Many good points have been made in this thread. I hope my comments are up to the standard set.
Trout, like all fish, have little, tiny brains, short attention spans and only a few settings: hungry, spooked, aroused and maybe a one or two others. Also, their eyes have only rods, which see black and white (bright and shadow). They have no cones, which we have and allow us to tell the difference between green and brown.
It doesn't mean color isn't important in a fly pattern, it's just that the fish doesn't see it the way we do. Every shade is just a version of gray.
How many times have you made a bad cast that resulted in your fly dragging across the surface, only to have a trout (yes, even a wild trout) or two chase it?
And how often has a bud or pine pollen cone dropped into a creek only to be eaten by a curious trout.
They are not nearly as smart as we give them credit for. That doesn't mean they're easy to catch. They're actually really hard to fish when you consider 10 trout in a leisurely evening of fishing is a pretty good day, even if you covered a quarter of a mile and fished over a few hundred trout.
Long ago, however, I modified my approach to take advantage of the situation at hand:
- Unless trout are rising steadily for a hatch, I don't fish dry flies. When there's a hatch, I do my best to match color and size then I focus on rising fish. If I can't get the first one to hit, I don't obsess. I move on to the next riser.
- When trout are not rising, I presume they are on the bottom, possibly under rocks, and adjust my technique accordingly, using whatever nymphing technique is appropriate.
- And here's where my comments intersect with the notion of junk flies. Mayflies, stoneflies, and caddis flies are cool, but trout also eat cranefly larvae, crayfish, snails, small fish, dragonfly larvae, earthworms, the eggs of other fish (which spawn throughout the spring and summer) and any number of other creatures, many of which are substantially larger than a size 10 or 12. Therefore, I almost start with something big, cream colored and typically made with some sort of cotton. In short, I fish mainly on the bottom and mainly with what a lot of folks call junk flies.
My go to flies:
- The Honeybug. Devised by Paul Berger in the hamlet of Trout Run, north of Williamsport, the Honeybug is nothing more than a bit of four-strand cotton chenille wrapped around a hook. Four-strand cotton chenille, used primarily to make cheap bathrobes and towels, is no longer made, so true Honeybug material is hard to come by. I carefully guard my dwindling supply. The thing that makes it effective is that when cotton gets wet, and especially when it's under water, it has a translucent quality that's not evident when it's dry. And that translucent quality resembles the translucent quality of a living caterpillar, grub, small fish, or fish egg.
- The rubber band grub. Black thread. A rubber band from your desk at work. A size 12 to 8 hook. That's the body. The head can be a bead of any color. Or you can use turkey or peacock to give it a buggy looking head with legs. Want to be really fancy: use red or pink thread with a bead head to give it a so-called "hot spot," but trout don't really see color.
- Sucker spawn. Cotton yarn, usually pale yellow, tied in tight loops along a size 12 to 8 hook. White thread in most cases, but sometimes red because that looks to me like blood veins. But, again, trout don't see color.
- San Juan worms (sometimes with squirmy wormy material)
- Black and yellow marabou streamer. This is a variant on a traditional smallmouth streamer, but trout and smallmouths like a lot of the same foods. Using marabou instead of bucktail gives the fly a lot of action with minimal twitching, which is ideal for small stream fishing. Use a tinsel body, gold or silver, as you see fit.
- For dry flies (in descending order): deer hair beetles and caterpillars (or cork or foam), elk hair caddis, sulfurs, the occasional green drake if there's a hatch, royal coachman, Adams.
I carry easily 35 to 40 other patterns and occasionally fish with them, but in more than 50 years of fly fishing, I would estimate I've caught 90 percent of my trout on these patterns. I like to tie other flies, because tying a good fly is its own challenge, but when I fish, I want to outsmart at least a few of those small, smooth-brained creatures.
If you're wondering, I have heard plenty of people chattering near me when I catch fish offering comments like, "That's not really fly fishing." I have no idea what flies they're using, but if they're paying that much attention to what I'm doing, I'd venture they're not having nearly as much fun as me.
