever enlarging selection of Colors... would those work?

 

[tjm 0]

 

would those work?

that was my question

 

I have several Pantone markers that have colored various materials but I have not done egg stuff.

[CasualAngler 0]

 

 

would those work?

 

that was my question

 

I have several Pantone markers that have colored various materials but I have not done egg stuff.

It's all a matter of how much color bleed one would get from both the marker & the egg material. Sharpies do bleed somewhat on porous material...

 

Alan

[NohackleHS 0]

On my home stream in California the trout really like an egg tied with a base color of "Oregon Cheese" (mostly bright yellow but with an orange hue) and the spot is "Flame" (bright pinkish red). It is very productive when the fish are on eggs. A lot of time the fly also acts as an "attractor". By this I mean that it seems that the egg will catch the eye of a fish and then they see the trailer fly and hit it. So even though the fish aren't hitting the egg fly, your catch rate still improves.

[vicrider 0]

For years in the spring and fall we caught steelhead, salmon, lake trout, and even brookies on simple yarn flies tied on the stream. Since we were using an early adaption of Czech nymphing style we used straight mono in tests to match the water or added tippet if necessary. We would use up eye hooks, run the line through the eye and snell the hook on. Lift the line behind the eye and tuck in a couple of hunks of steelhead yarn in contrasting colors and snip them into sort of an egg shape. Back in the days of lighter pressure and heavier runs we took an almost embarrassing amount of fish on these with whatever weight was required to get them deep into pools and pockets on the North Shore tributaries of Lake Superior. Some days certain colors would be better than others but it was pretty consistent that two clashing colors seemed to do best.

[whatfly 0]

The egg bite can be very odd depending on the waters you fish and the time of year. Convention dictates that you use the size and color of whatever is spawning at the time, be it trout, char, salmon, sucker, etc. Like all flies, size is very important but color can also matter as well. Eggs vary in color by species but they also vary due to length of time since they've been laid, and of course water clarity can be a factor during presentation as well. Flytire may have just been trying to be funny, but I've seen photos in AK of salmon eggs in blues and purples, and in certain conditions they can even be chartreuse, so color can vary quite a bit even for a single species.

 

That being said, in practice you can fish egg patterns year round, in moving water or still, even when you are months away from the spawn. If I have to boil it all down to just the basics, I would carry red, orange (Oregon cheese is a good shade already mentioned), and pink, which covers most of the stages of salmonid eggs. In terms of size 8mm covers Pacific salmon for the most part, and 6mm for trout or thereabouts (larger sizes are useful when visibility is lower). Glo-bugs and Sucker Spawn are the easiest patterns to tie, although by far and away the simplest way of making egg patterns is to just by plastic beads, "Trout Beads" being one of the more popular brands. Now "beading" is not without some controversy and you can search the forum for past threads, but just wanted to lay out all the options.

[flytire 0]

Flytire may have just been trying to be funny, but I've seen photos in AK of salmon eggs in blues and purples, and in certain conditions they can even be chartreuse, so color can vary quite a bit even for a single species.

 

 

 

nope! serious as a heat attack.

 

Chartreuse eggs are probably even better

 

[sandflyx 0]

for natural looking eggs in Pa a cream/yellow in a size 16 or 18 will do.

[Dubs 0]

I fish eggs quite a bit tied in the sucker spawn or blood dot methods. I use mostly size 14 with micro egg yarn. Pink lady, apricot supreme, egg, and oregon cheese are my best colors, but I prefer those pastel colors with sparse loops that get a great translucent look wet. Off color water or for something different I tie Crystal Meth eggs with diamond braid in lots of colors.

I have heard rainbows can be very interested in blue but I have never actually tried it. I also use them mainly as an attractor ahead of a nymph, but sometimes the fish just are just on them. Fall and spring is traditional but hey see what happens... match size, opacity, and brightness with water color and flow.