Yellow Sallies 2013 Photo Album

Yellow sallies are quite prevalent on Colorado Rivers during the summer months, and I probably don’t use them as often as I should. I’ve seen fairly steady emergences of yellow sallies on the upper Colorado River near Parshall and have experienced fair success there fishing a yellow sally imitation. I just finished tying quite a few deer hair caddis and the yellow sally pattern I like is essentially the same style fly so I moved right into producing ten size 16 yellow sallies.

Yellow Sally

The pattern only requires a hook and thread and three materials; yellow dubbing, yellow elk hair, and a ginger hackle. Similar to the deer hair caddis, I applied head cement to the thread wraps in front of the body before attaching the elk hair wing. I hope to use this fly as a prospecting dry fly during the summer of 2013.

A stalwart consistent reliable fly in my arsenal has always been the deer hair caddis. I tie these flies with dark olive brown bodies and light gray bodies. The dark olive brown body versions are matched with darker wings; whereas, the light gray body model is paired with light tan wings. I add grizzly hackles on the front of both colors.

Deer Hair Caddis Photo Album

Entering the 2013 season I plan to have 15 of each color in size 16 and an equal number in size 14 and I’ve completed all the dark olive brown versions and have five more size 14 light gray flies to complete.

Light Gray Deer Hair Caddis

I’ve been tying these flies almost since the beginning, but this winter I’ve added a couple improvements to the process. To improve the durability of the fly I’ve begun adding a small drop of head cement to the thread wraps in front of the body before attaching the deer hair wing. This improves durability and helps prevent the deer hair from rolling around the hook shank. The second change is using long size 16 or 14 grizzly saddle hackles. I can tie approximately ten flies from one long saddle hackle and with my rotary vise, it is easy to grip the long hackle while spinning the vise to put three or four nice wraps in front of the wing.

Dark Olive Deer Hair Caddis

Another plus this year was using the two deer hair patches that my friend Jeff Shafer mailed to me. The hair on these patches is so even that I skip the hair stacking step, and that’s another huge time saver.

Paradrake 09/11/2012 Photo Album

I was not satisfied with the performance of my green drake comparaduns during my last visit to the Frying Pan River and also on a recent outing on South Boulder Creek. I was able to get only a couple drifts until the fly began to sink and required sponging the moisture with my shirt and dipping in the drying powder. As I planned another trip to the Frying Pan River, I decided to do something about it.

I searched on line for green drake parachute fly and found a link to an Oregon fly shop with a video demonstrating the tying of a paradrake. I liked the style of fly and decided to make some prior to leaving for the Frying Pan on Thursday, September 13. The main feature I gained from the tying demonstration was how much thicker the moose mane tail was. The fly shop pattern used CDC as the wing and goose biots for the body and I didn’t care for these options so I adapted my own materials.

New Paradrake for Better Flotation

I stayed with the same Tiemco 200R size 12 3XL hook that I was using previously. I feel that this is the correct size other than for the smaller South Boulder Creek version, and I’ll address that later before I visit that stream again. I used olive thread and tied on a white calf tail wing. After I stood the wing up and created a thread base for wrapping the parachute hackle, I used a permanent black marker to color the bottom half of the wing. This resulted in a gray shade, but the top or tip of the wing remained white for better visibility. Hopefully this won’t turn off the fish. Picking up the drab olive/gray green drake is very difficult for my aging eyes.

Wellerfish Paradrake from Bottom

Next I moved to the tail and tied in five or six stacked moose mane fibers. I wrapped the thread up over the butt section of the moose mane almost to the base of the wing. I feel the hollow moose mane fibers will also add buoyancy. Next I returned to the base of the tail and tied in a section of maroon sewing thread for the rib. I dubbed the abdomen with the same light olive material that has proven itself on my comparaduns and then wrapped the ribbing to the base of the wing. Next I tied in a grizzly hackle concave side pointing down. The fly shop video used a grizzly hackle dyed olive, and if I had this material I would have used it. Hopefully my version isn’t a bit too light. I applied the same dubbing that I used for the abdomen to the thread and wrapped the thorax and then wrapped the hackle parachute style around the wing post.

I’m fairly certain this fly will improve over my comparaduns from a flotation perspective. I’m convinced the main features that are important to a trout from its underwater vantage point are the color of the underside of the body and the general size and silhouette of the fly. I think my version of the paradrake clicks on all these factors. Hopefully I’ll find out tomorrow how my paradrake performs on the upper Frying Pan River.

