User Friendly Green Drake 02/12/2021 Photo Album

My post of 01/31/2019 provides a nice description of my introduction to this fly. It also describes how I envisioned it enhancing my arsenal of green drake imitations, and it contains a materials table. You can find a step by step video performed by the designer himself, Andrew Grillos, on YouTube.

The Better Side

During the 2019 summer season I tested the user friendly green drake on numerous occasions, but the results were less than impressive. In fact, I switched back to my more trusted green drake versions on several occasions, and they resulted in superior performance. As it turns out, the saga of the user friendly green drake was not over. I continued to carry four in my green drake fly box, and during a visit to the Cache la Poudre River on 07/17/2020, I knotted one to my line as a last resort after cycling through my other green drake imitations. Voila! The out of favor green drake accounted for seven trout during my remaining time on the river. Once again on 07/21/2020 I defaulted to the user friendly green drake on the Taylor River, and it yielded decent results including a fifteen inch rainbow trout. Again the user friendly green drake model proved its worth on 08/11/2020 and 08/14/2020 on South Boulder Creek, as it produced trout during several stints on my line.

Five User Friendly Green Drakes

Needless to say these productive periods convinced me to restore the user friendly to a prominent space in my fly box. I counted my stock of five and approached my vise to create five additional flies to bring my total to ten. Hopefully the user friendly green drake will continue to impress me during 2021 and become the preeminent green drake imitation in my possession.