In Pursuit Of The Magic Fly.

There is no magic fly, but you are making the task of catching fish much harder if you insist on using the tried and true patterns. Why? Because they look nothing like the real flies the fish are eating. If you are casting flies at rising fish all day long and aren't getting DOZENS of refusals, the fish are telling you something. What? you ask. Fish see everything. If they recognize your fly isn't the real thing from their lie, they may do nothing more than quiver a pectoral fin. You see nothing. To get them to consistently come close enough to the fly for you to recognize a refusal, your flies have to look very much like the real thing.

I've gotten push back on this subject in the past. "I catch fish on a comparadun" or "I've done really well on parachutes". Fine, stick with them if you want, but lets be honest, how many Hendricksons have you ever seen with wings attached at right angles to their body? How many March Browns have you seen  dancing over the water in a grass skirt. Your stubbornness is making it harder for you to catch fish.

What to do? First thing is to get one of the Troutfitter's little plastic containers and take it to the river with you. If you have good eye hand coordination pick up some of the flies that are hatching by the wings and put them in the container. If you have trouble picking them up, get one of those little aquarium nets. Try to keep the flies as dry as possible. When you get home put the container in the fridge. The flies will live several days and when you want to use them as a pattern they will hold still until they warm up.

What better pattern to copy than the real thing. It's what the fish are eating after all. When tying, pay attention to the bottom of the fly, it's what the fish see, (March Browns are yellow on the bottom, not brown). Copy both the color, alignment and silhouette of the wing. Try to get the body length, color, and thickness as close to the real thing as possible. Count the legs and see how close you can come. The tails of the real flies don't touch the water, mine do. If you can get your fly to sit upright without the tail in the water, let me know how you do it.

If you don't tie, buy a pair of good fly tying scissors, then buy flies that you think most closely match the real thing. Using the real flies as models, trim you flies to get as close to a match as you can. 

A refusal is the result of the trout's last second decision to abort the take because there is something wrong with the fly. On average I get many, many more refusals than takes. The refusals let you know you're in the game, it's like you hit the ball but you flied out. 

If you decide to improve your flies let me know if it improves your results.