Most Effective Fly Patterns of 2014

The title of this makes me chuckle.  Ask 10 fly anglers what their favorite fly patterns were this past year, and you will more than likely get 10 different answers.  Everyone has favorite patterns, ones that work well for them.  Sometimes they work well for others too, sometimes not.

And that's OK!  Some of my favorites from several years ago no longer get fished as often, and have dropped lower on my favorites list.  Are those "old favorites" still effective?  In most cases yes.  When they no longer perform up to my expectations, sometimes I can explain it away that my local fish have LEARNED not to hit that pattern as much over the years.  True or not, it makes me feel better.

In other situatons, I have a much more difficult time explaining why something works less well this year than in past years.  Stocked trout are a good example.  They haven't had time to get caught and learn to avoid something.

I'm going to list my favorites by species, but I will only touch on species where I actually HAVE a new favorite, or at least a solid presentation.  Maybe some of these will work for you, too.

Crappies:
This isn't new to me this year, but is the best crappie presentation I've seen the past couple of years.  It is a 1/80th oz microjig, usually set @ 18" beneath an indicator.  If crappies are around, they will hit this.  Best color can vary, but usually chartreuse is a color they can't seem to leave alone.  Other good colors are red body/chartreuse tail, or gold or silver metallic chenille bodied microjigs (a version also called a Springbrook Wunder).   I'm sure lots of other colors would work, so try your favorite crappie colors.

Largemouth Bass & Smallmouth Bass:

Topwaters are definitely my favorite way to fish for Largemouth Bass.  I mainly tried 2 types this year.  I think I talked about each of them in detail in earlier blogs this year.

The first type is a sort of smallish (by bass standards) pre-formed foam head popper:

This caught a very good number of both Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass this year, and is reasonably easy to cast.

The second type is a "blockhead popper", made from cut pieces of foam flip-flops.

These are odd-looking things...no natural bass food items have such sharp angles.  With the light weight and large flat face, these take a bit more effort to cast.  Totally worth it, these things catch BASS!  Like the popper style above, I caught both river Smallmouth Bass and pond/lake Largemouth Bass on them.  These REALLY push a lot of water, and seemed to excite large bass in the waters I fished.  These Blockheads are my new favorite bass poppers!

As far as subsurface patterns for bass, I didn't stumble onto any new great patterns for Largemouth Bass.  I did, however, have a pretty good day flyfishing for Smallmouth Bass using a Pearl Shiner:

I caught good numbers of Smallies from a local river that day, including a pair of 17-inchers, and lost a third one of around the same size.  Those are NICE fish around here!

Channel Catfish:

I didn't catch many catfish while flyfishing this year, like only 4 I think.  But 3 of them were caught on the same evening on the same fly...so I will share that here.  Its a fairly simple baitfish imitation tied with Craft Fur and some Flashabou, and eyes.  The catfish hit this in a reservoir where gizzard shad is the main forage.

Stocked Rainbow Trout:

For the past couple of years, I've done well using a copper-colored beadhead Woolly Bugger variant called a Chili Pepper.  For some reason, that pattern didn't produce well this Fall.  Instead, I caught a lot of fish on SimiSeal Leech / Mohair Leech style fly, with a glass beadhead.

White Bass:

I tried a variety of flies for White Bass this year.  I caught fish, but also a lot of missed strikes on some baitfish imitations.  The pattern that got a lot of strikes AND good hookup percentage was a small, 1.5" long chartreuse over white Marabou Clouser Deep Minnow.

Goldfish:
Yes, GOLDFISH!  :)  I'd been wanting to catch Goldfish on a fly for years...and finally did it this year.  Found a pond FULL of 'em...And its been that way for many years.  I first caught goldfish there as a kid....probably around 35 years ago!  Still, I tried a few things and just wasn't getting much interest from the fish.  I finally tried a #14 Red Fox Squirrel Nymph variant, and the fish really liked it.

Fishing opportunities have been scarce recently. Leaves a bit more time for sitting at the tying desk pondering what to tie/use for the coming open-water season. Here's a few items I've tied over the past week.
First up is a "Skip's Anatomical Nymph":

Next up is a Deer Hair Bass Popper:

My buddy Jay had found some fly-tying materials at a garage sale a year or so ago.  He gave it all to me.  Included were some size 12 and size 10 cork bodies for making bluegill poppers.  I hadn't used them, but for some reason I was compelled to pick out a size 12 and "give it a go":

The dark spot behind the eye is an imperfection in the cork surface.  No biggie.
Here's the same fly under a UV light:

The next one is just a streamer I threw together.  Can't decide if I like it much:

And last...I'm following a blog called "[url]http://missouriflies.com/[/url]".  Interesting guy...fly-fishes around the north side of St. Louis, often from his kayak in backwaters off the Missouri River.  He catches mostly Grass Carp, Catfish, and some Wipers.  I'm fascinated...he doesn't usually try to imitate plants for his grass carp flies (even when fishing under ripe mulberry trees)....usually he just uses his own design of nymph and swims it back in.  So...here's a couple of his more productive patterns:

The top two with the softhackle legs he calls the "Rabbit Tail Dragon".  The bottom one is basically the same pattern without the softhackle legs.  I used rabbit for the tail on this one too, but he uses black turkey feather barbules for the tail.  He calls it the "Black Ops".

That's it for now!  :icon_salut: