If your heading off on a fishing trip the gotcha fly in a few colour combinations and a couple of sizes should definitely be included in you fly box. I was looking at the Fulling Mills bonefish flies and one of them was predominately orange with a pearl body … this is my version of that combination. It doesn’t matter if it’s fresh or salt water orange is one of those trigger colours for fish.
The story line was that the bonefish had refused every fly they had offered the day before so for the next days outing Etu tied this fly on the beach and then they walked straight into the water and immediately hooked a fish … gee it must be a good fly. Anyway I do like it because Aitutaki bonefish do seem to like flies that incorporate a yellow component.
This fly is one of a series of 4 woolly bugger flies that I tie specifically for river fishing and if I only had one woolly bugger in my river fishing fly box this would be the one.
MKII woolly buggers without any weight are amongst my favourite top dropper flies when loch style fly fishing in lakes and these smaller versions with a silver tungsten bead are up there amongst my favourite river flies.
This one of the 4 colours of TBH jig buggers that I carry in my river fly box. It’s a great buggy looking fly that sink well and swims hook point up so less likely to get hooked up on the bottom othan flies that swim hook point down.
These are the only woolly bugger type flies that I now carry in my river fly box. They are a step up from my earlier version in that I have added a CDC under wing directly behind the front hackle which I have reduced down to just one full turn. I tie them in sizes #10 and #12 in just 4 colours.
This fly has it’s origins based on my non bead-head inch nymph fly that I started tying over 20 years ago. For about 10 years now I have been tying this bead-head version in in black, dark olive, Adams colours, claret and brown. It’s a great buggy looking fly and one of the on-going inclusions in my nymph fly box.
I was attracted to this fly because it is made of two of my favourite fly tying materials UV Ice dubbing and CDC. It has looked like a winner since I first saw this fly and it has not let me down. Designed by, as I understand it, Craig McDonald it is a very popular fly in Europe and fast developing a following in Australia and New Zealand.
In this post I describe all the aspect of my current river fishing set up and techniques. The way I set my river fishing gear up and the way I fish has allowed me to hold my own in river sessions in Australia and overseas.
Proceeding through an orderly process as described in this post is a good way of making your fly selection for any trout river.
