I figured I'd poll the board to see what everyone likes. My imagination in fly tying has been very lax over the last year or so with little inspiration to experiment. I'll be hitting though Yough at the end of June with some guys from the board and will be throwing streamers a good portion of the time for big trout and bass.

My usual suspects are clouser style flies, and bunny leeches. I don't often even tie a traditional bugger anymore give how easy it is to whip up a bunny leech.

So what are some of your favorite patterns? I'm thinking some sort of articulated sculpin or just something creative. It doesn't have to be super easy to tie but preferably not overly involved as I'll be tying for myself as well as friends so time is of the essence, to a point.

Watcha got?

I've been having a blast tying and fishing my version of the zuddler. It's been really productive from CT to Central PA this year. I've been tying them on #4 and #6 with olive, black, tan, white and grizzly rabbit strips and assorted body colors and wire ribbing and deer collars. Mixing and matching the combos has been the fun part. A couple that have really stood the tests have been olive rabbit/rootbeer body, tan collar, silver/copper wire and red throat or flash. Grizzly rabbit, white chenille body, grey collar blue wire. All tied with coneheads. They've been producing on both trout (primary) and bass.

slumpbusters all day long. Easy tie and catches fish.

There was an awesome assortment of streamers in the recent articulated fly swap. I still have yet to try mine out and its bugging me!

Swap page

(if the link doesnt work, there are pics on p. 6)

I started tying this one after I shot my first hen pheasant.I know it does not look like much, but it works year round.
Size 8 hook
Tail: feather from the lower rear of the bird ( these feathers are alot like marabou)
Body: Hareline dubbing " dirty yellow" Sometimes I blend in a little sparkle with the dubbing w/a coffee bean grinder.
Collar: Feather from the top back " these feathers have the dark and light tan colors"
Head: Sand variant zonker strip " cut from strip and inserted into a dubbing loop and wrapped foreward tease it back as you work toward the eye".
I do weight it as well.

Shenk's White Minnow all day, every day.

I started using angel hair in baitfish color wich is a dark green and a light green belly. Size 4 for smallies. I just started adding a stinger to it to keep from missing short strikes. I set it up so the stinger hook is facing up and just at the end of the tail. It works well for smallies, pike(caught my first one last weekend) and musky (didn't catch but felt like a whale on my 5 wt switch.)
The stinger facing up allows me do literatly swing my streamer just along the bottom of the stream which works good.

I like the look of some of those streamers from the swap page. I will definitely have to emulate some of those. Also the gold standard for smallies is a crayfish pattern IMO so I'll have to whip up some of those as well.

I enjoy fishing streamers almost as much as throwing a dry. Watching a fish chase it down is just as good as watching a dry get slurped. I love summertime fishing!

these are a few of my latest streamer creations.
All original patterns

Quote:

I could not fish these. The potential risk of drowning as I tried to retrieve one of these beauties from a snag would be too great. I'll stick to wooly buggers and the like. I rarely shed a tear when I break one off.

Thanks for the compliment....the sidewinder was featured on Streamers365 project last month...hoping it raises some nice cash for charity on the ebay auctions - going now...

i'm not sure of the regulation about live links etc here, so if anyone is interested, hit up ebay and seach sidewinder or streamers365 - you'll find some great flies for sale for charity

Bunny strip streamers have been good to me. Bugger or slump buster.

I tie a smaller version of an articulated circus peanut. This has been a great streamer for me on the little Juniata. I tie it on size 8 front hook with a sze 10 on the back. Killer pattern in the fall.

dace

try tying a semi short tailed bunny leech then put lead eyes on cluser style and sping a deer hair head makes a nice easy tie if you can spin deer hair