Fly of the month (Canada)
What Fly fishing fly works best for this time of year in and around Canada
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About Me
- Joe "Mad about fly fishing" average
- This page is born out of a passion for fly fishing and for the bugs that we tie at the end of our leaders. If you think about it... ...it doesn't matter what altra light custom made rod with double tapered line and 100% flurocarbon tippet you have, if the fly is wrong they are not going to bite and them biting is what we want :) Tight lines
3 comments:
A Big Thumbs Up for This All-Season Canadian Classic
It doesn't sparkle, it's not at all difficult to tie, and it's been hailed as the “dry for all seasons.” Completely nondescript and made up of one, single-color material, the Tom Thumb is just about the most unassuming, dead-useful fly you could ever need or want. Originating in England in the 1940s, the Tom Thumb eventually migrated to western Canada where it developed a well-deserved following. Many Canadian anglers have made the Tom Thumb the only dry fly they'll put on the water because it's capable of performing the work of an entire collection of flies--with only about a sixteenth of the fuss, money, and effort. The Tom Thumb is an ideal choice for those just learning to tie, as it involves only two main materials—deer hair and tying thread—and minimal frustration.
While this fly is more than capable of imitating chironomids, sedge flies, mayflies, ants, water boatmen, and a host of other edible critters, it seems to be most at home as an emerging caddis imitator. The Tom Thumb is most often fished using a “traveling sedge” pattern, with the fly cast in the usual manner and retrieved using an unsure scuttling movement. Hang on tight when retrieving your Tom Thumb; it's not a fly trout typically sip at demurely! Another method is to fish the Tom Thumb as a wet fly on a full sink line. Due to the fly's buoyancy, it will hover just above the river or lake bottom and make excellent work of representing a tasty cased caddis or scud.
The singular drawback (if it can even be called that) of the Tom Thumb is that despite its rough and ready appearance, it isn't the most durable of flies and, unlike a fine wine, will not age gracefully. After wrangling two or three fish, this fly will typically become an unintelligible tangle of deer hair and thread. Some anglers, however, insist that this transformation only seems to improve the attractiveness and drawing power of the fly, and they will faithfully use their Tom Thumbs until they're floating in pieces in the water!
Try it on the lakes, try it in the streams, try it in the ice-melt and the rain and the sun. Whatever you do, give the diminutive Tom Thumb a chance and never sift cluelessly through your gear box again!
Hunting for Spring Trout in Canada? Use a Pheasant!
...a Pheasant Tail Nymph, that is. As the ice melts away and the start of the fly fishing season rolls around, those big Canadian trout “wake up” hungry for whatever might be hatching. Fortunately, you can't go wrong at the outset of the season (May) with the one fly that resembles pretty much anything that might be hatching at the time—the Pheasant Tail Nymph. There are over 600 species of mayflies in North America alone, and almost every single one of them resembles the small, brown Pheasant Tail Nymph upon hatching. Developed by no-frills English fly tier Frank Sawyer, this amazingly versatile fly can tear it up in rivers, streams, and lakes and should be your go-to fly on days when all the trout seem to have packed their bags and disappeared. The Pheasant Tail Nymph makes use of the two deadliest feather materials available—peacock and pheasant. Various bits of glitter and flash have been added over the years, but when you strip it down to the bare bones, it's this fly's understated and deceptively simple construction that makes it deadly no matter what conditions you're fishing.
How you choose to present the Pheasant Tail has a lot to do with the type of water you're fishing. For rivers and streams, most guides recommend a weighted fly combined with a sink-tip or floating line. The fly should be cast at an upstream angle and then mended, resulting in a drag free drift. When it comes to lakes, the fly should be fished in the reedy shallows. Fish it on a floating line with a splitshot, a sink tip, or an intermediate full sink, and retrieve it as slowly as you can stand to with a gentle weave pattern thrown in for a realistic emerging effect. The Pheasant Tail is at its deadliest during chironomid or mayfly hatches, but there's certainly no harm in giving it a wiggle when nothing seems to be hatching at all.
Trends will come and trends will go, so why fill your fly box with a hundred and one “new and improved” patterns that may or may not work when you can whip up a handful of Pheasant Tail Nymphs and spend the rest of your valuable time doing what you came here for--fishing!
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