TURKEY HUNTING MISTAKES - P.8 A Turkey Dissection Story inside page 6
Simple Flies Are Often the Best Flies OV Outdoor Times
The older I get, the more I appreciate keeping fishing tactics simple. Not that there aren’t times when more complicated By Jeff Knapp riggings are Fishing Editor appropriate. But why make things more elaborate when it’s not necessary? During a trout fishing weekend late last month this philosophy was reinforced. Saturday morning found me along one of Western Pennsylvania’s Delayed Harvest, Artificial Lures Only areas, one that had been stocked a couple of weeks prior. This DHALO area receives rainbow trout mostly, and as many of you know, rainbows are fond of eggs. So it’s no surprise that egg patterns had been productive there. As such, I made an egg pattern, more specifically a Glo Bug, my fly of choice to tie to the tip-
pet end. You can’t get much simpler than a Glo Bug, basically a ball of brightly colored yarn attached to the hook. I’d taken several trout during an earlier outing on the Glo Bug, but wanted to show the fish something else as well. So I tied about a footand-a-half of 4x tippet to the bend of the Glo But hook, then searched in my fly box for a good candidate for the dropper. A couple small orange-colored numbers caught my attention. I can’t recall where I’d gotten them, as a couple buddies and I trade flies we’ve tied, and their origin sometimes becomes lost with time. At any rate, the bead-headed fly — which was basically a just a size 14 scud hook, wrapped with tinsel and finished off with a collar of orange dubbing behind the gold bead — looked right. During the next hour and a half a hooked about 10 nice rainbows, and all but one fell for the orange pattern, before it became a victim of a snag. I refrained from using the last one, wishing to keep as a sample for future ties, which I knocked out later that evening. The afternoon of the following day my friend Dave Keith and I were on a section of remote stream in Jefferson County (PA), one that’s produced some nice wild Turn To Flies Page 13
Ohio Valley
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Outdoor Times April 2016
Ohio Valley Outdoors–Photo by Jeff Knapp
Dave Keith displays a nice wild brown trout that fell for a simple fly, the green weenie.