|
Planet X posted:
That's not wrong, but it is just not that simple if you're new to it or casual. It's not always apparent to me what a fly is supposed to be mimicking and I've got a lot of experience with benthic macroinvertebrates. Adult patterns are easier to look at and understand and a lot of nymphs can be as well, but 2nd instar stages are sometimes tough. Fly names are dumb and don't tell you anything either. A wooly bugger is supposed to be a leech, ffs. That name don't mean poo poo and a dry one doesn't look like any kind of invert at all. I think a lot of the "match the hatch" and fly names are elitist gatekeeping by flyfishing snobs. It irritates the poo poo out of me when flyfishing nerds are "helpful" like that but don't really tell you anything. It's not a hatch anyway, you dildoes, it's an emergence. When mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies hatch from eggs, they are not fish food yet. When they emerge from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd instar stages, they are. But anyhow, yeah, kick over some rocks and see what's crawling around and use flies that look like that if you're nymphing. If the fish are surface feeding, look in the air up and down the shoreline for clouds of flying insects and see what they look like.
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2020 18:58
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:02 |
|
|
Dangerllama posted:Flies are given goofy names because they're all just 3,000 variations on a couple-dozen fundamental patterns. Many of the names have great stories behind them, either funny or meaningful. Also, this is reinforced by fly shops who would all be out of business if people only ever bought pheasant tails and Adamses and were happy with that. If you're a newer angler, there are about 10 patterns you could stick with for your entire fly fishing career and catch just as many fish as anyone else on the river. As a local guide/tier said once, "A fish will eat a cigarette butt if you drift it right." But what fun is that? Yeah, I understand the source of all the names, but using too much jargon to a novice looking for help IS gatekeeping, or at least comes across that way. Even if it's unintentional. That's more what I mean. Telling someone asking for pointers to "just use a Wickham's Fancy" is not helpful at all when you could say "you want a fly that imitates a mayfly emerging into the adult stage, because that's currently happening and the trout are eating them." Jargon is fun, especially when it has all the history behind it that flies do, and it's a great thing to also tell novices about too, but it doesn't convey any useful information to a novice. I mention gatekeeping because in my experience it is so much worse in flyfishing than other jargony coolguy pastimes. Except maybe whitewater and climbing. But yeah, there are a small handful of really effective patterns for whatever you're fishing for, and they can pretty easily be tuned for local forage species and target fish. The dumber and more predatory the fish, the easier it is to get by with fewer patterns. I don't fish for trout much, but I spend more time stripping different colors of wooly buggers for bass and sunfish than just about any other kind of flyfishing.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2020 20:31
|
|
It's great!