WHICH FLY TO USE?

Here’s something I didn’t have time to get to when I made the April 17, 2014 post. You may remember that I only used three fly patterns the entire day. Two of those were general purpose nymph imitations (a size 16 Pheasant Tail Soft Hackle and a size 22 Churchill’s Sparkle Wing RS II) that I had good success with considering the conditions. The third was a dry fly that I called Taka’s Emerger. It was wildly effective.

Here’s the dilemma. I was fishing home water that I’m very familiar with and having a ball catching trout. Obviously, the fly imitations I was fishing were effective. Sometimes at the end of the day I wonder should I have tried some other fly patterns just to see what else would work.

It’s so much easier for me to be “experimental” when I’m struggling to catch fish or not catching as many as I think I should be. For all I know the trout might have taken anything I threw at them that day or the flies I fished might have been the only imitations that worked that day under those conditions. I’ll never know.

Maybe the way you take your game to the next level is by having the discipline to say to yourself, “Okay, I know this fly pattern works. I wonder what else would work.” And then you change flies and your education begins.