Mugly Caddis 01/22/2012 Photo Album

I’m quite excited about the latest batch of flies I tied today, Sunday, January 22. I spotted the fly and tying directions in Charlie Craven’s book, Charlie’s Fly Box, and today I generated six size 16 mugly caddis with olive brown bodies. These flies are purposely designed to be shaggy and unruly, and I love flies that fit that description. I’ve often caught numerous fish on a bedraggled fly, and it seems the more the fly deteriorates, the more the fish respond. The mugly caddis is analogous to buying faded jeans as it is created to look used.

Olive Body Mugly Caddis

In order to tie this fly I purchased two tan snowshoe rabbit feet. I’ve never tied a fly with this material, and I’m excited to see how it works. It certainly seems to bring a lot of air pockets to the underwing. In addition to offering a life like appearance, the mugly caddis is fairly easy to tie with only three materials involved.

Underside

Snowshoe Rabbit Underwing

At the end of October Dave Gaboury and I drove to the fairgrounds parking lot in Eagle, CO and gathered our rods and headed down the bank to fish the Eagle River across from where Brush Creek enters. The river was fairly low and Dave and I were hoping to catch a few fish after a very slow morning on Brush Creek. The sky was quite overcast and air temperatures fell into the 40’s while we were fishing.

Jujubaetis with Epoxy

Jujubaetis

We immediately saw a fisherman across from us in the nice long run and riffle below the entrance of Brush Creek. He was landing a fish as we approached the river, and Dave G. called out and asked him what he was using. The friendly fisherman replied, “prince nymph and jujubaetis”. I had seen the jujubaetis pattern in my Charlie’s Fly Box book authored by Charlie Craven, so I resolved to tie this great looking fly. The fact that the gentleman across from us was catching fish on it only reinforced my desire.

Flashback on Top

As I prepared to tie flies for the upcoming season, I made a list of what I planned to tie, and from that list I created a bill of materials. On a Saturday Jane and I drove to Old Arvada and visited Charlie’s Fly Box, and the salesman there helped me obtain the materials necessary to tie jujubaetis nymphs. This weekend I pulled out my book and the purchased materials and made five of these great looking flies. Since tying the jujubaetis involves using two different colors of thread, I made the tail and abdomen on five flies with the white thread and set aside. Next I switched to black thread and tied on the remaining materials. I set these aside and as a last step I added a layer of clear nail polish. I hope to purchase some five minute epoxy and finish them off with the appropriate coating.

Underside with Legs Visible

Perhaps the first dry fly that I had any consistent success with was the trico spinner. Tricos hatch like clockwork during the summer on the Little Lehigh Creek in Allentown, Pa., and I spent many weekend mornings trying to hook gulping trout on this waterway within the city limits of Allentown. This proved to be a great education in stealthy approach, casting and following a tiny dry fly for a relatively novice fly fisherman like myself.

Trico Spinner

When I moved to Colorado I assumed that my pursuit of trout sipping trico spinners was behind me, but I was mistaken. There are numerous streams in Colorado that host fairly dense trico hatches. Some of the first ones I witnessed were on the South Platte River between Spinney and Eleven Mile Reservoirs. Eventually I encountered spinner falls on the South Platte River near Deckers and some particularly predictable and steady hatches in Eleven Mile Canyon. This past summer I caught a few nice fish on trico spinners on the Arkansas River below Salida.

Top View of Trico Spinner

Because of these occasional encounters with the trico, I depleted my supply and decided to replenish this during January. I consulted my friend, Jeff Shafer, who continues to live in the Lehigh Valley about the latest trends in trico spinner tying. Jeff told me he has had good recent success using charcoal sculpin wool for the wings. This material more closely matches the gray opaque natural trico wing when viewed from beneath the water. Jeff was kind enough to mail me several hanks of sculpin wool, and I used this material to produce seven trico spinners. I also tied five spinners using the white poly wing from my past. Bring on the tricos as I’m ready to offer my charcoal wing imitations this summer.

Charcoal Wing Spinner

One of the highlights of each fishing season is encountering a western green drake hatch. I can almost guarantee a green drake emergence if I visit the Frying Pan River between July and October. Hitting green drakes on other Colorado streams is more haphazard, but I’ve encountered them on St. Vrain Creek, the Roaring River, Clear Creek, the Fraser River, the Conejos River, and the Eagle River. If I only spot a few of these large mayflies by western standards, I immediately tie a green drake imitation to my line. Trout seem to have a long memory for green drakes, and because of their large size they are a treat to use as a prospecting fly.

For the most part fish are not extremely selective to green drake flies; however, over time I have tied numerous varieties. My first attempts were intended to mimic some green drake cripples that I purchased in Basalt on an early trip. They were called green drake cripples and were tied with a marabou tail and abdomen, then a deer hair collar and then hackle. They were difficult to tie and I gradually used them up and moved on to comparadun style green drakes. I made these with many shades of olive dubbing and had varying results.

