Fly Selection

A portion of the book 'Fly Tying: An Enjoyable Hobby' by David and Cheryl Young | June 2009

The advantage of fly tying is that you can match the aquatic foods better in the waters that you fish. Take the time to collect and sample the aquatic foods and take them home to the tying bench. Next, look through the 100 plus patterns listed in this book and make the closest match.

Customize your flies with the correct color of materials that match your samples. Pay close attention to your fly’s size, shape, silhouette, and texture. Make sure that the fly you tie matches these factors with the natural. By doing this the flies you tie will be the best ones for the water that you fish. You’ll catch more and larger fish.

In writing this book I have purposefully omitted the material colors. In the real world aquatic foods take on their own specific coloration for the waters that they inhabit. Since these foods are constantly preyed upon they must match their surroundings to survive. Usually aquatic foods are camouflaged to match the weeds, rocks, and soil that they inhabit. When in doubt select a fly that is the same color of the bottom.

Don’t be afraid to be creative in your tying. This effort in sampling the actual foods that fish are accustomed to eating and matching them will pay off in larger and more fish. This process will make you a better fisherman.

Fish feed upon a great variety of water and land born nourishments. An angler’s artificial flies are designed to imitate these foods. Matching your fly to the specific fare that the fish are presently feeding upon is key to success.

Land born foods are classified as terrestrials; consequently, water born foods are classified as aquatics. The significant terrestrials are ants, grasshoppers, mice, moths, lizards, earthworms, beetles, and crickets. The important aquatics are caddisflies, mayflies, stoneflies, midges, craneflies, dragonflies, damselflies, crustaceans, forage fish, leeches and eels.

These natural foods can be imitated by today’s flies. But first the natural food must be identified. Knowledge of what the fish are presently feeding upon is essential to select the right fly. Time spent observing before fishing is well spent.

Start by watching the waters surface for insect activity. Observe both the birds and the fish to see what they are feeding upon. I carry a pair of compact binoculars and use them often. Then I collect a sample insect.

A small aquarium net can help collect the insects. Place the net just under the waters surface to catch the actively hatching insects. Also use the net to catch the air born ones.

Find a spider’s web and observe its contents for a history of the available insects.

A stomach pump can remove the fish’s recently ingested food. But first a fish must be caught. The pump is sold in most fly shops and is designed for its intended purpose. It is simply a rubber bulb with a plastic tube. The bulb injects a small amount of water into the fish’s stomach and the pressure on the pump is released sucking some of the fish’s ingested food back into the bulb. Now squeeze the bulbs contents back into your hand or into a white container. Inspect the contents. A major disadvantage is that the pump only removes the small food items and not the large ones lodged into the stomach. The pumps’ advantage is giving you the small presently ingested insects for identification.

A large screen is useful in identifying the assortment of foodstuffs in a stream. Such knowledge is useful when purchasing or tying flies for the specific stream. The screen is made by stapling a three foot section of window screen to two broom handles or one inch by two inch slat boards. Place the screen downstream from your waded position. Next, dislodge or overturn rocks with your feet and allow the debris to collect onto the screen. Take the screen a shore and examine its contents. It will contain a large sample of the streams aquatic founds. Save its contents in small bottles filled with eighty percent alcohol and twenty percent water.

Once the foodstuff is collected, try to identify them. Next, go through your fly box and make a match. Choose a fly that mimics the foodstuffs size, texture, color and shape. Imitate the foods action with the proper presentation and retrieve.

The size concerns the foodstuffs measurements in terms of thickness, width, and length. Foods smaller than half an inch are best imitated as to its exact length; on the other hand, foods larger than half an inch are best imitated as to its exact thickness and width. Choose your fly selection accordingly. The texture is the overall feel as to the foods softness or rigidity. A fish’s mouth readily detects texture and a too soft or too hard of a fly will be readily rejected. While a good match will be ingested.

The shape is the foods silhouette. This outline is an important consideration in matching the fly. Suggestive and impressionistic flies that match the foodstuffs three dimensional shape are the most successful. Suggestive flies can match a multitude of possible foods. While sometimes exact imitations restrict the number of matches.

The color match is helpful but it is not as important as the other elements of imitation. Natural foods color and patterns can vary in shades and tones. Hence select your fly as to the general color pattern of the natural.

Action, is the foodstuffs natural movement. The presentation and the retrieve mimics’ this motion. Action depicts a living movement that fish key upon while feeding.

Volumes of text could be written on the huge variety of foodstuffs eaten by fish. There are thousands of varieties of both land born and stream born insects. Try to classify your findings into one of the general groups. Match the natural foods size, texture, color, action, and silhouette with one of your flies.