Fly Collections For Montana

There are many hundreds of fly patterns out there. Then, when you add all the variations and combinations of patterns it is enough to make anyone's head spin.

What we did here is put together a few collections of flies that have been consistent producers for us over the years. As a fly tier of over thirty years I have the old habit of tying many patterns in many color combinations. The end result is a bunch of fly boxes stuffed with flies that rarely get used. This is because time and again, day after day I tend to use the patterns that work.

Don't get me wrong though. As a fly tier and fishermen I still love to tie and fish different patterns. However, I like to make sure that I have an ample supply of my basic, go to flies. Some of these are common flies, some are my own or friend's patterns. All of them have accounted for fish in many Montana rivers throughout the seasons.

Big Bugger Collection

Big buggers are fish catchers, big fish catchers! The best part about bugger fishing is that there really is no wrong way to fish them. Classic bugger chucking is slamming the banks and stripping them in. When the salmon fly nymphs are active prior to the emergence big, black buggers fished slow and deep are deadly.

Another extremely effective technique is to drop a small soft hackle (or just about any nymph) a foot to 16 inches off the bugger. The big bugger gets the soft hackle down deep, and gives it that magical swing and lift. Many big fish are caught with this technique!  

This collection consists of 2 weighted black buggers, 2 weighted olive buggers, 2 un-weighted black buggers, 2 bead head pheasant tail soft hackles and two of my emergers.

 

Nymph Collection

Trout eat nymphs, every day, regardless of whether there is a hatch or not. When it is bright and sunny the fish are often down deep trying to not be eaten by birds. As a result nymphs are  an everyday of the year fly choice.

Since the salmon fly and golden stone fly nymphs have a multiple year life cycle, the nymphs are always in the rivers and available to the trout. That makes stone fly nymphs a must have. It is hard to imagine a more productive nymph than the bead head pheasant tail. To round out the collection we have the old reliable Prince nymph. Prince nymphs are very popular flies, for good reason.

The nymph collection consisits of: 2 large and 2 medium black rubber legs, 2 medium golden stone rubber legs, 2 size 14 and 2 size 16 bead head pheasant tails and 2 size 14 Prince nymphs.