This summer I traveled to the Conejos River in southcentral Colorado in late July and based upon the recommendation of the gentleman at the Conejos River Angler, I purchased a couple green drake flies. These flies produced quite well on my second day on the river in spite of a relatively sparse emergence. Subsequently the same flies produced fish on Clear Creek, but I lost all but one. Before I lost the remaining fly, I decided to use it as a model and produce some new ones for a September trip to the Frying Pan River.

Purchased Green Drake Took Ten Fish

I used the purchased fly to determine that the proper hook size was 12 3XL. I also was able to find some dubbing labeled light olive that matched the abdomen quite well, and found some maroon sewing thread in Jane’s sewing box that was perfect for the ribbing. Dark coastal deer hair was the final ingredient for the wing. The fly I purchased was much bushier than my version, but I wasn’t sure how to attach the extra materials, so I stayed with the sparse comparadun pattern.

Top View of Green Drake

I stream tested these newly tied flies in September on the Frying Pan River and they performed like a charm. I landed four trout in a fifteen minute time period at the tail end of the green drake hatch, and Dan landed one as well. I was convinced that this was the model I would stick to for future years of green drake fly tying.

Nice Side View of Green Drake Comparadun

I sat down at my vice over the weekend and whipped out ten size 12 3XL green drakes. I’m quite anxious to test them again during the summer of 2012.

Nine Green Drakes and Materials Used

Early in the season, particularly on the Arkansas River, a caddis with a dark body is highly effective. Deer hair caddis with a peacock body are probably a better imitation of the caddis that hatch in thick clouds on the Arkansas; however, I’ve found that a dark olive-brown body caddis also fools fish. In addition this fly produces during other early season caddis hatches on various Colorado rivers so it is more versatile.

Underside of Olive Brown Deer Hair Caddis

Since I was on a roll making 20 light gray deer hair caddis, I simply swapped out the tying thread and dubbing and continued producing size 16 deer hair caddis with a dark olive-brown body. I made 15 of these to go along with the supply that already occupied my fly box.

Another fly that I discovered I was in short supply of late in the season was the light gray deer hair caddis. This fly proved to be a huge winner in one of my late season outings on the Big Thompson River, and it was after this experience that I discovered my shortage and I tied eight more before visiting the South Platte in Wildcat Canyon.

Dark bodied deer hair caddis seem to be the desired fly of trout early in the season, but by August, September and October gray or light colored caddis seem to be a better imitation. The late season caddis I’ve captured seem to have a yellow hue, but the light gray poly dubbing that I use seems to work across a broader range of matching situations than yellow.

When I tallied my list of fly tying requirements, I realized that I needed to make quite a few light gray and olive brown caddis in size 16, so I purchased a $25 pack of Whiting saddle hackles rated size 16. These are extremely long saddle hackles with size sixteen along the entire length. What a pleasure it was to tie twenty light gray deer hair caddis with the long saddles as I used approximately 2.5 feathers to complete 20 flies.

Twenty Light Gray Deer Hair Caddis

I tie my size 16 caddis in a very sparse manner with a narrow body and no palmered hackle over the abdomen. I make a full wrap around the deer hair before cinching it down on top of the hook to prevent the deer hair from rolling around the hook shank. I apply some head cement to the thread wraps that serve as the base for the deer hair, and I usually make four wraps of hackle in front of the deer hair wing. I’ve been in several situations where I caught fish with my sparse caddis when others failed or had less consistent success.

Sparse Light Gray Caddis

I began tying this fly several years ago when I discovered it in a book I purchased by Scott Sanchez at the fly fishing show in Denver. I made 5-10 flies in the 12-14 size range, but they were poorly tied using calf tail hair for the wing. I crowded the head and the slippery wing material tended to to pull out after catching a few fish or even from handling the fly.

For the 2011 season I plan to begin with 15 solid royal stimulators. I’ve already tied nine of them, and I’m now putting three coats of head cement on the thread wraps ahead of the wing. I’ve also switched to calf body hair instead of calf tail, and the calf body hair seems to be less slippery and less unruly. I tie these flies on 3X long hooks.

I believe the main fish attracting qualities of the royal stimulator are the iridescent peacock body material and the red thread. I also love the white wing for visibility in the twilight hours. The large size of the fly and the dense palmered hackle contribute to buoyancy and visibility.

Top View of Stimulator

I’ve experienced much success using the royal stimulator early in the season and also throughout the season in the small headwater streams in Colorado. The royal stimulator floats well and brings up fish in the likely spots in small streams such as those found in Rocky Mountain National Park and tributaries to the Arkansas River.

Perhaps my best fishing experience during the summer of 2010 occurred while casting a royal stimulator in the last hour before dark on Brush Creek near Eagle, CO. You can read more about this on the page link, Brush Creek – 7/10/10.