Fly Adaptations

A smart angler is well-versed on the insects that are found in the stream he/she is fishing. I've seen guys with vests that are popping with fly boxes filled with all sorts of flies. That's good, I guess, if you want to carry around all that stuff. I usually carry three boxes with me on the water, unless I know what I'm specifically doing all day. I have a streamer box, small fly box, and big fly box, which both include dries and nymphs.

Sometimes, however, out of all the possible selections we have to offer, the fish don't want what we've got. I learned an important lesson one day while fishing in North Carolina. I was on a stream getting my ass handed to me. Fish were everywhere except on the end of my line. Upstream of me was a guy who in a period of 20-30 minutes hooked into at least 10 nice fish. I was stumped. I looked in the trees, I looked in the water, I picked up rocks to look on the bottom to see what nymphs were scooting around. Nothing. And this guy was Lefty Kreh for the day.

I decided to take a break and sit on my tailgate and have a beer.

"Pretty nice day out there, huh?" It was cloudy, raining and about 40 degrees so naturally I gave an interesting glance to the guy talking to me. It was the guy who had been upstream of me. I was taking a break from getting skunked, he was taking a break because he was tired of catching so many. Go figure.

"Yeah, you were doing pretty well out there," I said. He walked over and showed me his set-up. It was an egg pattern, a split-shot, and another fly with essentially just red thread. He said he was catching them all on the red fly. "Blood midge," he says. "They're all in the grass on the stream-bed."

When I get back on the water I look into my fly box and know that I don't have any 'blood midges'. I do, however, see a few Rusty Spinners. I take one out, clip off the wings and split-tail, and what do you know, I've got a blood midge. Pretty simple.

I didn't catch anything but at least I adapted to the situation. My guess is he was catching them on the egg pattern and didn't want to say anything, but hey, whatever. Just because you only have certain flies in your box at any given time, doesn't mean you don't have the potential to 'create' a couple more with some minor tweaking of a different pattern. So next time you're on the water and don't have exactly what's working, take a closer look, use your imagination and adapt the flies you have to become flies 'they' want. It may just be the fly of the day that originally was a Rusty Spinner or Isonychia or anything else. The worst that can happen is you keep not catching fish. Give it a shot.