Fly Fishing Patterns

From The Art of Fly Tying:

A fly angler who took up the sport twenty years ago may never have fished a tradtional wet-fly pattern. The fancy patterns of the late 1800s and early 1900s have all but disappeared from most fly shops and catalogs. Yet wet flies were the most popular patterns in America until the 1950s. Traditional wet flies had colorful names like "Queen of the Waters" and "Wickham's Fancy" and were meant to be fished below the surface to suggest a variety of drowned mayflies. Most were attractor patterns with plenty of flash and color. Wet flies went out of fashion as more realistic patterns, such as nymphs and dry flies, gained popularity. But wet didn't disappear entirely, and for good reason: they still catch fish. Today, wet flies are making a comeback. Traditional wet flies like Parmachene Belle and Wooly Worm remain popular with flytiers and anglers, and the soft-hackle fly, a wet-fly/nymph hybrid developed in England, has found wide acceptance in America. Though closely related, traditional wet flies and soft-hackle flies differ somewhat in the way they are tied. Wet flies often resemble dry fly patterns with hackle and wings sloping back over a dubbed body. Soft-hackle flies seldom have wings and are more sparsely tied. They have a tightly dubbed body, and hackle made of partridge, hen or other soft-fibered feathers. Wet and soft-hackle flies are most effective when fished unweighted on a dead-drift, or as a dropper fly rigged several inches below a dry. Another type of wet fly is the salmon fly. These complex and beautiful fly patterns are related to both wet flies and streamers, but mnake up a distinct fly category. Some salmon flies have elaborate and colorful feather wings. Called fully dressed, these patterns rarely see water. They are usually tied for the purpose of display and feature married wings. Often made of exotic and hard-to-find materials, fully-dressed flies are considered the pinnacle of the flytier's art.

From The Art of Fly Tying:

A streamer is designed to imitate a baitfish rather than an insect. Traditional streamers have hackle-feather wings that extend back, or "stream," over the body of the fly. Another popular type of streamer is the bucktail, which has hair wings, making it more durable. Both types can be extremely productive for salmon, trout, steelhead, bass and even pike. Some streamer patterns, called imitators, closely resemble a real baitfish. Others, called attractors, use flash, color and movement to draw a strike. Streamers are generally tied on extra-long hooks to help give them the long profile of a baitfish. Streamers and bucktails are often weighted with lead wire, and are fished deep by casting them with a weighted line, or trolling. Streamers can be retrieved upstream or down, or across the current with a jerky, twitching retrieve to simulate a baitfish. Fly-tying courses often begin with a steamer or bucktail pattern. Their large size and simple construction make these patterns easy to tie. Many anglers believe that eyes increase the effectiveness of a streamer. Dab on eyes with a small dowel dipped in white acrylic paint. Use a smaller dowel to dab on the black pupil.

From The Art of Fly Tying:

When the hot summer winds blow across the water, trout feed heavily on the increasing numbers of land insects, or terrestrials, that accidentally fall, or are blown into, lakes and streams. Then, a well-tied terrestrial imitation can be extremely productive. But don't be afraid to try a terrestrial pattern in early and late season as well. Terrestrials such as ants and beetles are a staple in a trout's diet throughout the season, and their imitations can be used as searching patterns when no insects are emerging. Even during a heavy mayfly hatch, some trout will rise to terrestrials that drift into their feeding window. Cast a terrestrial along the bank or shoreline. Twitch it occasionally to make it look like a struggling insect. This will draw fish from farther away than will a fly drifting motionless. Success with terrestrials imitaitions isn't limited to trout fishing. Panfish and bass will readily take a hopper or cricket pattern twitched on the surface of a lake or farm pond. Terrestrial types include: Ants. These small insects make up a large percentage of the natural terrestrials that find their way into the water. Trout feed on ants whenever they are available, making imitations effective from early spring thought late fall. Hoppers and Crickets. Although they represent only a small percentage of a fish's diet, hoppers and crickets are commonly taken by trout, panfish and bass, especially in late summer. Many terrestrial patterns are tied complete with legs. Beetles. The opportunistic trout will rise to a beetle even in winter, making beetle imitations year-round producers. Imitations are tied using deer hair or foam bodies, often with a small piece of fluorescent yarn.

Here's a great one from VarmintCaller~

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Brown Woolly Bugger

By Dave Hughes

The largest mayflies fall into the burrowing category. Some reach two inches long when they're mature, and make quite a mouthful for any trout. Many, such as the eastern green drake (Ephemera guttalata) and midwestern and western Hex (Hexagenia limbata) have two- or three-year life cycles, meaning the nymphs are out there all year long in one instar or another. Trout always feed on them when given a chance at them.

Burrowers, as their name implies, either dig tunnels into mud, marl, and clay bottoms, or work their way into sand or gravel bottoms until they're out of sight. They come out to forage along the bottom only at night, which limits the time they're available to trout, and also the time that they're useful as the basis for imitations, to the hours of darkness.

When mature and ready to emerge, burrower nymphs leave their tunnels or free themselves from the sand and gravel, then swim boldly to the top, where the nymphal skin splits in the surface film and the dun escapes. This, like their feeding, usually happens after dark, though on a gloomy summer afternoon, say a day with thunderheads lowering and darkening the sky, they might begin emerging two to three hours before dark.

Though many more imitative dressings have been devised for these large nymphs, it's difficult to beat a Woolly Bugger in the appropriate size and color to resemble the natural. The marabou tail undulates in the water, and represents the swimming motion of the natural more realistically than the most exact but lifeless imitation might. With any insect that swims briskly and emerges in poor light, it's more important to copy the movement than it is the precise shape.

