Wooly worm questions.

[Yotrout]

From what ive read is a wolly worm simply a wooly bugger on a smaller hook and with a straighter tail? Is this true?

Also,i would be interested to see some wooly worm patterns just for ideas sake. Thanks.

 

[buffalo7]

The wooly worm was out before the wooly bugger. from memory I think the tail was useualy red yarn. I sometimes would use a red feather or hackle fibers. Wooly buggers had a bushy marabu tail.

Wooly worms useualy were not weighted, Wooly Buggers were.

 

[njk3395]

Essentially its the same design, as buffalo stated it traditionally was unweighted with a red yarn tail. While buggers usually have beads or cones, with marabou.

 

[buffalo7]

Come to think of it, my first trout was caught on a wooly Worm. I used to fish them dry when I was a kid. ( started flyfishing when I was 15) They are a lot of fun fishing wet unweighted over blueguill nest, on a light rod. You can fish them weighted like a nymph. I remember 3 flies I had when I started, a Muddler Minnow, Wooly Worm, and a Quill Gordon wet fly.

 

[Yotrout]

Well buffalo i am glad we are in this tiny club. 🙂

 

[sandfly]

they can be weighted or unweighted, they can be fished dry or wet, or swam like a minnow. It is the predecessor to the woolly bugger. I use them still. good fly to use when there are tent caterpillars falling.

 

[Yotrout]

Why did the wooly worm evolve into the wooly bugger?

 

[gfen]

Because someone saw the need for a hellgrammite and a sweet young lass should have wander'd close and said the most immortal words of this modern era, "cor, that's a woolly bugger, eh wot?"

Except she weren't English, but in fact she was of the english... So one might surmise the words may have been something along the lines of "gosh, that's a woolly bugger, ya dumb bunny."

Except, you know, the english thing, not being Dutch, or Deutsch if you prefer.

So she probably just said, "that's a woolly bugger, dad."

The rest is history.

 

[Yotrout]

Wtf?

 

[gfen]

Outside of the flights of fancy involving accents, its 100% apocryphal.... A PA angler supposedly started tying it in the '60s to emulate hellgrammites, his daughter declared it to be "one woolly bugger" and thus it enters canon.

Prior to that, the Wooly Worm, so named because of its wool tag, begat the bugger. The worm was begaught (which isn't a word, but run with me here) from earlier palmer hackle flies that go back to the Dawn of Man. I believe a black stone obelisk from the alien forms beneath Io told us about it, but it could've just been Izzak Walton's Soldier Palmer, which is probably just another renamed fly from an older time.

 

[JeffK]

Out on western lakes when the fish are hitting short, many people shorten the tail of a wooly bugger just grabbing the tail feather between fingernails and pinching the excess off. A quick way to turn a wooly bugger into a wooly worm - it works too. One popular Pyramid Lake wooly worm is the Martini Olive (olive body and hackle with short red tail). I always liked that name.

Back in the bad old days wooly worms were commonly fished with spinning tackle under a spinning bubble - a clear football shaped bobber that you could fill with water to adjust the weight so it cast well.

 

[Lonewolve]

Russell Blessing {father of the Wooly Bugger} was from Lancaster area.

 

[shakey]

wooly worms are a fun fly.i prefer them to wooly buggers.

i tye mine with wool tails or hackle fiber tails,whichever is handy.

 

[shakey]

oh yeah,i tye them in brown with brown hackle,yellow with grizzly hackle,olive with griz,black with black ,peacock with griz,and i tye a gray one with dun hackle.

 

[Maurice]

I believe he was from leb'non.....at least that where a co-worker who lived across the street from him lived.

 

[Leteras]

I tie my wooly worms with a glow in the dark tail to fish early morning, evening and stained waters. Its a killer way to fish it that not many have tried.