Materials for the Brown Woolly Bugger:

• Hook - 3X long, size 6 - 12
• Weight - 15-20 turns lead wire
• Thread - Brown 6/0
• Tail - Brown marabou with a few strands of red Krystal Flash
• Hackle - Brown hen, palmered over body
• Body - Brown chenille

Tying Instruction for the Brown Woolly Bugger:

Step 1: Fix hook in vise, layer mid-shank with lead wire, and layer working thread to the bend. Measure a clump of marabou the full length of the hook, and tie it in at the bend of the hook. You can also tie the marabou long, then pinch it off at the right length. Tie in 4 to 8 strands of Krystal Flash, just short of the marabou length.

Step 2: Tie in the body chenille at the bend of the hook. Select a hackle with fibers about two times the hook gap. Tie it in by the tip, with the concave side against the body. Leave room for one turn of chenille behind the hackle tie-in point. Take your thread forward to the hook eye.

Step 3: Take a turn of chenille behind the hackle, then wind the body forward in front of the hackle to the hook eye. Tie it off and chip the excess.

Step 4: Wind the hackle forward in evenly-spaced turns to the hook eye. The hackle fibers should tend to flare back, not forward. Tie off the hackle stem, clip the excess, form a neat thread head, and whip-finish the fly.

Tiger Weave Bitch Creek Nymph By Al Campbell Woven bodies create a look that is unmatched in other forms of tying. If you can weave a fly body, you can create another dimension in your fly that simple tying steps can't create. This added dimension results in a fly that looks more realistic to the fish. Since the size of the fly is important if you are going to see detailed pictures of the steps, I'll be picking on larger insects in this series, but these tying steps can be used to create much smaller flies as well. A woven midge larva isn�t out of the question once you learn how to weave a certain style of weave. My focus here is to show you how to perform the weave, not merely a pattern. It will be up to you to put on the thinking cap and use these new skills in other patterns as you see fit. The only limiting factor here is your imagination and willingness to experiment a little. Although I have chosen materials that are easy to see in a photo, color and size of the materials you select should be based on what you are trying to imitate. If you're trying to imitate a damselfly nymph, shades of olive, yellow and brown will work well. Stoneflies are generally some combination of black and orange or yellow and brown, but investigation in your local waters with a nymph net might reveal a tendency toward tan and olive or black and yellow. Ultra chenille, punch embroidery yarn, wool yarn, poly yarn and antron are just the tip of the pile of materials you can use to create realistic, woven bodies. Use your imagination and the materials you have easy access to. Weaving isn't as hard as it looks. It just takes a little practice to get good at it, but the fish won't be too picky if your fly doesn't look fit for a frame at first. What do you have to lose; time or a few materials? The skills you gain will more than offset your monetary investment and the time will be well spent learning new ways to create something a fish will eat. After all, isn't that why you're here in the first place? Let's get started.

List of materials: Tiger Weave Bitch Creek Nymph   Hook: Nymph, Mustad 80050BR; Tiemco 200R; or equivalent. Thread: 6/0 or 3/0, color as desired for effect, traditional is black. Tail: Rubber leg strands, any color will work. I'm using orange here. Body: Woven strands of orange and black Ultra Chenille (vernille). Again, any color or texture of material can be used to create the body you want. Thorax: Black Ultra Chenille. Legs: Dun or black hackle wrapped around the thorax. Antennae: Rubber leg material, same as tail.   Tying steps: 1. Start the thread on the hook. Tie in a loop of rubber leg material by the tips of the loop. Keep it spread apart as you tie it down to the hook shank. Tie all the way to the bend. 2. Clip the loop with your scissors to form a split tail.

3. Tie the light colored body material to the far side of the hook. 4. Tie the body material down all the way to the tail.

5. Next, tie the darker body material down to the near side of the hook. 6. Again, all the way to the tail. I usually make several half hitches in the thread here so I can leave the thread dangling at the hook bend as I weave. If that isn't comfortable to you, you can half hitch the thread and cut it off, but you will have to start it later when your hands are full.

7. With your right hand, wrap the light colored material over the top of the hook as shown. Stop with the material where you see it here. 8. With your left hand, wrap the dark material over the light material on the top of the hook, then under the hook and stopping on the near side of the hook as shown. Don't take your hands off either material during this weaving process. 9. Now, wrap the light material over the dark material on the bottom of the hook as shown.

10. Then continue over the top of the hook with the light material. 11. Next, wrap the dark material over the light material on top of the hook.

12. And, under the hook like you did before. 13. Repeat this process, (dark over light on top of the hook, and light over dark on the bottom of the hook), until you have the body length you want (about half the hook shank in length). 14. Holding both body materials in your left hand to keep tension on them, bring the thread forward over the hook in front of the body materials. (If you cut the thread, you will have to start it over here while keeping tension on the body materials). 15. Now, switch hands with the body materials and tie them down with the thread.

16. Inspect the body. Is the light material on the bottom and the dark material on the top? 17. Clip the light material, but leave the dark material attached to the hook.

18. Make sure everything is tied down securely. A couple of half hitches here wouldn't hurt. 19. Tie in a long, soft hackle, curvature down. 20. Wrap the dark body material forward to create a dark thorax.

21. Tie off the body material and trim, leaving plenty of room for a head. 22. Wrap the hackle forward, spacing it as evenly as possible. 23. Tie off the hackle at the head and trim. 24. Tie in a strand of rubber leg material behind the hook eye. 25. Bring the other side of the rubber strand forward and tie it down to form a split antenna. 26. Create a nice head that covers all of the rubber leg material. 27. Whip-finish and trim the thread. Trim the antennae to length. 28. From the top, your finished fly should look like this. 29. From the bottom, it should look like this. You can trim the thread you see on the bottom of the body if you want, but the fish won't complain if you don't. You can modify this process by using different materials to create nymphs of other species. Just be sure to practice the weave until you're happy with the results.